Some ignorant gallery owners on both sides of the fence have turned me down multiple times for their lack of interest in African art. In his words, African art is primitive. The sad thing is that our so-called elite gallery owners don’t get it either. In most cases they are the worst and very ignorant and naive about African art. How long are we going to allow these false monsters of the past to run wild in our present time?
I have come to realize that the truth is often a hard pill to swallow, but we must face our past in order to have a better tomorrow.
We have been forced to put ourselves down. They held our minds captive with television, print media, history books, or documentaries by their scouts that were supposedly written for them, but ended up on our nation’s school shelves for mind-altering and economic exploitation. Maybe I’m missing something; Please tell me the expectation of an educator who thought that Amina’s grandchildren in Nigeria, that the Niger River was discovered by Mongo Park.
The same river Niger, where their grandmother, Anina, bathed, swam, fetched water, they have known and played in the river all their lives and, in fact, legend said that their grandfather Obi was among the men who guided and guarded the the strangers. White man from the wild beast of the jungle. Instead of a thank you letter, his great-grandchildren are forced to feed the lies of the incident in the name of education.
They consistently used everything they could to achieve their vision. The invention of television became an effective tool for manipulating generations with ease using the power of Jacob’s magnifying vision, Genesis 30:31-43, for his negative agenda. There is power in what we hear and see. That is one more reason why they will never show you the good side of Africa.
During the era of European avant-garde artists, there were prolific African artists like ‘Aina Onabolu’ and many others whose works were never considered modern. Obviously, including them in your modern era will mean equating them with their counterparts in Europe. You know what that means to the black man who was supposed to be picking cotton. “European modern art” was the biggest scam in African art. They took the best of our ancestors and kicked us in the trash.
They knew what they were doing and the effect of these centuries of bad seed is what we see today in Africa and beyond. It is very common to see African professionals, very educated but with no knowledge of themselves and much more white than white, if you know what I mean. I walked into a financial firm in Atlanta owned and run by some Nigerians and the topic of African art came up. One of the owners was asked what kind of art he has hanging on his wall. You have to watch him walk away with pride and he spoke eloquently about modern art at the end he declared that he doesn’t want to be associated with African art.
You can imagine how that made me feel, having studied art and taught art professionally to listen to a Nigerian elite in a position of power and influence, to promote our arts and culture, and rightfully rejected their heritage. I didn’t wait to ask why? She returned to talk about crime and the world image of Nigeria. At this point I struggled to keep
to explode before other nationalities in the company. I am by no means in favor of any crime, but if the man should disown his nation because of crime and Western media propaganda, the problem is much deeper than it seems. I respectfully asked him again if any of these nationalities working in Nigeria had taken out their oil-drilling machines and abandoned their Nigerian mansions since the 419 propaganda started. I didn’t see him jump with an answer this time. Tell me where there is no fraud and crime.
This nice brother is one of the millions of African souls lost in this false and petty world of conspiracy and selfish vision of racism and imperialism. You may be wondering what this has to do with modern art. But the truth is that there was nothing modern about the works of the European avant-garde artists other than the punching of imitators, imitators, and plagiarists in conspiracy with their racist writers, art critics, and art historians to right wrong. Once again names were given, cubism, modern art and they stuffed it down our throats as always.
They covered up the truth of the plagiarism of African art and began their usual wicked naming ceremonies for their selfish targets. Who named Primitive Art and Modern Art? Take a close look at his so-called primitive art and look at modern art and decide for yourself. Who named Tribal Art? These are the same people whose name lists consist of Blacks, Aboriginals, Blacks and Blacks, Gypsies, Whites, Reds, Yellows, and People of Color, to name a few. What good have these names done for humanity apart from division and control? Let’s face the truth, because truth is the heart of freedom. There is more to names than we can imagine, therefore God had to change people’s first names to fulfill his mission in their lives. He has been and always will be demonic and it is time to reject such names for our true purpose and relationship with others.
Let’s see more facts in part 2 coming soon.
