Summary of Postcolonial Art
For centuries, the practice of colonialism has peppered global history as a policy or practice of domination by nations which have acquired control over other countries through enforced settlement and infiltration into existing populations. In the wake of these large-scale cultural attacks and the blatant ignorance of authentic indigenous existence, a field of Postcolonial theory has risen to explore the effects on native cultural identities, race, and ethnicity that have developed both during the process of colonization, and in the aftermath of decolonization. Postcolonial art contributes a complex array of voices to this field by artists in direct response to their and their home countries' experiences navigating the waters of colonialism's influence.
Key Ideas & Accomplishments
- Postcolonial art has allowed enslaved peoples to recover and renegotiate their cultural identities from the shadows of subjugation by those who have sought to suppress or repress their indigenous realities.
- Postcolonial art directly competes with the Western art canon by offering differing viewpoints on people and place which were in existence prior to colonization, cementing the point that such variations of expression can coexist without entirely negating one another.
- Postcolonial art forwards the act of re-empowering personal identity as an act of authentic expression, direct from the self. As postcolonial artist Faith Ringgold states, "You can't sit around and wait for somebody to say who you are. You need to write it and paint it and do it."
- Much Postcolonial art serves to directly oppose and override the fetishization of a people as exotic or "other" by colonizers through the exploration of the relational dynamics between ruled and ruler through the lens of both attraction and repulsion.
- The multiple perspectives derived through Postcolonial art reflect not only the rescuing and resurgence of a native peoples' pre-colonial identity, but also a contemporary hybridity of voice that represents a sort of "third space" in between designations of colonizer and colonized - informed by their integration of, and influence by, mutual shared existence. This can be seen in postcolonial works that fuse indigenous art forms with modern art influences brought in by colonizers.
Progression of Art
Love Letter I
Indian-Pakistani artist Anwar Jalal Shemza, who also lived much of his life in England, was one of the South Asian Modernists, a generation of painters from India and Pakistan who combined international influences with a distinctively personal perspective on South Asian culture during the mid-1900s. Arts writer Anoushka Khandwala says that artists in this group, like Shemza, as well as Indian artists Francis Newton Souza, Maqbool Fida Husain, and Akbar Padamsee "didn't just break from tradition but reinvented it, fusing indigenous art forms with other influences such as Cubism, or Gauguin-reminiscent studies of the body."
According to art historian Sanjukta Sunderason, "Progressive art at the arrival of political independence in South Asia captured both the zeal toward a universal modern (while grappling with the pulls of context) and the ideological and political resonances of art's social commitments." For instance, Shemza, who was heavily influenced by Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, and Wassily Kandinsky explored "modernism through the double prism of Islamic and Western aesthetics." This is seen in Love Letter I's (1969) vocabulary of pattern, with resulting shapes invoking the forms of the Arabic alphabet, Islamic carpet patterns, and Mughal architecture from Lahore.
Shemza was first inspired to develop his unique, postcolonial South Asian visual language after attending a lecture by art historian E. H. Gombrich, who stated that Islamic art was "purely functional." He found the dismissal of the visual arts and for all of the artistic expressions of the Islamic peoples, of the vast populations of the Middle East and elsewhere that adopted the Islamic faith from the 7th century onward extremely depressing.
Some of the other South Asian Modernists, like Souza and Husain, who were influenced by Shemza, went on to become founding members of the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group in 1947. The avant-garde group similarly sought to develop a new visual language for recently independent India by blending elements of traditional Indian art with European influences like Post-Impressionism and Expressionism.
Khandwala notes that other notable modern artists dealing with themes of postcolonialism in South Asia and the Middle East include Indian sculptor Ramkinkar Baij (whose statues of Yaksha and Yakshi (1955-67) stand at the entrance of the Reserve Bank Of India in New Delhi); Pakistani calligrapher and painter Sadequain (whose mural Treasures of Time (1961) resides at the State Bank of Pakistan); and Bangladeshi-Pakistani painter Zainul Abedin with his epic narrative murals and scrolls, like Nabanna (Harvest) (1969).
Oil on canvas - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Measures of Distance
Mona Hatoum was born in Lebanon in 1952, just a few years after it gained independence from French colonial powers (who controlled the country from 1920-46). Her parents were both from Palestine, which had been colonized by the British around the same time. As a young adult, she was forced by civil war in Lebanon (which had its roots in cultural and religious tensions that can be traced to the country's colonization by the French) to exile to England, where in the 1980s, a series of race riots took place. Her formative years were thus characterized by complex postcolonial and intercultural relations, and these experiences are reflected in many of her artworks. In her 1988 video Measures of Distance, she superimposes Arabic script (taken from letters exchanged between herself and her mother over the course of six years) over images of her mother in the shower, with an audio track of Hatoum reading the letters aloud in English, interspersed with audio recordings of conversations between them. The content of the letters ranges from casual chitchat to painful exchanges regarding what the family was dealing with, living in war-torn Lebanon, and the feelings of grief and loss the women experienced due to their difficult separation. Though highly autobiographical, the work also conveys experiences and sentiments with which countless refugees and displaced persons around the world can easily resonate.
Hatoum has explained of Measures of Distance that "Although the main thing that comes across is a very close and emotional relationship between mother and daughter, it also speaks of exile, displacement, disorientation and a tremendous sense of loss as a result of the separation caused by war. In this work I was also trying to go against the fixed identity that is usually implied in the stereotype of Arab woman as passive, mother as non-sexual being [...] the work is constructed visually in such a way that every frame speaks of literal closeness and implied distance." Arts writer and curator Melika Sebihi argues that in this way, the video "deviates from the Orientalist norm, representing Arab women in a complex way that does not serve the Western fetishist gaze." Moreover, Hatoum notes that the equal weight given to the Arabic text and the English audio creates "a difficult and alienating situation for a Western audience who have to strain to follow the narrative," placing them, for a moment, in the shoes of countless colonized peoples who have found themselves suddenly inundated with the language of their colonizers.
Many scholars, like cultural studies professor Michael Hayes, note that autobiography has "long held a central role" in Postcolonial arts and literature, and autobiographical works, like Measures of Distance, "must be read as a renegotiated narrative which conflates personal and national histories in the exploration of Postcolonial identities." Twentieth-century French essayist Philip Lejeune, who specializes in autobiography, has defined the genre as one in which "the focus is [the author's] individual life, in particular the story of his personality." Yet, as Hayes notes, "individuality is not an intrinsic element in humanity, but a western concept with a privileged history," and a person's "'personality' may only be considered worth reading if it belongs to those public figures who have some authority in society. [...] The declaration of personality and reality lean the narrative towards normalized perceptions of self in society, so that minorities, the oppressed, or those of different cultural beliefs are not perceived as 'real'." For this reason, the production of autobiographical works by "subaltern," or Others, is in itself a form of resistance and activism, as the increased inclusion of these voices serves to challenge and diversify our typically one-sided conversations about colonialist histories. Other artists who deal with the theme of postcolonialism through an autobiographical perspective include Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, Mexican-American artist James Luna, and Canadian artist Rebecca Belmore.
Performance-based video - Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Couple in the Cage: Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West
One of the most intriguing Postcolonial artworks to engage with the notion of "the Other" is Cuban-American Coco Fusco and Chicano Guillermo Gómez-Peña's performance The Couple in the Cage: Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West (1992-94). The performance involved the two artists appearing in a large cage in several public, museum, and gallery spaces, presented through an anthropological lens as though the couple were authentic natives of some exotic land. The piece included fake "scientific" texts, diagrams, and volunteer museum "guards" presenting anthropological "facts" about the "specimens'" sexual habits and preferred foods, just as zoo employees might do for wild animals. Props, both "Western" (like bottles of Coca-Cola, a computer, a television, and Converse sneakers) and stereotypically "exotic" (like a grass skirt, feather headdress, and voodoo dolls), also populated the installation. Anthropologists Ruth Behar and Bruce Mannheim have asserted that the performance demonstrated art as "a form of studying the West's construction of itself through its construction of the Other." The performance was filmed by Salvadorian-American director Paula Heredia as part of a documentary titled The Couple in the Cage (1993).
Fusco has explained that with The Couple in the Cage, "We were trying to blast this myth that the non-Western Other exists in a time and place that is completely untouched by western civilization or that in order to be authentic one would have to be devoid of characteristics associated with the West. [...W]e introduced into the cage some elements that shocked and bothered many people [who] said, 'How could we be authentic if he smokes Dunhills? How could she really know how to use a computer if she is from this undiscovered island? Why is she wearing Converse high tops?' Everything they viewed as part of their world, they didn't want us to have. That would mean that we were inauthentic. However, if you see Conchero dancers in Mexico City, they do wear Converse high tops and Adidas and Nikes. They probably listen to hard rock when they are not dancing to traditional music. We wanted to make fun of this very Euro-centric notion that other people operate in a pristine world untouched by Western civilization."
Perhaps most jarring about the performance was audiences' ignorant reactions. Although, as Fusco explained, the piece was not created with the intention of duping or convincing "people that the fiction of our being Amerindians was a reality" (and instead the artists intended it as "a satirical commentary [...] on the history of this practice of exhibiting human beings from Africa, Asia, and Latin America in Europe and the United States in zoos, theaters, and museums"), a shocking number of viewers believed in the ruse, and treated them as such, attempting to mock or provoke the "captives." A few gullible individuals went so far as to contact the local Humane Society to demand for the couple's release. Said Gómez-Peña, "I think we have touched on a colonial wound in this piece." Moreover, for him, the piece exposed the troubling nature of the notion of "authenticity." Said Gómez-Peña, "To me, authenticity is an obsession of Western anthropologists. When I am in Mexico, Mexicans are never concerned about this question of authenticity in regard to postcolonial relations. However, when I am in the United States, North Americans are constantly making this artificial division between what is an 'authentic' Chicano, an 'authentic' Mexican, an 'authentic' Native American in order to fulfill their own desires. Generally speaking, this authentic Other has to be pre-industrial, has to be more tuned with their past, has to be less tainted by post-modernity, has to be more innocent and must not live with contemporary technology."
Historically, the concept of "the Other" has frequently been characterized by eroticism, and this too was invoked by The Couple in the Cage. Fusco explained that "We had a lot of sexualized reactions to us. Men in Spain put coins in the donation box to get me to dance because, as they said, they wanted to see my tits. There was a woman in Irvine who asked for a rubber glove in order to touch Guillermo and started to fondle him in a sexual manner. There were several instances where people crossed the boundaries of expected sexual behavior. I think that was provoked by us being presented as objects, by their sense of having power over us." To this, Gómez-Peña added that responses to the work straddled "the boundary between ethnography and pornography. [...T] his endemic dual perception of the Other, as either noble savage or cannibal, has existed at the core of European and American relations since the very first encounters. We try to play very much with these dualities. When we appear in the cage, I am the cannibal, I am the warrior, this threatening masculine Other who causes fear to the viewer. Coco performs the noble savage, you know the quiet, subdued innocent. The response people have towards her is either one of compassion or one of sexual aggression."
Performance - Various locations
Rainbow Series #14
This image by South African artist Candice Breitz uses collage to splice together images taken from postcard photographs produced in South Africa in the 1990s and Western pornography. A bizarre hybrid creature results, comprised of a tribal Black African female, and a white naked porn star female. The white female hand, with red painted fingernails, provocatively reaches around her buttocks to hold open her vagina to the viewer. The work sought to address the complex cultural relations that have continued to trouble South Africa decades after colonization (by the Netherlands (1652-1795 and 1803-1806) and Great Britain (1795-1803 and 1806-1961)) and the related system of Apartheid (a system of institutionalized racial segregation that existed there from the mid-1940s to the early 1990s).
Breitz was born in Johannesburg in 1972, and currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany where she also works as a professor at the Braunschweig University of Art. In her Rainbow Series, Breitz explored and critiqued the competing cultural representations of, and influences on, post-Apartheid South Africa. In the wake of Apartheid, South Africa sought to renegotiate its identity as the "Rainbow nation" (a national slogan adopted for a time in the 1990s), that is, a country in which individuals and communities of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds coexisted peacefully. Part of this project involved the production of tourist postcards, many of which presented indigenous-looking Black Africans in rural settings. The images, however, were carefully constructed, and used models rather than "real" people. At the same time, South Africa was just beginning to open its doors to foreign media, which led to the sudden importation of a significant amount of Western pornography. Thus, during the 1990s, South Africans were flooded with highly sexualized images that almost exclusively featured white women. Breitz has stated that the images in the Rainbow Series "were my response to the contagious post-Apartheid metaphor of a South African 'Rainbow Nation,' a metaphor which tends to elide significant cultural differences amongst South Africans in favour of the construction of a homogeneous and somehow cohesive national subject."
The photomontage technique used by Breitz in this series is anything but polished, with her cuts between the images harsh and crude. For Breitz, this method served as a metaphor for the violence that continues to be carried out against women, primarily Black women, as well as the ongoing, tumultuous process of identity negotiation in South Africa. As Breitz said, "It probably has something to do with my constant awareness of just how many women are getting cut up out there, literally or otherwise. [...] The Rainbow People are reconstituted as violently sutured exquisite corpses, fragmented and scarred by their multiple identities. They are far from the romanticized hybrid imagined by certain postmodern writers; or the seamless, slick, computer-generated images which some artists produce. Rather, at a time when porn is (at least for the moment) freely available in South Africa for the first time in decades, and when inner Johannesburg maintains the dubious distinction of having one of the highest rape and murder rates in the world, this series is, specifically, a perverse take on the composite subject making up the imaginary tribe which is said to populate the 'New' South Africa." Another contemporary artist who uses montage/collage to explore themes of gender, race, war, postcolonialism, global consumption, and the exoticization of the black female body is Kenyan-American Wangechi Mutu.
Cibachrome print
In the House of My Father
Donald Gladstone Rodney, a British artist of Jamaican descent who only lived to be thirty-six years old (1961-98), suffered from sickle cell anemia, an inherited and debilitating blood disorder with a significantly high rate of incidence among individuals of African and Caribbean descent. In an attempt to combat the disease, Rodney underwent a series of medical procedures during which segments of his skin were removed. In the House of My Father (1996-7) is a photograph of a tiny house constructed out of Rodney's own skin. Artist and curator Eddie Chambers asserts that "the house, a delicate, simple dwelling seemed to symbolize the fragility and near futility of Rodney having to live within a structure hopelessly unable to sustain itself or withstand even the smallest turbulence."
Art historian Tanya Barson writes that In the House of My Father "is a touching, ambiguous work that returns us both to the scholastic hierarchies of medieval scale, where small is infinite, and the more modern sense of small as confinement. Sitting in the artist's hand it seems as though he could crush it in an act of definitive relegation." The work was created for Rodney's South London Gallery exhibition 9 Nights in Eldorado, which was conceived as a tribute to the artist's father who had died two years earlier, at a time when Rodney was in the hospital unable to visit his father or perform the usual Jamaican funerary traditions.
Barson notes that "Rodney's use of photography can be related to his hospital experiences, to the extensive medical data accumulated over his long illness including photographs, x-ray scans and DNA sequencing." Some of his other works even incorporate medical documents, such as X-rays, and medical devices, such as wheelchairs, with the intention, she writes, for "these references to medicine and the body to refer metaphorically to social sicknesses, including racism, police brutality or apartheid, as much as to his personal circumstances. In this way his autobiographical approach enabled him to explore wider questions of identity," including not only broader historical legacies of the medicalization of subjugated peoples' bodies (as seen in histories of "scientific racism," eugenics, physiognomy, phrenology, craniometry, etc,), but also, as arts writer Keisha Jacobs notes, the "metaphor" representing the "'disease' of racism." By exploring the interconnected issues of race and disability, Rodney's practice takes an intersectional approach (that is, looking at how seemingly disparate identity categories, like race, gender, sexuality, and/or (dis)ability are in fact interrelated).
Artist David Thorpe explains "The key theme of [Rodney's] work was the social position of the black person in a predominantly white society. [...] He explored his own history and that of his family as immigrants to the UK in works like Land of Milk and Honey and In the House of My Father and he used his illness as a metaphor with which he expressed the marginalization of the black and disabled."
Rodney was a leading figure in the BLK art group, a collective of young Black artists (all children of Caribbean immigrants) that formed in Wolverhampton, England, in 1979. The group, which also included Eddie Chambers, Dominic Dawes, Lubaina Himid, Claudette Johnson, Wenda Leslie, Ian Palmer, Keith Piper, and Marlene Smith, was inspired by the African American-led Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s (which itself was a continuation of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s). Artists from all these groups sought to define a new Black aesthetic (focusing on Black experience and empowerment/pride) in art and literature.
Photograph, c-print on paper, mounted on aluminum - The Tate, London
Mawa-che-hitoowin: A Gathering of People for Any Purpose
In 2005, First Nations artist Rebecca Belmore became the first aboriginal woman to represent Canada at the Venice Biennale. Even today, Canada continues to struggle to come to terms with its history of colonization, which involved the near erasure of much indigenous culture, language, and tradition, in large part due to the residential school system. It is estimated that over 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children were placed into residential schools, which often involved their being abducted from their families, given new Christian names, and being forbidden from speaking their native languages, practicing their cultural traditions, or having any contact with their families or community members (not to mention the physical, verbal, psychological, and sexual abuse that was rampant at the schools). Though the last of these schools was closed in 1996, the pain, suffering, and loss they inflicted on families and communities live on today. This collective trauma has resulted in a prevalence of mental illness and addiction in aboriginal communities, and ongoing nationwide racism that results in disproportionate numbers of indigenous individuals being the victims of abuse, rape, violence, murder, and unresolved disappearances.
In her work, Belmore combines contemporary Western art forms such as performance and installation with cultural practices like storytelling and visual languages like craft making from her aboriginal heritage, in order to highlight the histories and legacies of subjugation and violence that exist not only in Canada, but in countries around the world that continue to grapple with their colonial pasts. Moreover, while some of her works deal specifically with Canada's violent colonial history (such as At Pelican Falls (2017)), many of her works are also relatable to a wider audience, offering points of connection for subjugated, colonized, and marginalized peoples the world over. For instance, her video Fountain (2005) explored water's importance in the history of European colonization, while her performance Creation or Death: We Will Win (1991), which was presented at the Fourth Havana Biennial in Cuba, symbolized the struggles of indigenous peoples around the world as they attempt to preserve their cultural traditions in the face of colonization.
Mawa-che-hitoowin: A Gathering of People for Any Purpose (1992) was a particularly powerful early interactive/participatory installation by Belmore that involved the creation of a space, in which chairs (that came from Belmore's home, as well as the homes of her family members) were placed in a circle on a floor that the artist had constructed of plywood and painted with flowers (representing the importance of the connection between man and nature, as per aboriginal belief systems), with a pair of headphones at each, through which visitors could listen to first-person accounts of indigenous Canadian women regarding their personal struggles. Art historians Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips note that "For Belmore, the interactive potential of the installation offered a positive strategy with which to address stereotyping, racism, and the prices paid by the victims of these evils."
Art historian Scott Watson asserts that "This work's power depended upon the voices and stories of loved ones, community, children and parents. It was a political gesture for Belmore to feature those voices in the space allocated to her art. Here it was perfectly clear that narrative, identity and subjectivity are not just abstract issues, but concrete ones, tied to life." Indeed, as artist and lecturer Julia Bryan-Wilson notes, participatory/relational/dialogic art forms offer artists a unique way of transforming their artistic practice into something impactful, going beyond the merely visual toward a more fully embodied experience that prompts the viewer toward more thoughtful engagement and dialogue.
Interactive installation (audio recordings, headsets, chairs, plywood, linoleum, wood stain) - National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Flags
For his 2009 series Flags, American artist Fred Wilson, who describes himself as being of "African, Native American, European and Amerindian" descent, recreated the flags of several African and African diasporic countries. However, he omitted all color, painting the flag designs solely in black, on off-white cotton canvas (referencing the importance of cotton to the African slave trade). The artist explained that the lack of color in these works "expresses a feeling of loss--the loss of human potential in the wholesale theft and abuse of thousands of children and young adults abducted by slave traders." He added, "I was thinking about the nature of these countries - that they are unfinished and sometimes they change." Artist and arts writer Doro Globus sees Wilson's project as "the unpacking, deconstructing and reconfiguring of accepted cultural forms."
Artist and researcher Sam Holleran writes that "Flags are routinely associated with crass forms of nationalism. [...] While the flag is a symbolic distillation of political and ideological sentiment into a graphic form, it is very much a medium, and not a message. Flags don't convey one elemental ideology but are freighted with myriad, disparate identities. This dissonance has been appealing to artists throughout time. [...] To see flags as simply relics of the past is to ignore their emotional pull, whether it be national, ethnic, or regional, they still have affective power over the vast majority of us. Artists are keenly aware of this, and the flag has been, and continues to be, a thematic touchstone. The form is a shorthand for issues of identity and belonging." Likewise, political scientist and indigenous studies professor Glen Coulthard and urban studies scholar Matt Hern note that "National flags represent an imagined community, a symbolic gesture claiming commonality and identity. The question of 'community' - of who can be together with whom - has long been a central, perhaps the central conundrum of political thinking: Who is 'we?' Where and with whom do we belong? Who can we be in-common with? [...] Refusing the flag and acknowledging its deployment as essential to colonial occupations and empire might open the door to new emancipatory renditions of being together."
Indeed, many Postcolonial artists (like Faith Ringgold and Laura Serejo Genes) incorporate powerful national symbols, such as flags (as well as other national icons, like the Statue of Liberty) into their art in order to critique the hypocrisy of national pride in regard to colonial pasts. For instance in Ringgold's Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger (1969), made shortly after the first moon landing, she embedded/hid the final two words of the title in the stars and stripes of an American Flag, in order to highlight the fact that too many American people go to bed hungry, while the government spent billions to place their flag on the moon." Unsurprisingly, artists often find themselves in hot water when they use flags in critical ways. In 1970, Ringgold, along with artists John Hendricks and Jean Tuche, were arrested just days after opening the People's Flag Show at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City, on the basis of "desecration of the American flag."
Acrylic on canvas - Tate, London
Nelson's Ship in a Bottle
Yinka Shonibare, MBE, was born in London, England, and raised in Lagos, Nigeria. Today, he is one of the best-known artists dealing directly with themes of postcolonialism in his work. His sculpture Nelson's Ship in a Bottle, which was originally installed in London's Trafalgar Square in 2010, and now resides in the city's National Maritime Museum, is one of the most photographed artworks to have appeared in London's public spaces. It is composed of a fifteen-foot-long bottle inside of which sits a model of Admiral Horatio Nelson's ship HMS Victory. Nelson was an officer in the British Royal Navy from 1771-1805, during which time he was instrumental in securing a number of victories, such as at the Battle of Trafalgar, and established his place as one of the nation's greatest military heroes, before being fatally wounded while aboard the Victory. Shonibare's model of the ship is detailed and precise, except that his thirty-seven sails are made of richly patterned batik textiles.
Batik textiles and patterns have been a trademark of Shonibare's work for decades. He explains that, although these patterns have come to be seen as traditionally "African," batik is, in fact, an "Indonesian-inspired fabric which was subsequently factory-produced by the Dutch and then traded in Africa." He says, "I use this fabric to explore the complex relationship between Africa and Europe, particularly the complexities of contemporary hyphenated identities." Indeed, textiles feature prominently in the works of many artists working from a postcolonial perspective such as Filipino artist Cian Dayrit, Ghanian sculptor El Anatsui, and Moroccan artist Hassan Hajjaj. These are familiar materials, writes visual culture scholar Jessica Hemmings, which "clothe our bodies and domestic lives," possess a unique ability "to capture and convey cultural, national, and individual identity," and can thus be used "to capture hybridity and communicate the complexities of postcolonial identities."
Nelson's Ship in a Bottle has opened itself to a wide range of critical readings, as do many of Shonibare's works. Artist Rebecca Jagoe notes that "Read simultaneously as a celebration and a condemnation of the past, Shonibare's playful yet intricate work avoids didactic statements and never clearly states a position." Shonibare has asserted that Nelson's Ship in a Bottle is "a celebration of London's immense ethnic wealth, giving expression to and honoring the many cultures and ethnicities that are still breathing precious wind into the sails of the United Kingdom." Meanwhile, art historian Heather Shirey asserts that the work "inserted a black diasporic perspective into Trafalgar Square, offer[ed] a conspicuous challenge to the normative power that defines social and political space in Great Britain [and] challenged the dominant nationalist discourse celebrating British imperialism." Shirey recognizes that, due to these multiple potential readings, the work exemplifies the way in which, as Stuart Hall asserted in his discussion of cultural identity, "meaning is never finished or completed, but keeps on moving to encompass other, additional, or supplementary meanings."
Sustainably sourced wood, other hardwoods, brass, textiles, acrylic (PMMA), LED lighting, and ventilation system - National Maritime Museum, London, England
Fons Americanus
Growing up in the southern state of Georgia, African-American artist Kara Walker struggled with being the target of racism. Since the 1980s, her art has sought to grapple with these experiences, and more broadly, with what it means to be Black in the United States today, as the colonial legacy of slavery lives on. Though she is perhaps best known for her life-sized paper cut-out silhouettes of horrific historical scenes (such as lynchings and sexual violence), in recent years she has produced monumental sculptural works that offer a unique take on post-colonial America. Fons Americanus (2019), which was dismantled and destroyed in 2020, was a 43-foot-tall, four-tiered fountain made entirely of recyclable materials, inspired by the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace. At the apex of Walker's sculpture stood the figure of Venus, with water spurting not only from her nipples (something seen throughout art history, as in Giambologna's Neptune Fountain (1563-66) in Bologna, Italy) but also from her slashed throat. Smaller figures in the fountain appeared, from a distance, as traditional cherubs or putti, but upon closer inspection revealed themselves to be Black children weeping, or donning swimming goggles and snorkels in attempts to swim for their lives. Sharks swam, leapt, and thrashed in the pool at the fountain's base, symbolizing the perilous sea crossings that millions of African slaves were forced to undergo.
Walker has noted that "Although slavery didn't exist on these shores, England was the beneficiary of the slave trade and its products." She says, "I wondered how to return the gift of having come to be - through the mechanics of finance, exploitation, murder, rape, death, ecological destruction, co-optation, coercion, love, seafaring feats, bravery, slavery, loss, injustice, excess, cruelty, tenacity, submission and progress - conceived here in the United States, to live in this time and place, with this opportunity, this ability." Elsewhere, she has stated "The Fons Americanus is an allegory of the Black Atlantic and really all global waters which disastrously connect Africa to America, Europe, and economic prosperity."
Walker's choice to create a subversive monument, or "counter-memorial," as curator and critic Rianna Jade Parker put it, came at a time when many cities are receiving demands to remove public monuments that celebrate "heroes" and "victories" intricately tied up in violent colonial histories. Arts and culture writer Bidisha Mamata explains that "Public monuments were built by the victors of history to celebrate their feats, legitimize their abuses, exult in their spoils and anchor their power. Walker's monumental rebuke rises up palely: white supremacy built on black degradation. She makes visible the black women, children and men who were exploited and erased, and does so in a sardonic reclamation of the perpetrators' own visual language."
Cork, metal, and wood coated in jesmonite - Tate Modern, London, England (now destroyed)
Beginnings of Postcolonial Art
Colonialism
Political scientists Margaret Kohn and Kavita Reddy define colonialism as "a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another." For centuries, powerful nations around the world (particularly in Europe) have been colonizing nations and peoples viewed as "inferior," as seen in Spain's colonization of Mexico in the sixteenth century, the Netherland's colonization of South Africa in the seventeenth century, and England's colonization of India in the eighteenth century. Human rights journalist Emmaline Soken-Huberty notes that "between 1492-1914, European countries conquered more than 80% of the world's land mass." Kohn and Reddy note that although "colonialism is not a modern phenomenon, [...] in the sixteenth century, colonialism changed decisively because of technological developments in navigation that began to connect more remote parts of the world. The modern European colonial project emerged when it became possible to move large numbers of people across the ocean and to maintain political control in spite of geographical dispersion."
Colonialism is closely related to imperialism, which, according to Kohn and Reddy, refers to "the way that one country exercises power over another, whether through settlement, sovereignty, or indirect mechanisms of control." Throughout history, colonization has been viewed by the colonizers as a way of expanding their territory, a means of obtaining natural resources in foreign lands, and as a "civilizing mission," which, as Kohn and Reddy write, "took place within the framework of a religious discourse that legitimized military conquest as a way to facilitate the conversion and salvation of indigenous peoples." In all cases, however, colonization has had deleterious effects on indigenous populations, with colonizers bringing new diseases to these regions, enacting violence on, displacing, and even enslaving millions of individuals, as well as diluting, diminishing, or even eradicating local cultures, traditions, religions, and languages, with the justification that colonized peoples are "barbarians" or "savages" in need of salvation and civilization.
For as long as colonialism has existed, it has had critics. Nineteenth-century German philosopher Karl Marx understood colonization as, above all else, a tool of capitalist expansion. Similarly, twentieth-century writer, former President of the Regional Council of Martinique, and founder of the Négritude movement in Francophone literature, Aimé Césaire argued in his Discourse on Colonialism (1955) that colonization is "neither evangelization, nor a philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease, and tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law," but rather, at its core, is driven by market/economic interests and an urge to exploit.
Post-Colonialism
Decolonization, which refers to both literal decolonization (a colonizing force giving up political control of a colonized land) and cultural decolonization (colonized peoples returning to or rediscovering their traditions and cultural practices, and abandoning those imposed on them by their colonizers) became a significant trend throughout the twentieth century. For instance, Japan leaving Korea in 1945, the United States giving up control of the Philippines in 1946, and Britain leaving India in 1947, Palestine in 1948, and its African nations shortly thereafter.
According to the United Nations, "In 1945, some 750 million people, nearly a third of the world's population, lived in Territories that were dependent on colonial Powers. Today, there are 17 Non-Self-Governing Territories remaining and fewer than 2 million people live in them." However, as Soken-Huberty notes, colonialism has long-lasting social, cultural, and psychological effects. She writes that "after centuries of colonization, colonized societies are worlds away from what they once were; countries can't simply 'go back'. The colonizer's dominant values, practices, laws, culture, and more often remain in place. Indigenous people are still marginalized and discriminated against. The legacy of the slave trade, which brought colonized people to places around the world, also cannot be forgotten. [...] Some people talk about colonialism as a thing of the past, but experts say that dismisses the reality of colonialism's ongoing impact." Moreover, write Kohn and Reddy, "violence is the foundation of the colonial regime, and therefore inevitably plays a role in its overthrow." In other words, gaining independence from colonizing powers comes at the cost of many lives. In all cases, decolonization is a complex process, and an entire field of discourse, Postcolonial Theory, has developed to study the way in which nations process their newfound independence and the departure of their colonizers.
Postcolonial Theory
Cameron McCarthy, professor of Education Policy, defines postcolonial theory as the "practices of systematic reflection on dominant relations, produced in the process of elaboration of colonial and neocolonial relationships and encounters between metropolitan countries of the West and the third world." For centuries, political scientists, philosophers, and other thinkers have developed theories and schools of thought that have played a significant role in decolonization efforts, and in the processes of formerly colonized and enslaved peoples recovering or renegotiating their cultural identities. Just a few major postcolonial thinkers and their theories are outlined below.
Frantz Fanon and The Psychology of Colonization and Oppression
Afro-Caribbean Marxist psychiatrist and political philosopher Frantz Fanon wrote extensively about decolonization and postcolonialism during the mid-twentieth century, with German historians Jan C. Jansen and Jürgen Osterhammel calling him "the most influential anticolonial thinker of his time." Fanon was born in the French colony of Martinique, and his ancestors had been slaves. He fought for France against Nazi occupation during WWII, and later lived and worked in colonized nations like Algeria and Tunis. His publications, which included the books Black Skin, White Masks (1952), A Dying Colonialism (1959), and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), examined the psychological effects of colonization on subjugated peoples (such as inferiority and dependency complexes, a servile mentality, alienation, and dehumanization), and influenced key leaders of national liberation and decolonization movements around the world. According to his radical vision, the colonized subject could best regain their humanity, and experience catharsis, by freeing themselves from colonialism through violence, just as colonial rule was imposed upon them through violence. Speaking specifically to the psychological effects of colonization, he saw violence as a "cleansing force."
Fanon was heavily influenced by psychoanalysis, as well as by his teacher and mentor Aimé Césaire, a leader of the Négritude movement, who wrote in 1955 that "Between colonizer and colonized there is room only for forced labor, intimidation, pressure, the police, taxation, theft, rape, compulsory crops, contempt, mistrust, arrogance, self-complacency, swinishness, brainless elites, degraded masses. No human contact, but relations of domination and submission which turn the colonizing man into a classroom monitor, an army sergeant, a prison guard, a slave driver, and the indigenous man into an instrument of production. [...] Colonization = 'thingification.'" Building off of Césaire's work, Fanon argued that "decolonization is always a violent phenomenon [and] is the veritable creation of new men [...]; the 'thing' which has been colonized becomes man during the same process by which it frees itself."
Edward Said and Orientalism
Palestinian-American cultural critic Edward Said, who drew heavily upon earlier writings by French philosopher Michel Foucault, is generally considered to be the father of postcolonial theory, with his book Orientalism (1978) describing the way in which a group of people (such as those living in the Western world) construct an imaginary identity (which is both political and cultural) for people they see as "Other" (such as those living in the Eastern world, or "the Orient"). He writes that, for Westerners, Orientalism is a way of "coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient's special place in European Western experience." Said was concerned with the question of how "intellectual, aesthetic, scholarly, and cultural energies" (including the production of artworks and other forms of visual culture) have gone into the making of imperialist traditions such as Orientalism. Said's work has influenced more recent art historians, such as Linda Nochlin (most notably in her 1983 essay, "The Imaginary Orient," which examined the work of nineteenth-century French artists Jean-Léon Gérôme and Eugène Delacroix), in their analysis of artworks created in colonial contexts, and how these artworks not only feed off of, but also feed into, the imaginary construction of the "Other."
Stuart Hall and Diasporic Cultural Identity
Jamaican-born British Marxist cultural theorist and political activist Stuart Hall was of mixed-race background, with some of his ancestors even being slave owners. In his writings, such as his 1996 essay "Cultural Identity and Diaspora," Hall used a semiotic framework to explore the role of visual cultural artifacts (like photographs and films) in histories and legacies of colonization, migration, and racism, as well as the construction of cultural identities, particularly in displaced and diasporic communities. He asserted that "instead of thinking of identity as an already accomplished fact [...] we should think [...] of identity as a 'production which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation."
Hall wrote that, while members of subjugated groups possess collective cultural identity, that is, a "shared culture [...] which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common," there is also a "second, related but different view of cultural identity [which] recognizes that, as well as the many points of similarity, there are also critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute 'what we really are'; or rather - since history has intervened - 'what we have become'." In other words, both "homogeneity" (or "essentialization," a reductive view of identity, or seeing sameness in all members of a group) and "hybridity" (which recognizes more complexly nuanced differences) come into play in the construction of cultural identities. Hall was also involved with the British Black Arts Movement and helped found the Association of Black Photographers.
Homi K. Bhabha
Since the late 1970s, Indian-British post-structural cultural theorist Homi K. Bhabha has written about several concepts that are central to postcolonial theory, including hybridity (or what he called "third space," meaning a space "in-between the designations of identity" which "opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy,") mimicry ("a complex strategy of reform, regulation, and discipline, which 'appropriates' the Other as it visualizes power,") and ambivalence (which postcolonial researcher Nasrullah Mambrol defines concisely as "the complex mix of attraction and repulsion that characterizes the relationship between colonizer and colonized.") Bhabha has also written through a postcolonial lens about contemporary artists like Anish Kapoor and Matthew Barney.
Gayatri Spivak
Postcolonial feminist critical theorist and activist Gayatri Spivak was born in India in 1942, five years before the country gained independence from Britain, and she therefore grew up in the immediate aftermath of decolonization. In her writings, such as her book A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999), she advocated for the voices of the "subaltern" (meaning anyone who is subjugated, thus not only referring to colonized peoples and racial/ethnic minorities, but also women, LGBTQ individuals, etc.) to be entered into postcolonial discourse, rather than simply the voices of the colonizers. This model is sometimes referred to as "history from below." Spivak also coined the term "sanctioned ignorance," referring to the way in which imperialism has led Western institutions (such as academia) to "absolutely ignore" or "strategically exclude" subaltern perspectives. In other words, sociologist Lucy Mayblin explains that Spivak's concept of "sanctioned ignorance" refers to "a purposeful silencing through the dismissing of a particular context as being irrelevant," or the way in which these Western institutions are "tainted by imperialist assumptions," which has the effect of "reproducing and foreclosing [...] colonialist structures."
Okwui Enwezor
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Nigerian curator, art critic, art historian, and educator Okwui Enwezor held prominent positions in art institutions like the Haus der Kunst in Munich, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as the Venice Biennale, the Documenta quinquennial, and the Johannesburg Biennale, to name just a few. As art critic Jason Farago notes, during his relatively short curating career, and through his writings, which have appeared in the world's most prominent art journals, Enwezor "displaced European and American art from its central position as he forged a new approach to art for a global age," and "presented contemporary art against a backdrop of world history and cultural exchange." In short, he placed postcolonial discourse front and center in the art world. His early years were characterized by constant displacement and migration, living through wartime in his home country. He later stated that during his formative years "I learned what it means to be the Other, even within the rooms of one's own home." Enwezor has influenced others, such as Nigerian-American artists, curators, critics, and scholars Olu Oguibe and Chika Okeke-Agulu.
The Decolonization of Art History
As art historians Mary Kelly and Ceren Özpinar explain, "since the early 1980s, a number of scholars have called for pioneering change to open the art canon to acknowledge modern and contemporary art produced by artists in various countries around the world." In other words, there is a significant push in recent years not only for art institutions to include minority or "Other" artists/artworks in their collections, but also for art history itself to turn to and include the voices of subjugated or "subaltern" groups, and to become self-critical, examining and rectifying the imperialist tradition of the academic institution. Kelly and Özpinar write that "various countries in Asia and Africa, for instance, have very different art historical ideas about the origins and timelines of aesthetic modernism and postmodernism, and gaining deep knowledge of wide scholarship is imperative to understanding contemporary art from different geographical regions. [...] These matters demonstrate just some of the ways in which the discipline is still deeply rooted in colonial art history and the English-speaking world, indicating the crucial need for new research to further challenge and structurally intervene in art history." Postcolonial theory can work in tandem with feminist and intersectional modes of thinking in order to, as art historians Joshua I. Cohen, Foad Torshizi, and Vazira Zamindar put it, "break [...] with the Eurocentric, patriarchal, and nationalist foundations of art history."
Concepts and Styles
Postcolonial Art in Africa
From the early 1600s to early 1900s, many African nations (about one-fifth of the total land mass of the continent) came under the rule of European countries like France, The Netherlands, Portugal, and Great Britain. Historians John Parker and Richard Rathbone note that "For some Africans, colonial rule was threatening; for others, an opportunity. Reconstructing the complicated patterns of this time is a massive challenge for historians of Africa. [...] Colonialism was not just about the actions of the Europeans, it was also about the actions of the Africans and what they thought." However, since much earlier (about the early 1500s), the continent and its inhabitants had also been deeply implicated in colonization projects through the abduction of over twelve million individuals as part of the global slave trade.
Modern and contemporary artists across the African continent have dealt with these multiple histories and perspectives of colonization in their art in myriad ways. South African artists Candice Breitz and Mary Sibande produce jarring, sometimes even violent artworks that explore the nation's complex struggles to build a new national identity following decolonization and the problematic race relations left in the wake of Apartheid. In Ghanian filmmaker Nii Kwate Owoo's 1970 film You Hide Me, his exploration of the history of "the theft and concealment of ancient and rare African Art hidden in plastic bags and wooden boxes in the basement of the British Museum" served as a symbolic metaphor for the colonization not only of objects, but of people and cultures. The paintings of Congolese artist Chéri Samba and Sudanese artist Hassan Musa seek to create a new African identity, taking into consideration ongoing postcolonial issues of poverty, ignorance, racism, and cultural imperialism. Many of today's African artists, like Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui, British-Nigerian artist , and half-Malawian half-South African artist Billy Zangewa, highlight the importance of textiles to traditional African culture, incorporating these materials into their contemporary works.
Meanwhile, African art historians, scholars, and curators like Okwui Enwezor, Olu Oguibe, and Chika Okeke-Agulu have produced a significant amount of writing over the past few decades that analyzes the postcolonial context of art production in Africa. For instance, in his 1993 essay "In the Heart of Darkness," Oguibe discussed the way in which Western cultures equate pre-modernity in non-Western cultures with "primitivism," due to an "underlying necessity to consign the rest of humanity to antiquity and atrophy so as to cast the West in the light of progress and civilization," whereas he calls for greater recognition of the plurality/multiplicity, as well as the construction, of what constitutes our definitions of "modernity" or "Africanity" (African identity). In Okeke-Agulu's 2015 book Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria, he analyzes the way in which the works of artists working in post-colonial "modern" Nigeria (such as Bruce Onobrakpeya, Jimo Akolo, and Uche Okeke) "show both a deep connection with local artistic traditions and the stylistic sophistication we have come to associate with twentieth-century modernist practices."
Postcolonial Art in the Caribbean
Colonization in the Caribbean began around 1493, and was due in part to a European search for gold and silver. When that proved relatively unfruitful, the islands were converted by the colonists into agricultural lands for the growing of profitable crops like coffee and sugarcane. In need of men and women to work these plantations, the Spanish, English, Dutch, and French colonizers brought some five million slaves from Africa. In discussing the outcome of the Caribbean's colonial past, Cuban ethnographer Lydia Cabrera and Martinican-French philosopher and poet Édouard Glissant have used the term "creolization" (etymologically derived from the Latin words for "create" and "colony") to describe the "coming together of cultural elements from absolutely diverse horizons, [...] which really interlink and mix with one another to produce something absolutely unforeseeable, absolutely new: Creole reality."
Artists who have dealt with the creolization of Caribbean culture in their work include Cuban artist Wifredo Lam and Jamaican-American photographer Renee Cox. In his paintings (such as The Jungle (1943) and Horse-Headed Woman (1950)), Lam referenced "primitive" Afro-Cuban traditions and religious practices, like Santería. He saw his art "as a form of decolonization," and once stated "I wanted with all my heart to paint the drama of my country, but by thoroughly expressing the negro spirit, the beauty of the plastic art of the blacks. In this way I could act as a Trojan horse that would spew forth hallucinating figures with the power to surprise, to disturb the dreams of the exploiters." Meanwhile, in her photographic series Queen Nanny of the Maroons (2004), Cox presents herself as the historical figure of Queen Nanny, an eighteenth-century escaped slave who went on to free over 800 others over the course of fifty years. With the series, Cox wanted to honor "the only female among Jamaica's national heroes, [who] continues to inspire those with a desire for independence and the spirit to achieve it."
Postcolonial Art in Oceania
Between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, almost all of Oceania came, at one point or another, under the control of colonizing forces from Europe and the United States, such as the British in Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji, and the Americans in Samoa. Since decolonization, artists in the Pacific nations have grappled with their past through their art, often through the incorporation of aboriginal imagery and craft traditions. In contemplating the implications of producing "traditionally oriented" art for an external "world market," anthropologist Eric Venbrux asserts that "more than anything else, [...] Aboriginal art reflects worth, morality and success in contemporary Australia," and "the omnipresence of visual art produced by Aborigines rhetorically demonstrates the nation's post-colonial virtue. It suggests that mainstream Australia and the institutions of the state have come to terms with the past wrongs to the indigenous population: a symbolic reconciliation to expel colonial vice."
For instance, in New Zealand, many contemporary artists (like photographers Tia Ranginui and Talia Smith, painters Ralph Hotere and Robyn Kahukiwa, and sculptors Peter Robinson and Michael Parekōwhai) use image-making as a means of staying connected to the traditions of their Māori ancestors. Ranginui states that "Art is a vital part of keeping matauranga Māori alive, to promote a Māori worldview where Pākehā views usually dominate, prevail in the art world. I see it as an intrinsic part of our culture, within all of us, that we can use to work through our feelings and heal from the colonial history of our people and land, to turn something very sad into something constructive. Create an ongoing dialogue, so that we may move into a more knowing state of co-existence." A similar impulse can be seen in the work of many contemporary aboriginal Australian artists, like painter and batik textile artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye, multimedia artist Danie Mellor, and painter Christopher Pease.
Artists without indigenous ancestry also produce work that connects with themes of postcolonialism. In New Zealand, painter Charles Frederick Goldie made his career in the early 1900s by painting portraits of Māori chiefs and community leaders in a distinguished style hitherto reserved for prominent white men. Goldie has been criticized by some postcolonial scholars for playing into the problematic primitivist myth of the Māori as "noble relics" from a "dying race" (an issue also prevalent in Canadian and American art history, as seen in early twentieth-century documentary images of North American Indians by American photographer Edward Curtis), and for perpetuating a "comforting fiction" from a "patronizing European perspective." However, some argue that it is well-documented that Goldie worked out of a deep admiration for the Māori, and, rather than operating as a detached outsider, he learned their language, spent a great deal of time living with them in their communities, and developed strong friendships with his subjects. Moreover, during his career he managed to bring images of aboriginal individuals into public view, alongside the faces of prominent white Europeans in institutions like the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Today, many Māori community members, like Ira Norman, a descendant of one of Goldie's sitters, view the portraits as valuable documents that allow the individuals' legacies to live on.
Postcolonial Art in the United States and Canada
The United States and Canada are home to myriad artists dealing with themes of postcolonialism, through a range of lenses. Not only have these relatively young nations established themselves on the foundation of thriving British, French, and Spanish colonies, which has had a tremendous detrimental impact on indigenous populations, not to mention the role of the African slave trade, but also over the past two centuries (and two world wars), these countries, which have been seen as safe havens for refugees and those seeking a better life from around the world, have developed populations comprised of a significant number of immigrants, including artists who seek to maintain diasporic identity.
The history of slavery in the United States, with its ties to colonialist agendas, has left a lasting mark on the now more than 40 million African American individuals who continue to come to grips with their (often murky) ancestry, and the ongoing racism and prejudice they continue to face. Over the past century or so, many Black artists and arts groups have used their art to confront these issues, such as the members of the Harlem Renaissance (like Aaron Douglas and Jacob Lawrence), active from the 1920s to the 1940s, who sought to celebrate black identity and propose new visual languages to express that identity (often drawing on the aesthetics of traditional African art). Harlem Renaissance artists influenced the Négritude movement in Paris, which began in the 1930s, and included artists like Cuban painter Wifredo Lam, Nigerian painter Ben Enwonwu, and Jamaican sculptor Ronald Moody, as well as the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, and the BLK art group of the 1970s and 1980s in Britain. More recently, such explorations have been taken up by contemporary Black artists like Kehinde Wiley, Kerry James Marshall, and Amy Sherald.
Meanwhile, in both the United States and Canada, indigenous artists also seek to celebrate their traditions and cultures, as well as to call out the injustices their ancestors have suffered at the hands of European colonialist forces. In works like Kent Monkman's painting The Scream (2017), and Rebecca Belmore's video installation Apparition, contemporary Canadian artists deal with the troubling history of the Canadian residential school system that operated from 1831-1996, which involved the forcible removal of around 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children from their families and communities to be placed in residential schools. While in these schools, they were forbidden to speak their native languages, use their given names, or practice their traditions, not to mention the rampant physical, sexual, and psychological abuse that took place, leading to multiple generations of trauma, as well as the near-extinction of native languages and traditions. Other notable indigenous artists in the United States who address both the violent history of colonialism, and who celebrate traditional culture, include painter Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, textile artist Marie Watt, and ceramics artist Rose B. Simpson.
Postcolonial Art in Latin America
Latin America exists today with a long history of colonial conquest and control, primarily under the Spanish and Portuguese. As elsewhere, artists in Latin American countries frequently use their creative practice to examine histories of colonization, to celebrate the aspects of native culture and traditions that managed to endure the violent colonial centuries, and to assert a post-colonial identity. This can be seen in the works by the Mexican Muralists, as well as Mexican twentieth-century painters Frida Kahlo, Rufino Tamayo, and Maria Izquierdo, modern/contemporary Cuban artist Ana Mendieta, Argentine artist Antonio Berni, Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar, and Colombian artists Fernando Botero and Doris Salcedo.
For instance, between 1929-30, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera painted The History of Mexico, a large fresco cycle that depicts major moments from the country's history, including the struggle for independence from the colonizing powers of Spain (which occurred in 1821), the annexation of Mexican territories by the United States in the 1840s, and resistance to control by the French in the 1860s. The mural's location is also significant, as it resides in the National Palace which was built atop the ruins of Aztec emperor Moctezuma II's former residence in the city of Tenochtitlan, which was conquered by Spanish colonists in 1521, and was the site of many subsequent conflicts between the Aztecs and the Spanish.
Postcolonial Art in Asia and the Middle East
Throughout Asia and the Middle East, colonialism and its aftereffects remain visible in the landscape, the architecture, and the lived experiences of citizens. In the early twentieth century, Japan colonized Korea, and Britain's rule over countries India, Pakistan, and Singapore left a mark that continues to the present day. Art historian Hiroki Yamamoto notes that "East Asia is similar to the Commonwealth in that they are 'imagined' cultural unities that include a number of unsettled postcolonial issues derived from the colonial policies. On the other hand, their artistic responses to the issues have been quite different [from, for example, the postcolonial artistic responses of Black artists in the United States and United Kingdom] when, for example, these issues have frequently been treated as taboo in the realm of art in East Asia. [...] In the field of art in East Asia, ethnic minorities, such as Korean residents of Japan, had little means to express their hardship through art. In Asia where 'the myth of a homogeneous nation' has been predominant, the social pressures to conform have discouraged them to express their identities." Similarly, sociologist Chua Beng Huat asserts that there has been "an absence of postcolonial discourse in Southeast Asia."
Nevertheless, there have been artists in these regions that have grappled with postcolonialism. For instance, arts writer Ben Valentine discusses how, in Southeast Asia, the Ten Men Art Group travelled around the region (Cambodia, Indonesia, Singapore, etc.) between 1961-70, producing art that addressed identity reconstruction at a time when many of these nations were experiencing "a cultural tug-of-war, [with] deadly ethnic and religious clashes." In her exploration of Postcolonial art in South Asia, art historian Sanjukta Sunderason notes that this region "is a particularly fertile ground for studying such expanded temporalities, sociocultural structures, and shadows of decolonization" due to continuing and unresolved "ethnic conflicts and regional struggles."
In his analysis of Postcolonial art in Japan, Yamamoto notes that "participatory and collaborative art practices are effective tools to provide a socially-inclusive platform for dialogue," as seen, for example, in the Zainichi Series by Takamine Tadasu, inspired by the experiences of his Zainichi (Korean-Japanese) wife, and the prejudice faced by all contemporary Zainichi in Japan. Moreover, artistic expressions of postcolonialism don't always appear in galleries, museums, or other "traditional" arts spaces. Asian filmmakers have demonstrated how the medium has offered an opportunity for grappling with postcolonial issues. For instance, Japanese filmmaker and video artist Yamashiro Chikako uses film to explore the effects of WWII, as well as of the ongoing issues caused by the American military presence in her homeland of Okinawa. Meanwhile, in India, many of the most acclaimed films to come out of the booming Bollywood film industry address the nation's colonial legacy, like Mother India (1957), directed by Mehboob Khan, and Lagaan (2001), directed by Ashutosh Gowariker.
Later Developments - After Postcolonial Art
Criticisms of Postcolonial Theory
Over the past decades, postcolonial theory has been criticized, though it is important to keep in mind, as art historian Anthony Gardner notes, there are "as many postcolonial studies as there are postcolonial spaces." Art historian and critic Hal Foster identifies several assumptions underlying the practice of postcolonial art. He mentions that 1), most contemporary artists operating as ethnographers are frequently guided by what he terms the "primitivist fantasy" which assumes that the Other has "access to primal psychic and social processes from which the white (petit) bourgeois subject is blocked," and 2), that if the artist cannot pass as culturally Other, then he/she "has but limited access to this transformative alterity," whereas if the artist can pass as Other, he/she is granted "automatic access to it."
This results in a troubling paradox, wherein non-dominant identities are frequently under- or misrepresented yet attempts by minority artists to create new and alternative representations of their identities risk contributing to reductionism, generalization, and essentialization of identity.
Post-colonialism, Neo-Colonialism, and Globalism
Today, many scholars are seeking to bring colonial theory up to date. Visual culture researchers Maia Dauner and Cynthia Foo write that "discussions of contemporary visual culture that engage theories of cosmopolitanism, globalization, and transnationalism can be enhanced by re-considering some of the ideas generated by engaging with postcolonial theory. Some of these core ideas include the assumption that racial identities fluctuate in ways that defy categorization, that global inequalities in economic, political, and social mobility are the result of a sustained systematic guarding of privilege through colonialism and imperialism, and that relationships between previously colonized populations and the populations living in former imperial centers of power continue to be strained by historical effects of colonization." They cite Homi K. Bhabha in explaining that "'post' does not signify a temporal order, but a spatial and contemporaneous relationship with modernity," and thus "when we ask what might come after post-colonialism, we would like to examine the limits of postcolonial theory. Where does postcolonial theory cease to function as a mode of analysis or thinking about the world? How and why are these limits created? What lies beyond these limits and how does it influence our current understandings of identity and place?"
At the same time as many scholars are looking for something beyond postcolonialism, so too are many artists seeking a more fitting designation for the way in which they use art making to negotiate their identities. Contemporary New Zealand artist Angela Tiatia has stated "I don't like to use the term 'post-colonization' as it assumes that we are living in an era after colonization. Colonization never ended. So, I prefer 'neo-colonization' as a better description so we can ask ourselves 'who are the new colonials?' What is so eerie about neo-colonization is that it is so inconspicuous. For me, it is an unseen process that cloaks our bodies and minds every single day." Besides post-postcolonialism, and examinations of neo-colonialism (new, often more surreptitious forms of colonialism/imperialism), we are seeing more of the terms "transculturalism," "globalization," and "glocalization" (a combination of "globalization" and "localization," which recognizes the interplay between globalized forces and the resilience of local traditions, or, as sociologist Roland Robertson puts is, the simultaneity of "universalizing and particularizing tendencies").
One contemporary artist whose work and approach could be described as "post-postcolonial" is Portuguese-British Carlos Noronha Feio, who also spends a significant amount of time in Moscow. His works deal with his "glocal," "transnational," and "cross-border" experiences, such as his series of War Rugs inspired by the centuries-old rugmaking traditions of both Afghanistan and the Arraiolos region of Portugal. However, he notes that "the very act, or idea, of thinking about getting inspired by something 'cross-border' becomes problematic. As it assumes that you personally care about borders, and about the current notion/s of national identity and culture as something unique to those in the inside, which is insane, bonkers and pretty much... well let's say... silly." At the same time, his practice is also "post-postcolonial" in that it seeks to work outside of or against the traditional (capitalist) institutions of art. For instance, curator Iaroslav Volovod says that Noronha Feio's 2016-18 assemblage work The Growing Museum "brings together artifacts from a variety of origins: geographical, cultural, and historical. Each new assemblage created by the artist is a hybrid construct contrary to the laws of traditional museum logic. [...The] artist brings into contact objects and images from East Asia, West Africa, and Europe [and shows] how clothing becomes a screen onto which images born of colonial fantasy and political imagination are projected."