Layers of Culture

‘It is work that the artist produce outside the demands, pressures, and expectations of others in the process of wrestling with their own selves and in the serenity or turbulence of their own solitude; that work that they produce when they have no need to be serious. It is in such work also that we find the truest moments of an artist’s career and his or her most relevant contributions to culture. Which is why, for the Zairean popular painter , it is referred to as work made for our own.’

Olu Oguibe in The Culture Game, 2004

Olu tells that African scholar T. K. Biaya in a conference in New York in 1995 explained that African artists made two types of art to sell: work conceived with certain devices suited for Mungo -the Western art buyer- and artwork made leisurely and free from constraints, that the artist would also show to local art lovers.

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