Relocation or dislocation: How SOS Culture by Laboratoire AGIT’Art at the Whitechapel Gallery exposes the challenges that lay in communicating themes of African identity within Western spaces

As African nations gained back their independence in the latter half of the twentieth century, the development of new and improved national identities arose in hotspots of artistic discourse. In Senegal, for example, under the authority of its first president Leopold Sédar Senghor, there was a generous investment into the arts. This approach, moulded from the philosophy of Négritude, gave artists the liberty to chase an authentic African identity. 

While this freedom spearheaded expressive notions of a post-independence national identity, not everyone agreed with the interpolation of Senegalese expression by French means, style and materials as seen at the Ecole de Dakar. One such group was Laboratoire AGIT’Art (LAA), who actively opposed fastening their artistic productions to visual archetypes of ethnicity and instead, worked to resist the systematisation of post-colonial culture through their art. Even though they embraced practices of Western avant-garde conceptualism,[1] as their name suggests their craftmanship ultimately lay in agitating the politics surrounding art and uprooting its responsibility to aesthetics. Thus, they strove to show the Senegalese identity as fluid, shifting and ultimately, independent from its metropole. 

In 1995, London-based curator Clémentine Deliss brought LAA and their work to London in order to participate in an exhibition titled Seven Stories about Modern African Art at the Whitechapel Gallery. In addition to displaying paintings, sculptures and installations, the group performed a piece known as SOS Culture. To provide a skeletal overview of this performance, it consisted of two prominent members of LAA, El Hadji Sy and Issa Samb conducting a loosely choreographed performance to a large crowd that had filtered into a small corner of the gallery.[2] As Samb recited headlines from the French newspaper Liberation to the audience surrounding him, Sy wrapped himself in white gauge. As Sy mummified himself, projections of modern paintings from Senegal from the 1960s to 1970s reflected onto the body-turned-canvas of Sy’s wrapped figure. Samb then unravelled his compatriot [Figure 1], and when freed Sy placed a noose around his own neck. Samb concluded the performance asking, ‘Alors, c’est de quelle Afrique qu’il s’agit?’ (‘So, which Africa are we talking about here?’).[3]

As Elizabeth Harney wrote in her book In Senghor’s Shadow, the premise of the performance concerns the value and importance of African culture on an international scale, and invokes the origin of genuine, human connection as stemming from Africa.[4] Yet, the reactions of the spectators were mediocre, and it seemed only those possessing foundational knowledge of the group and its history could have some understanding of its intentions.[5] Therefore this relocation of SOS Culture from Dakar to London, ultimately creates a dislocation between underlying themes of identity at work within the performance and the alternative environment in which it was conjured. This was not a matter of whether or not its context could be salvaged, but rather proves an inevitable loss of meaning as seen in elements of space, material and corporeality. LAA generated an atmosphere in their performance to imitate the density of the Dakar streets by accumulating viewers into a confined space of the gallery. The materials they used acted as traces of culture and heritage, which garnered meaning throughout its lifetime rather than being created for the purposes of the performance. The bodies of the artists, therefore, became agents of a post-colonial discourse which opposed the structures of the ‘new’ contemporary art scene. One can thus better understand how this dislocation stripped SOS Culture of its original symbolism of Senegalese identity by deconstructing how the three components of space, materials, and corporeality affected how one could have perceived its execution.

The artists of LAA did not define space in order to create their art but rather, their inspiration was the space in which they operated. This can be seen more clearly in LAA’s tendency to display their work in the public spaces of Dakar. This manoeuvre, which in addition to avoiding any issues of censorship or systematisation[6],  solidified Senegal’s identity amongst the local population. Thus, by relocating SOS Culture to a Western space, the compatibility of their art in the gallery became challenged by the past conjunctions made between space and art in LAA’s oeuvre.

SOS Culture was ultimately reflected the engagement with the public spaces of Senegal and the discourse surrounding Senghor’s proclamations of what the new Senegalese identity should be. Thus, despite the reputation of the Whitechapel Gallery as a hub for revolutionary contemporary art,[7] it lacked what LAA needed most: the city of Dakar itself. The gallery’s smooth surfaces were no match for the absence of the humid climate hijacking the atmosphere, the clamour of Dakar’s bustling streets beyond the Villages des Artes where LAA resided, and even the sun beating down onto the open-aired courtyard was replaced with unnatural lighting and white walls. The city itself was a primary source of inspiration for LAA, and without it, the artists had to turn to other forms of creating atmosphere in order to generate what Sy defined as “visual and kinaesthetic experimentation.”[8]. 

One such way was through invoking elements of the theatre. However, unlike traditional theatre, LAA removed the hierarchical nature between performer and audience. The audience, eye level with the artists, became (arguably involuntary) performers who engaged in the dialogue of the performance. This “extended theatre”, as African studies professor Mamadou Dilouf put it,[9] reflected African traditions relating to the engagement with a community. As is seen in traditional settings in African culture, cultural performances are inherent in the African communal experience. By reading aloud from the French newspapers and switching between French, Wolof and English,[10] Samb strived to create a broad sense of association and a sense of equality amongst the crowd. 

Ultimately, space, for Sy, was about the “mobility of art” and was never about “one fixed location.”[11] This is attested to some extent with SOS Culture, which, regardless of its location, creates a site of resistance and makes its audience a witness to its deliverance. Yet despite the attempts to create a sense of community in the gallery space, the performativity of the piece risks becoming a spectacle of entertainment. There was criticism relating to the execution of the performance, as it was “not only culturally ‘untranslatable’”, but also “inappropriately re-enacted in an inauthentic or even insulting fashion.”[12]  The ambiguity of defining space in LAA’s work thus shows the resistance of cultural institutionalisation, but also refuses its essence from being understood through discourses such as art history. 

To a Western audience, the iconographical nature of the materials in SOS Culture may overshadow the vanguardism of the performance. Most notably, perhaps, is the white gauze that Sy uses to wrap himself. Due to the predisposed knowledge of generalities in African history, the white sheet used to wrap the Sy’s body can be interpreted as a stereotype of Egyptian mummification. The mummification of SOS Culture does reflect the Dogon rituals, [13] but does not strive to anchorsthe audiences’ understanding of the performance in death itself. Sy is far from deceased and instead, emboldens the white gauze with a meaning far beyond the polarities of life and death and instead, the white gauze acts as a spiritual bridge from Africa to the transnational audience.

In addition to the white gauze, burlap sacks and hand painted walls acted as thresholds between different spaces of the gallery. These are elements of recycled materials in addition to the technical projections of images throughout the performance. LAA resourced most of their materials from their community in Senegal. The materials used in SOS Culture are thus a connecting link between artists and local people, keeping the artwork grounded in its origins. Ranging from coffee bags from Brazil to fishing nets from the coast, LAA gave materials and objects a second life through their artistic expressions.[14] Additionally, the use of temporary and decomposing materials resonates a temporality both in the materials themselves but also the ontology of performance. It is a reflection of time passing and almost a political resistance of institutionalisation. The materials act as proof of existence, proof of activity, growth and a sign of life. Many of the materials used in the performance were not necessarily ‘decorative’ which is why many of the materials themselves could not even be preserved or moved wholly to an exhibition space due to the fallibility of the materials themselves. [15]

To LAA, the materials are not necessarily meant to portray an iconographic approach to ‘African’ art but rather facilitate discussions regarding the reception of Africa within artistic development. Samb believed that the materials and performers existed solely within the experience.[16] He argues he is not caught up in the static nature of the materials but instead how they can fold, bend and alter. The “aspect of transformation is essential.”[17] LAA thus rejects materials of luxury in preference of tangible objects, and due to the materials having this origin in Senegal, they bring a little bit of home to the sleek gallery space of Whitechapel. However, their symbolisms are at risk of being interpreted in more generic narratives.

The relocation of SOS Culture endows the corporeality of the artists with an additional role of agency due to the translocation of the performance. In the Villages des Artes, the artists identified themselves as autonomous voices, but in the context of the Whitechapel Gallery, they act as reflections of the Africanity.

The wrapping of Sy by the gauze communicated what Deliss quoted Sy as an archaic ‘Afronautical’ figure.”.[18] ‘Nautical’, from the Greek work nautikos, concerns the act of navigation.[19] While its linguistic origins lie in maritime jargon, it clearly defines the purpose of the mummifying figure as a having a function of navigating through the assumptions and acceptances of what has been deemed as the Senegalese national identity on an international level. In this performance, the body thus survives on its own rhythm and makes its mark in the performance by acting as a vessel of African identity. This relates to how Sy was interested in “a displacement of the gaze,” but also “a displacement of the body.”[20] The body, therefore, for a moment, is not a body but rather an invocation of a historical narrative.

The movements of Sy’s mummified body also imitated elements of an induced ‘psychosis’ (Figure 2) and undergoing an out of body experience. LAA was fascinated with Western methods of psychosis and SOS Culture presented the body as invoking “bodies in trance”. The body therefore become possessed by a consciousness larger than that of the artist themselves and instead reflected the origins of African tradition and culture. Additionally, while one can never know the level fluency of the audience in French or Wolof, there it can be argued that there may have been a language barrier between the audience and the artists. To avoid this, the LAA centres their works of performances, as well as their art, around a langage des gestes (language of gestures).[21] Therefore, the bodies in motion become equally important in portraying their message and the physical state of the body became a reflection of the mental state of the mind. LAA strived to overcome this untranslatable-ness through the actions of their bodies.

LAA’s SOS Culture performance at the Whitechapel Gallery provides a haunting yet symbolic message about arts from Africa. While it may be ancient and historical, it possesses a powerful trajectory towards the future of African artistic expression. The relocation of the performance has raises interesting questions about the temporality and malleability of meaning in artistic forms. Considering how engaged LAA were their local community in Dakar, this relocation to another space challenges their alternative methods to transport their audience.  Through a shift in space LAA had to attempt to mould a complex subjectivity through objects and materials to imitate the environment of Dakar. Consequently, or perhaps naturally, the materials and the bodies of the performers worked in tandem with one another throughout the performance to provide an intimate account of the transformative nature of the African identity.

Through deconstructing these three elements, one has a better understanding of how the institutionalisation of African art strips it from its original meaning, and that as Western spectators, one must approach it critically, yet embrace its differences to mainstream contemporary art. The performative relocation became a place of enlightenment for their audience and in order to further research the impact of creative expression of the relocation of SOS Culture to a Western space, one must expand ones understanding of modern African art and its aesthetics.

SOS Culture, therefore, tests the threshold between African creation and Western recipient. As Deliss reflects, “in dislocating the stage you tighten its propositions and question the contraflow between the local cultural context with its own audiences, and the new engagements that may be possible with visitors to the gallery.”[22] It was almost as if two opposing ideas confronted one another in the corner of this gallery. Their performance at Whitechapel Gallery, hence, raises interesting questions about the relocation of performance and more specifically, the interpretations of art when taken out of its origins which must continue to be explored due to its continuous and exciting development.