Masterpieces of African art travel to Tate Gallery, courtesy Jorge and Darlene Pérez
Jorge M. and Darlene Pérez presented Tate 36 with works by artists from Africa and its diaspora. This is the second high-profile donation to the museum network from the married collectors in the past year, having previously donated a large Joan Mitchell painting to the Tate.
The artworks included in the gift are by artists from multiple generations, including Malian photographer Seydou Keïta, who was born in the 1920s, and Joy Labinjo, a rising Nigerian-British painter who was born in 1994.
In some cases, the Tate has made significant efforts to highlight the artists included in the gifts. The late Nigerian-born, UK-based photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode has gained an important place in the Tate collection, and work by the Nigerian photographer JD ‘Okhai Ojeikere is currently on display at Tate Modern in the survey ‘Nigerian Modernism’.
But in other cases, the gift helps introduce artists to the Tate’s collection. Chéri Samba, an influential Congolese painter, now appears in the Tate collection for the first time. The same goes for Malian photographer Adama Kouyaté.
In addition to this gift, Nigerian Modernism organizer Osei Bonsu has been named Jorge M. Pérez Senior Curator of International Art, Africa, and Diaspora.
Bonsu said in a statement: “Jorge M. and Darlene Pérez have amassed a vibrant and significant collection of work by artists from Africa and the African diaspora, and have a deep appreciation for their contribution to the history of art. With their generous support, I look forward to further expanding my research and networks in Africa and its global diaspora, and sharing these works with Tate Modern visitors.”
Below are six pieces donated by the Perezes.
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Seydou Keita, Untitled, 1957–58
Photo credit: ©Seydou Keïta/SKPEAC/Courtesy Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection
Keita, a photographer whose work is currently under survey at the Brooklyn Museum, is best known for studio portraits that allow his Malian subjects to shape themselves to their liking. In this photo, a woman reclines in a posture reminiscent of centuries-old odalisque traditions. Whether intentional or not, she subverted European artistic conventions that often relegated female subjects to a passive position.
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Gavin Youngers, drink tea quietly1981
Image credit: ©Gavin Jantjes/Courtesy of Christie’s London
Jantjes is a South African artist who recently had a retrospective exhibition at the Sharjah Art Foundation and the Whitechapel Gallery in London, having moved to London the year he created this painting. An allegory about the treatment of Africans in Britain at the time, a priest, a businessman and a soldier are in deep conversation while an overturned African sculpture is in the foreground.
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Rotimi Fani-Kayode, twin1989
Photo credit: ©Rotimi Fani-Kayode/Courtesy Autograph ABP
Nigerian-born, London-based artist Fani-Kayode’s beloved photographs, like the one shown here, often feature black people and evoke worrying psychological states. He completed the work in 1989, the same year he died from AIDS-related complications.
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Yinka Shonibal, girl/boy1998
Image credit: ©Yinka Shonibare, all rights reserved/2023 DACS/ARS, New York
Yinka Shonibare, a British artist who grew up in Nigeria, once said, “African fabrics are as emblematic of African identity as American Levi’s are an icon of fashionable youth culture.” Early sculptures like this one question what the fabric—which, in fact, was often made in Europe rather than Africa—meant, defying gender norms in the process.
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JD ‘Okhai Ojeikere, Mon Mon Edt Ubock1974
Photo credit: ©JD ‘Okhai Ojeikere/Courtesy Magnin-A, Paris
Nigerian-born photographer JD ‘Okhai Ojeikere is best known for documenting women’s hairstyles after Nigeria’s independence from British rule. Like many of the other photographs in this body of work, this portrait places the model in empty space, removing her from any time period and thereby rendering her hairstyle timeless.
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Amadou Sanogo, Singh briefing2015
Photo credit: ©Amadou Sanogo
Artist Amadou Sanogo often paints on fabrics found in the markets of his native Mali and is known for simple graphics that, as he once said, are intended to “represent a person’s relationship to himself, to his surroundings and to other people.” elephant. “I distort them because we are all flawed: I cannot create perfect forms because they do not exist.”
