Chine Afrique — Centre Georges Pompidou — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: March 4 → 13, 2020

Focus — Chine Afrique, Centre Pompidou Discover in pictures the exhibition (suspended for now) Chine Afrique at the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Thirty years after «The Magicians of the Earth», fifteen years after «Africa Remix», five years after «Multiple Modernities from 1905 to 1970» and following on from the exhibitions devoted to Wifredo Lam, Latiff Mohidin and, most recently, Ernest Mancoba, the Centre Pompidou continues to explore the history of non-Western arts, with a special focus on the ties between China and Africa. Should the China-Africa connection be seen as a form of total emancipation from colonialism or as the expression of a new relationship based on domination ? The China Africa exhibition examines the real and imaginary spaces resulting from this dialogue, which were first constructed within a framework of Marxist ideology and colonial and then decolonial history. It is an implicit interrogation of Western history.

At the turn of the 20th century, W. E. B. DuBois, the pan-Africanist American thinker, advocated the idea whereby the Asian world could trace the pathway for worldwide racial emancipation. The last century was shaped by the progressive establishment of a link, in certain cases a community of political, ideological and then largely economic interest, between China and Africa. This Afro-Asian meeting of two «Southern» zones liberated representation systems from both the colonial and Western framework, and asserted a common need for a change of focus. What new realities emerged from this transcultural encounter? What mobilities, what cities, what communities? What Utopian or dystopian projections came to light?

Exhibited artists :

Kiluanji Kia Henda, born in 1979 in Angola, lives and works in Lisbonne and Luanda.
Musquiqui Chihying, born in 1985 in Taipei, lives and works in Berlin and Taipei.
Binelde Hyrcan, born in 1983 in Luanda, lives and works in Nice and Paris.
Cui Jie, born in 1983 in Shanghai, lives and works in Beijing.
François-Xavier Gbré, born in 1978 in Lille, lives and works in Abidjan.
Annie Anawana Haloba, born in 1978 in Livingstone, lives and works in Amsterdam
Wang Bing, born in 1967 in Xi’an, Province of Shaanxi, China, lives and works in China and in France.
Marie Voignier, born in 1974 in Ris-Orangis, France, lives and works in Paris.
Yonamine, born in 1975 in Angola, works between Harare, Luanda, Lisbonne and Berlin.
Pratchaya Phinthong, born in 1974, lives and works in Bangkok.