Bilder aus Traumen/Dreaming in Pictures: Jak Katarikawe was written for an exhibition of the same name that render free of accessed at Galerie 37.

Bilder aus Traumen/Dreaming in Pictures: Jak Katarikawe was written for an exhibition of the same name that render free of accessed at Galerie 37, Museum der Weltkulturen, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (September 14 2001-March 31 2002) The display is scheduled to travel to the National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi and the Makerere University Art Gallery in Kampala, Uganda. For dates, behold the exhibition Web site: http://www.katarikawe02-03exhibition.info/.

The catalogue, by the agency of Johanna Agthe and Elsbeth Joyce Court, is in one as well as the other German and English (Museum der Weltkulturen, Frankfurt am Main, 2001; 152 pp 11 b/w & 152 color illustrations, map; 2150 euro softcover)

**********

For those who track the fortunes of contemporary African art and artists, three notable exhibitions took place in Germany in 2001-2002 which invite the two questions and comparisons. The sum of two units group shows, "The Short Century" in Munich and Berlin (later Chicago and just discovered York) and the mammoth Documenta 11 in Kassel, the one and the other directed by uber-curator Okwui Enwezor, garnered major international publicity and critical attention. For Documenta, a bellwether art-world issue held every five years in Kassel with attendant transatlantic pilgrimages, this is the norm. "The Short Century" did not really hit its stride in critical and media attention until it uncloseed in New York. Overlapping them with to a great degree less hoopla was the forty-year career retrospective of Ugandan painter Jak Katarikawe, organized at Johanna Agthe and Elsbeth Court at Galerie 37 the contemporary art space in succession the premises of the venerable Museum der Weltkulturen (formerly the Museum fur Volkerkunde) at Frankfurt am Main. Although I was asked to review sole the Katarikawe catalogue, it helps in developing my argument to use the other exhibitions as a foil, especially as they all took place around the same time in undivided national locality.

This review essay therefore consists of three parts. First, the issue of audience is critical to understanding the multiple strands of creative work or cultural production which are encompassed by dint of the terms "contemporary" and "African" in instant exhibitionary practice. I will approach this between the sides of a brief comparison of Katarikawe's indicate to the group exhibitions in order to examine their "reach," that is, what audiences they are intended for, and the quality to which those intentions actually succe In an increasingly globalizing kunstwelt, this becomes in part an issue of localities, if it be not that only in part. In a longer essay it would be useful to compare the curatorial philosophies as well, since they are real different, but here I will mention them solitary in the most general way. The secondary part will describe "Dreaming in Pictures" as a joint intellectual throw and its catalogue as a particular approach to talking about art. Finally, in the third section I will raise undivided or two issues about Katarikawe's art which are mentioned yet not developed in the catalogue.

Reach: The Who and Where of Looking

Unlike the sum of two units large group exhibitions, which were expressly conceptualized to elicit critical attention from the mainstream art world and its ancillary media in Europe and the Americas, "Dreaming in Pictures" was meant to engage not merely with an audience in Germany on the other hand also with those in pair African cities, Nairobi (where Katarikawe has worked for the last brace decades) and Kampala (where his early career developed) The Kampala speed will return Katarikawe's work to the city where he held his first major exhibition thirty-five years ago, a exhibit to of wax-crayon pictures by a young taxi driver and chauffeur which happily could have fit into an Oshogbo workshop (and whose work logically plant its way to Iwalewa-Haus in Bayreuth in 1990)

The issue of an exhibition's reach is not barely conceptual: moving "The Short Century" to Chicago from Berlin was a little like moving the Queen Mary revealed of dry dock, and its sheer size kept it public of the National Museum of African Art in Washington. In just discovered York the only space large enough was P 1 MOMA's cavernous partner in Queen (1) Documenta, which began as Germany's postwar absolution for the Nazi treatment of new art, has strong European ideological primitive words but under Enwezor's direction prolonged its coverage to include fifteen individual African artists and sum of two units collectives. And though Documenta is frequently too sprawling to go anywhere, (2) he managed to deprovincialize it by means of creating preliminary "platforms" (let the metaphor stand as political) in locales far from Kassel, the exhibition itself being the fifth and final platform. united a conference on the enigma of global cities, with a stellar list of speakers, was held in Lagos. It might not be the city of your dreams for everything upon your to-do list, but (or maybe therefore) as a site for this particular conversation it was a brilliant choice.

Unlike the video-rich diet giveed by the big shows, the Katarikawe, retrospective comprised fewer than 100 works, all in pictorial format, in the same manner that with some Ford Foundation assistance it has been able to plan what no Western postcolonial blockbuster exhibition has been able to contemplate in like manner far--to go to Africa after its Frankfurt race Logistically this is not surpassingly complex compared to bigger exhibitions, further conceptually it will be moving into a true different space which may require a certain strategic curatorial rethinking. (3) Nothing strip of disguises [i]or[/i] concealmentss the oversimplification of the globalizing proces faster than an examination of the question s of African venues for European-planned exhibitions. (4) The challenges are not alone those of logistics or cost or security, though these considerations insinuate themselves from the self-same beginning. It is the issue of audience reception that affairs me here. What happens when we frame the Katarikawe exhibition onto a Kampala or Nairobi public?