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Crosslisted from H-AfrArts: > > date: Sun, 16 Nov 1997 > from: Olu Oguibe, H-AfrArts Contemporary Arts Editor > <ooguibe@arts.usf.edu> > For those who might be interested, a fine catalog edited by Salah Hassan has just been published by Africa World Press in New Jersey. > _Gendered Visions: The Art of Contemporary Africana Women Artists_ is published in conjunction with an exhibit of the same title curated by Hassan and Dorothy Desir-Davis earlier this year for the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University. Artists in the exhibit were Houria Niati [Algeria], Xenobia Bailey [US], Renee Cox [US], Elsabeth Atnafu [Ethiopia], Angele Etoundi Essamba [Cameroun], and Etiye Dimma Poulson [Ethiopia] > The catalog consists of an introduction by Hassan, six essays on the artists by Desir-Davis, Bob Meyers, Diane Butler, Florence Alexis and Hassan himself, as well as two theoretical essays by myself [Olu Oguibe] and Freida High Tesfagiorgis. Tesfagiorgis's contribution is her very fine essay, "In Search of a Discourse and Critique/s that Center the Art ofBlack Women Artists", originally published in _Theorizing Black Feminisms_ [Routledge 1993]. Mine is a much shorter intervention under the title, "Beyond Visual Pleasures: A Brief Reflection on the work of Contemporary African Women Artists." > Some of the observations in "Beyond Visual Pleasures" have already generated mixed reaction especially in South Africa where, in a newspaper column occasioned by excerpts from the essay earlier this year, the critic Robert Greig asks: "What is it about white women that riles black men, makes them write with such violence, and makes them write as custodians of black females's [sic] virtue?" Greig goes on to conclude that "the silent, innocent, long-suffering tribal female [is]...unable to contradict expressions of her feelings and needs by urbanised and highly educated black foreigners." Greig's position was echoed by some others at the conclusion of the recent Johannesburg Biennale conference at the University of Cape Town. > _Gendered Visions_ concludes with a select bibliography compiled by ayodele ngozi-brown, and biographical notes on the artists.
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