Meschac Gaba’s twelve room installation The Museum
of Contemporary African Art
1997-2002 is one of Tate’s most inspiring acquisitions of contemporary art
in recent years. It is the single largest work bought by the gallery and was
acquired in 2012, sixteen years after its creation. This installation does not
have a permanent home but travels the world. I had the opportunity to visit it
in its most recent temporary accommodation at the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle in Berlin. Gaba’s
installation marks the beginning of a long term co-operation between Deutshe
Bank KunstHalle and Tate Modern. However, this building has only managed to
display seven rooms of this installation. I wonder what Gaba would say at his
art being cut short by five rooms - maybe he wouldn’t care.
Although there is excitement surrounding a travelling
exhibition and there is a fantastic panic to see it in a limited time, there is
also something sad about an artwork which has no permanent home. I think this
feeling is particularly prominent with The
Museum of Contemporary African Art. Having
gained a scholarship from the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, Gaba created this museum as he
believed his art had no place in the western world. African contemporary art
did not exist as a concept and so he built himself this museum to house his creations.
The fact that this exhibition is always temporary, for me, highlights the
artist’s concern that his artwork doesn’t fit into a permanent collection in
the west. Then again, it is owned by Tate and how many artists can say that?
The first room I walk through is the ‘Draft Room’ containing
a weird mix of decommissioned banknotes from Benin, cut into small circles, and
fake frozen food, bits of chicken including the feet and vegetables piled
against the walls. Hardly surprisingly this room comments on consumerism,
particularly the waste created by the west. Gaba shows that even the feet of a
chicken are considered food in Africa. The
money in this room is interesting; money is something that rules the art world.
In many ways it controls the snobbery and prestige of a piece of art and the
more popular an artist or an artwork, the higher its value. And yet money is
just paper. Here Gaba shows it as completely worthless and having no value to
him. But theoretically, if his artwork and his installation were not tied to
monetary value, could his artwork really exist in the art market? Is it money
that gives art meaning and a continuous life?
The ‘Architecture Room’ allows visitors to build their own
museum out of children’s building blocks. I enjoyed this all-inclusive
interaction with the space. On the simplest level, the idea that anyone can
create their own museum in theory, leads to the deconstruction of elitism. Those
without an education in architecture, without the money to pursue this dream
but who possess the imagination, can enjoy building too. Does this also devalue
architecture though, like the bank notes in the ‘Draft Room’, does the
architecture become worthless because anyone can do it?
The coloured ladder shows the progression of Gaba’s
installation until 2002. The curators’ names are displayed on one side of each
rung and the institution they worked for on the other side. As the installation
moved to different sites, more rungs were added. This method of showing the exhibition’s
development and its rising worth as the height of the rungs increased is very
much like a child marking his height on a doorframe as he grows over the years.
Gaba is marking his own success, this is the perfect way to literally measure
it, not in money or in academic papers but in the physical and practical
marking of steps.
The ‘Art and Religion Room’ is the wooden structure in the
middle of this space. Its intermittent wooden panels create a structure you can
see through. It may be structurally sound but it would not withstand force or
abuse and it would not keep out the rain. Perhaps this is a comment on the
precariousness of the different religions is displays. Objects and symbols of
Christianity, Budhism, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism are all present. Their
conflict and similarities in ideas and religious texts mirror the mish-mash
structure they are held in. These religious symbols, combined with every day
objects, are suggestive of the underlying culture and lifestyle that goes alongside
faith.
On the surface, Gaba has created something for himself,
regardless of its monetary value and its expression of thoughts and ideas. It
is not until you look closer though that you realise Gaba has created the
impossible; the balance between inclusivity and elitism, value and
worthlessness, the fighting forces which surround individuals whether in
different counties, the east and the west, or in different classes. This is a gentle
but incisive comment on ongoing social problems and it is wrapped up in one
man’s dream of having his own contemporary African museum.
