Negar Azimi speaks to , creator of the Museum of Contemporary African Art was born in 1961 in Cotonou, Benin. He worked first as a painter while his later work involved the manipulation of bank notes, addressing notions of materiality and social devaluation. He studied at the Reijksacademie in Amsterdam from 1996 to 1997, where he first started work on what would become the Museum of Contemporary African Art. Gaba's Museum is both a tangible reality and an abstraction, blurring the lines between the hyper-political and the universal, the critical and the utopian, in a manifesto on the museological institution. The Museum consists of 12 parts and the museum library--one of the 12 -- is currently on display in Cairo, at the American University, after having been shown at Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany. Composed of over 1,500 texts on the contemporary arts, the audience is free to manipulate the work by accessing the information within. Gaba lives and works in Amsterdam. Have you shown any other parts of the Museum in Africa? Yes, in Ghana. I showed the Museum Shop section at the Musée de Ghana in a show entitled "South meets West." What kind of reaction did it receive? My work looked like a typical market in Ghana, so the response was "oh, you just copied our market." I liked this because it provoked confusion and a dialogue. Critics wrote a lot about it. Do you have other plans to show on the continent? I would like to show at the Dakar Biennale, whether in the actual Biennale or the "OFF" version. And there is Cairo. This is Africa. Is it not an African biennale that is held here? I would also like to show in Benin, but there has been no money for it yet. You left Benin as a painter and came to Europe. How has your work changed since that time? Fifteen years ago, I was speaking a different language. We are all in a culture of copying -- based on European modalities--even the coat you are wearing. I was painting, but there is no real painting in Africa. It is a European construction. Did you have any formal training in painting? No. I studied in the studio of an artist who had learned how to paint from art books. What did you take away from studying at the Reijksacademie in Holland? For my future, it was a great school. After five years, I am at Documenta. This allows people to enter the history of art. Reijks is not a school where you learn painting or sculpture -- you have to be an artist to be admitted. You propose projects and they advise. The academy engages you. It is a very positive atmosphere. Is it possible to live and work as an artist in Benin? It is possible, but difficult. You see I have never worked in my life as anything but an artist. But because there are no funds in Africa, one has to be one of the best to survive. It is the market that decides. Would you agree that art in Africa, Egypt included, is often dismissed as decorative or kitsch? How do you learn of art? You look at paintings. And what do people hang in their homes in Africa? The decorative. What are the books about? Decorative traditions. Yes. How was your museum conceived? It was not produced for Documenta. It was conceived of five years ago. I left Benin searching for my place and found that there were few options because I was not producing ethnic work. I had to create my own museum because there was no place for me. This is my own museum and it has given me the liberty to do precisely what I want. I produce my fantasy, but at the same time it is a controlled liberty. You see, the real Egyptian museum is the Great Pyramid. In China, it is the temples. The museum does not exist in Africa. In Benin we have the ethnographic museum, a temple of fetishism. The idea of a museum as we know it is an imposition. So you as an African use the museum, a Eurocentric construct, as a platform? It is a type of ironic museum. The institution uses me, so I use it. And my museum is accessible. You can touch it. What does your work say about the parameters of African contemporary art? Africans can produce work that is not ethnic or kitsch. This shows that Africa has evolved and that it is diverse. It is not new, selling one's ethnicity, but now it is in the museum spaces instead of craft stalls. This is the problem of museums. To be honest, this is a discussion that exhausts me. The artists know exactly what they are doing. In West Africa, for example, artists who are not making it are starting to produce ethnic art. I want to remove Africa from ethnography. The artists who are doing this think that they are saving their nation. Instead, they are reinforcing stereotype. And what of people like Cameroonian artist Pascale Martine Tayou, who often samples from prototypical "village" scenes in assemblage-installation work that has met with great success? He sells the ethnic. But perhaps he comes from a village, so this is his reality. I do not have a village. I left one to live in another. If I were to make a video about Egypt I would not film the Pyramids. The Egyptians do not live amidst the Pyramids anymore, do they? And then maybe they do. I would try to capture the reality. Perhaps, after you and I, people will be able to say that everything around us comes from Europe and it can be thrown away. But for the moment it is the reality. Your work is informed by and perhaps a response to the tendency to categorise in the art world... I cannot renounce Africa. I am an African and that stays with me. But at the same time I have a wife and two children in Holland. I am a part of that culture, too. Categories suffocate me. Your work is conceptual. Is the use of a modality that is largely rooted in the Western art canon also meant to be ironic? Conceptual art is to a great extent European, but not exclusively. Maybe. Do you feel a responsibility to represent Africa? No, I am not a politician. If I can show my work in Benin I will do it. But I cannot force myself to show there simply because it is where I am from. When I was living in Benin I showed my work many times. Some people say, "He is from Benin but he shows his work in Holland." I say to them that I live in Holland and that is my current reality. What of future projects? I have no paucity of projects, but I must rest at the moment. For more information on Gaba's museum, visit www.museumofcontemporaryafricanart.com For full details see Listings
