Of Africa Symposium at Royal Ontario Museum

Pushing People to Be Curious About Africa

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) launched earlier this month “Of Africa”, a three-year multi-platform project exploring African experiences through exhibitions, lectures, performances and events. Curators, artists, authors, educators, and academics from across Africa and the African Diaspora are contributors to the project which introduces museum visitors to historical and contemporary African cultural and artistic expressions.

   The multi-dimensional project includes a new display, Maps, Borders, and Mobility in Africa, which opened October 11. Famed Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina delivers the keynote address October 23 to launch ROM 100 Speaks This will be followed by a two-day symposium “Of Africa Histories, Collections, Reflections”  beginning October 24. It is being presented by ROM Contemporary Culture and ROM World Cultures.

   From October 24 there will be a series of Panels examining various subjects. The first will be “Learning From Into The Heart of Africa”and speakers are Afua Cooper, Geraldine Moriba, Yaw Oluwasanjo Akyeaw, Dan Rahimi with Moderator: Dr. Honor Ford-Smith

Speakers on the panel on “Africa and the Diaspora in Western Institutions” include Kenneth Montague, Olubukola A. Gbadegesin, Zoey Whitley and Moderator: Andrea Fatona. The discussion on – African Modernities has a panel which includes  Pablo Idahosa, Elizabeth Harney, Ato Quayson, Fatimah Tuggar and Moderator: Karen Milbourne. There is a fourth panel dealing with – Canonical Understanding and Politics of Representation. Here speakers will be Christa Clarke, Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, Ciraj Rassool with Moderator: Warren Crichlow. “African Curatorial Networks” will be examined by a panel of speakers like Bisi Silva, Mekerm Assegued, and Dominique Malaquais. The Moderator is Elizabeth Harney.

A special performance by Nástio Mosquito titled “African, I Guess, closes the symposium. Mosquito presents an immersive multimedia spoken word performance. The artist was recently named by the UK Guardian to the list of 10 African Artists To Look Out For.

 In a pre-conference interview Wainaina said because he does not live in Toronto his address has to be relevant to the place of the Black and African world in Toronto as well as the global communities. "I guess I am kind of bringing messages from home (Africa).  I guess I am provoking discussions to interact,” he suggested.

   He is concerned that the Black world of Canada especially the literary world, which he knows, seems not connected to the continent because Africans don’t see much of them and very little is known about what is going on here in Canada. The award winning author feels members of the Diaspora out of the U.S. and the U.K. are integrated and there is need for some discussion about that. “We need to interact with each other because how we interact provokes our thoughts. We learn new ideas from each other,” Wainaina observes.

                            ROM Publicist Wendy Vincent, Silvia Forni and Julie 
                                 Crooks working on Of Africa Symposium
   Binyavanga promised to talk in his keynote address to the symposium, about changes that he knows are going on in the artistic community and the community in general – the queers, the bohemians, the people who in history and in diverse societies are always the provocateurs and change makers. He also plans to talk about the history of the Royal Ontario Museum, including “Into the Heart of Africa” exhibition which created serious divisions between members of the African Canadian community and the institution. Many were arrested and charged by police. The scholar believes it is important to revisit this development which hit the city 25 years ago. “I think the idea that these things happen need always to be mentioned. We cannot be a generation of forgetters.” He plans meeting with members of the African Canadian community prior to his speech so that he could understand some of the dynamics associated with the disagreement.

   Silvia Forni, curator of the ROM’s African Collection and Julie Crooks, independent curator and organizer of “Of Africa” alongside Dominique Fontaine are the curators. They are working on a major venture that involves numerous aspects. “For us it’s an important start because it is about having and expanding the conversation about Africa through the voices of artists, curators and people who are deeply engaged in contemporary culture in Africa to present to the public here in Ontario a multiple perspective and multiple visions of the African continent,” says Forni. This is a symposium that we really try to organize by bringing to Toronto a number of people that are very deeply engaged in transforming and living culture on the African continent and from different places in Africa. It is really about presenting the variety and the complexity of what Africa is today.”

   About a year ago Fontaine and Crooks began thinking about a way, based on the fact that the 25^th anniversary of the “Into the Heart of Africa exhibition” was coming up and to look at that past history through the museum but also find a way of moving forward from that event so they met with Sylvia and proposed this idea. They also formed an advisory committee that would help to frame what they were doing. It also served as a sounding board. That is how the process started about how this would develop over the next two to three years.