Insistent Presence: Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection examines how artists have reimagined the human figure as a lens to pose questions about social and political histories, contested identities, and the possible future of how we relate to one another and the spiritual realm. The exhibition presents forty works–sculpture, painting, ceramics, printmaking, and photography–by twenty-four contemporary artists who have lived and worked on the African continent and in the diaspora. The title, Insistent Presence, was inspired by renowned African art scholars and curators Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu. These scholars point to the enduring usefulness of depicting the human figure for artists keen on affirming the humanity of Africans and those critical of postcolonial governments. In this exhibition, artists provocatively explore the human body through juxtapositions of those political concerns with emotions and passions of everyday lived experiences.
Insistent Presence is organized into three sections exploring the presence and absence of the human body. The first section, “The Body in Society,” explores how identity is shaped through isolation, proximity, and interaction among figures depicted in groups or individually. The second section, “The Artist is Present,” examines artists’ use of their own bodies as their primary artistic medium. Works in the final section, “The Absent Body,” remain resolutely non-figurative. Accessories and accoutrements prompt the viewer to form a mental image of the body. Each section in Insistent Presence highlights 21st-century ways of being in the world and invites us to reflect on ourselves, our relationships, and the worlds we inhabit.
Artists represented in the exhibition span the continent of Africa, from Tunisia and Egypt to Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Mozambique and South Africa. Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania are also among the countries represented. The works are drawn from the Chazen Museum of Art’s Contemporary African Art Initiative, a five-year project supported by the Straus Family Foundation that built upon several contemporary African artworks the Chazen collected in the late 1990s. The exhibition opened at the Chazen in 2023.
This exhibition, which is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, is organized by the Chazen Museum of Art and presented by the Palmer Museum of Art. The Palmer Museum of Art’s presentation of the exhibition is overseen by Amanda Hellman, Director, with support provided by the Michael J. and Aimee Rusinko Kakos Dean’s Chair in the College of Arts and Architecture.
Above: Nana Yaw Oduro (Ghanaian, b. 1994) PHILIP, 2019, inkjet print, 19-5/8 x 29-1/2 inches. Sara Guyer and Scott Straus Contemporary African Art Initiative made possible by the Straus Family Foundation, 2021.28.3