Originally created: 2024
Subject: Abstract
Material: Canvas
Medium: Mixed Media
Styles: Abstract Expressionism, Modern, Street Art
It is a narrative that questions the form of African self-inscription, according to philosophy, art, and literature. African discourse has been dominated, for approximately a century, by three political-intellectual paradigms that, moreover, are not mutually exclusive.
African identity basically comes from a nativist discourse, on the one hand, and an instrumentalist one of Africa and its people. During the last century, some of these trends have developed, and others have remained as mere sketches. Very few are notable for their richness and creativity; even fewer are those trends endowed with exceptional strength.
There is nothing that compares, for example, to German philosophy, which, from Luther to Heidegger, has been based not only on religious mysticism but more fundamentally on the desire to transgress the border between the human and the divine. Nor is there any comparison to unworthy mysticism. Following the example of these two meta narratives, African ways of making the self are inseparably connected to the problematic of self-construction and the modern philosophy of the subject. However, the similarities end there.
Several factors prevented the development of conceptions that could have explained the meaning of the African past and present through the future. The outline of determining the conditions under which the African subject could fully acquire his own subjectivity.
Propaganda: the latest series based on the “Memory and Identity” project developed over the last ten years.
Babu
Coimbra, July 2024
