Tshibumba Kanda-Matulu - Democratic Republic of Congo Link to Guardian article about his work |
Website about her work
Jane Alexander is one of the most important contemporary artists working in South Africa to have received international recognition. Born in Johannesburg in 1959, her figurative sculptures, installations, tableaux and photomontages are informed by the experience of growing up under apartheid and can be read as a response to that political and social environment and what followed in relation to broader global conditions.
Key Terms
Neo-colonialism:
The geopolitical practice of using capitalism, business globalization, and cultural imperialism to influence a country, in lieu of either direct military or indirect political control[1]
Post-colonialism:
An academic discipline featuring methods of intellectual discourse that analyze, explain, and respond to the cultural legacies of colonialism and of imperialism, to the human consequences of controlling a country and establishing settlers for the economic exploitation of the native people and their land[2]
Discuss Overview of African Resistance to Imperialism
1. What impact did the end of World War I have on African colonies under European rule?
2. What role did Pan-Africanism play in the growth of anticolonial nationalism? (Shall we review this video?)
3. What methods did anticolonial groups in Africa use to resist colonial rule during the 1920s and 1930s?
4. How did world opinion on colonization shift after World War II?
Discuss “The Man and the Elephant”
- Summarize the plot
- This is clearly an extended metaphor. What is it?
- This is a "fable", which is a short story, often with animals as characters, used to convey a moral. What is the moral of this story?
- Let's watch Professor Bogues speak and see if that adds a bit to our understanding of the connections between the ideas in this story and what we know about African resistance and struggles for independence.
- What do you think the effect of this story would have been? Think abut the effect on different groups.
- If you were a Kikuyu in colonial Kenya in the 1930s, how would hearing this story make you feel? What would be the benefit of conveying this message in a story, as opposed to a political pamphlet or newspaper article? How could a story like this be a form of resistance?
Artist Exploration: Explore one of the three artists linked above.....or find another well-known post-colonialist African artist OR an artist from the resistance/independence era!