AUTHOR Chris Spring, curator of the African galleries at the British Museum, has selected 60 of Africa’s most thoughtful and creative contemporary artists working now not only in Africa, but also Europe and North and South America, including the Caribbean. Their work is in traditional artistic media (painting and clay etc.), newer media, photography, video and installation work, and rejected materials from all aspects of modern life, reborn into exciting transformed creations - strongly challenging our preconceived notions of Africa art. But the artists often reject the label of ‘African’.

“To hell with African Art,” Hassan Musa says, “I have been forced, me an artist from Africa, to consider African art as a hindrance to my artistic projects”. Spring begins his book with the words of a recent South African visitor to the British Museum, “Art is all around in Africa”. It is there in the hand-painted signs still popular throughout Africa, in the art that continues old traditions, such as the tent makers of Cairo, fantasy coffins of Ghana, or the many potters, weavers and metalworkers. El Anatsui of Ghana/Nigeria creates vast ‘tapestries’ of flattened liquor bottle tops, large enough to be full-sized balcony hangings (even a façade covering), “subverting the stereotype of metal as a stiff, rigid medium and … showing it as an almost sensuous material.” Dilomprizulike (Nigeria) revives junk materials to create life-sized group tableaux. Through his art he “gives them the touch of a mother.” Many of these artists combine teachings and imagery from their own traditions (whether Sufi, Santería or Ifa) with the latest expressive media and installations. Mwangi Hutter (Kenya/Germany) use their bodies as canvases in video installations to explore issues of identity. Samuel Fosso of Cameroon/Central African Republic also photographs only himself but with irony and commentary on Africa’s situation in the world. His work The Chief: The One Who Sold Africa to the Colonial Powers has become an iconic image of Africa today. These artists all resist categories. Many have developed their art both in Africa and in the West. They have submitted to multiple influences. They are both of Africa and reject its limitations. Mohamed Omer Bushara (Sudan/UK) qualifies his images as elusive.

“They are both free and entrapped.” Many of these artists do not hesitate to assess and comment on Africa’s recent history, whether it is slavery, apartheid or exploitation by Western corporations.

Kester, Dos Santos, Nhatugueja and Maté of Mozambique create amazing sculptures; a tree, a chair, men and animals from amnestied weapons. Chéri Samba of the Democratic Republic of Congo and France shows the world vomiting on the US for waging an unjust war: “I like to think that artists can change people’s mentality… artists should make people think.”

Kester, Throne of Weapons, 2001. Recycled guns. British Museum, London

South African Willi Bester sees his work as “a nasty tasting medicine for awakening consciences.” His metal sculpture of a menacing guard dog, For Those Left Behind (2003) made from scrap metal, expresses the post-apartheid tensions of his country. Each artist is presented within the context of his or her own background and work. The text is alive with quotations, explaining where each feels they belong on the African and world scale of art, their traditional and personal contribution and what historical situations have coloured their work. Angaza Afrika: African Art Now by Chris Spring, is published by Laurence King and distributed in the UK via Thames & Hudson. El Anatsui, Akua’s Surviving Children, 1996. Driftwood. Collection of the artist, Courtesy of October Gallery, London