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Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art in Cape Town celebrates its fifth birthday: »We survived!«

2022-09-28T08:41:31.831Z


After scandals, the most important museum for contemporary art from Africa is celebrating its anniversary - director Koyo Kouoh says today: »It is not our job to deconstruct stupid Euro-American prejudices.«


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The Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town: An independent platform

Photo:

Hoberman Collection / Zondo/Hoberman Collection/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

It was the most spectacular art event in South Africa since the fall of apartheid.

In September 2017, the world's first, only and largest museum dedicated exclusively to contemporary art from Africa and the African diaspora opened in Cape Town: the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Zeitz MOCAA for short.

The global cultural scene was enthusiastic, curators, gallery owners, experts and collectors from all over the world flew in and praised the groundbreaking project.

The Zeitz MOCCA is said to be Africa's answer to the Tate Modern in London.

Finally, artists who are largely unknown on their continent and are still treated as exotic in Europe or America should be given an independent platform and make an equal contribution to globalized world art.

"We want to tell the diverse stories of Africa and overcome the Eurocentric perception of the continent," said then director Mark Coetzee in an interview with SPIEGEL.

A shambles

This week the Zeitz MOCAA celebrates its fifth anniversary - and looks back on a roller coaster ride that almost derailed it.

Because the euphoria after the foundation was soon followed by disillusionment.

There was silence around the museum, the converted granary on the edge of Cape Town's shopping and entertainment center Waterfront seemed lifeless and isolated.

No new ideas, no significant exhibitions, hardly any public activities - but a lot of talk about the management style and the misconduct of Mark Coetzee.

The autocratic director was controversial from day one, art critics accused him of abuse of power and insider dealing, employees complained about racist and sexist incidents.

Coetzee had been in office less than a year when he had to resign in July 2018.

And no one really knew how to proceed.

Because to make matters worse, Corona had also broken out, and the museum had to remain closed for eight months.

Immediately after the pandemic began, in March 2019, Koyo Kouoh took over as the new director.

The museum board chose one of Africa's leading cultural producers and curators, a

rising star

on the global art scene.

The polyglot Cameroonian had organized exhibitions in the USA, Europe and on her home continent, was a consultant for the Documenta, sat on the jury for the Venice Biennale, and founded the innovative art center Raw Material Company in Dakar, Senegal.

This summer she also curated the Triennial of Photography in Hamburg.

In Cape Town, Koyo Kouoh was faced with the shambles her predecessor had left behind: chaotic administration, a frozen budget, no new acquisitions, the staff discouraged and insecure, visitor numbers at rock bottom.

Only a few tourists got lost in the labyrinth of small, cramped, lightless cabinets to see the private collection that the German business manager and namesake Jochen Zeitz had donated.

Like most cultural institutions, the Zeitz MOCAA experienced a massive slump during the pandemic.

It lost an estimated 85 percent of its sources of income, the salaries of the newly appointed director and all employees had to be cut, and a few superfluous posts had to be eliminated.

The museum was only able to stay afloat thanks to a guarantee from the Board of Trustees.

"But we survived," says Kouoh.

She receives them in the museum's café on the sixth floor high above the fishing port, just as a cutter is docking with the fresh catch.

It was necessary to change everything, she says.

“I literally had to tear down walls.

We needed a completely new narrative for the most important art project in Africa.« Kouoh firmly rejects the advertising claim that the Zeitz MOCAA is the answer to the Tate Modern.

“That's a short-sighted and intellectually limited understanding of what an art institution like this means.

Our imagination is much larger than the reference to Europe, Africa's past goes way back to the slave trade and the colonial era.«

So Kouoh is not really interested in a post-colonial discourse that overcomes the West's sovereignty of interpretation.

»I belong to a generation of African professionals that lives in the pan-African territory of the world and speaks primarily to Africa.

It is not our job to deconstruct stupid Euro-American prejudices against our continent.

We have better things to do!”

The 55-year-old director and chief curator swept through the museum like a whirlwind and turned everything inside out.

She created a transparent organizational structure, diversified the board of directors, established a global advisory board.

There is again a cooperative working atmosphere, which is mainly due to the fact that almost exclusively women hold key management positions.

The Center for Art Education has come back to life and new scientific research projects have been launched.

Artists value the six-month residency;

in an open studio, visitors can watch how their works are created.

The outreach program promotes extracurricular educational initiatives and reaches people in places remote from art with a mobile museum.

The popularity of the Zeitz MOCAA rose abruptly through the exhibition »Home Is Where The Art Is«, to which all sections of the population were invited.

The museum was overrun, with over 2000 people submitting artworks, children and adults, black and white, amateur and professional.

"We don't just want to serve a cultural elite, we want to create access for everyone," says Kouoh.

Helping to shape society is one of the core tasks of cultural institutions, especially in socially divided metropolises like Cape Town, where the gap between rich and poor is extreme.

»Therefore we have to ask ourselves: what is a museum?

A chic collection like ours?

Or an organic body that lives, reflects, and produces?”

The chief curator, Kouoh, sees herself as a kind of obstetrician or midwife, as she puts it.

"What matters is what you pack into a museum, the historical, political and social perspective, especially here in South Africa the racist legacy cannot be ignored."

Driven by this vision, Kouoh and her team have put together an impressive series of projects.

The spectrum ranges from exhibitions with lesser-known artists such as Senzeni Marasela or Nobukho Nqaba to a symposium on the work of the world-famous William Kentridge;

from Alfredo Jaar's stirring reflection on the Rwandan genocide that was ignored by the rest of the world, to Johannes Phokela's grandiose paintings that visualize the three Cs of colonialism (Civilisation, Christianity, Commerce).

Most recently »Shooting Down Babylon«, a retrospective on the work of one of South Africa's most provocative performance artists: Tracy Rose.

In multimedia search movements, she revolves around the topics of

race

and gender.

The solo exhibition is an example of the new DNA of the Zeitz MOCAA, explains Kouoh.

»I want to draw away from the group exhibitions and focus on the genealogy of artistic creation, on the artist's reference systems, her sources of inspiration, the material, the social context.«

At the end, the director casually reveals her greatest achievement: she was able to convince patron Jochen Zeitz to donate his million-dollar collection to the museum.

Originally it was planned that the works of art would remain in Cape Town until the end of his life, but at least for twenty years.

"I don't want to run a museum that only has items on loan," says Koyo Kouoh.

“We negotiated hard for two years.

Then Zeitz signed it.«

Source: spiegel

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