Over the last five years, ICOM UK has run a series of interviews exploring museums across the globe. This autumn Catherine McDermott (ICOM UK Secretary) and Claire Messenger (ICOM UK Committee) have been talking to museum and heritage colleagues about the challenges they have faced in the sector in the past six months. In this interview, Claire talks to Yvette Mutumba, co-founder and artistic director of Contemporary And (C&).
Hello Yvette. Thank you for speaking to ICOM UK members. Perhaps you could start by telling us about yourself?
I am co-founder and artistic director of Contemporary And (C&), a multimedia platform which includes C& Magazine, and Contemporary And América Latina Magazine, C& Education and C& Projects. I also lecture at the Institute of Art in Context, University of Arts, Berlin and am Curator-at-Large at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
I was part of the curatorial Team for the 10th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art (2018) and Visiting Professor for “Global Discourses” at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (2017 – 2018). From 2012 to 2016 I worked at the Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt a. M., where I co-curated the exhibitions FOREIGN EXCHANGE (or the stories you wouldn’t tell a stranger) (2014 –15), El Hadji Sy: Paintings, Performance, Politics (2015), and A Labour of Love (2015-2016; 2017, Johannesburg Art Gallery). I studied Art History at Freie Universität Berlin and have a PhD from Birkbeck, University of London.
Can you give us some background to Contemporary And (C&)? When and why it was set-up and what do you aim to achieve?
Together with my colleague Julia Grosse, I founded Contemporary And (C&) in 2013, with the focus on building a platform for discourses and questions around cultural and especially visual art production from Africa and its global diaspora. We are both trained art historians and have continuously worked as curators and journalists/writers. During this time, we also experienced the great lack of knowledge and interest in other perspectives within the “Western” arts scenes besides the European – US-American ones. We were fortunate to be co-funded and co-published by the IFA (Institute for Foreign Affairs), which gave us complete freedom to curate and design this magazine.
C& started out as a classic art magazine with the publication of exhibition reviews, columns, interviews, etc., but it quickly developed into a platform on which we began to organize offline projects as well. For example, our workshops on critical writing, which we have held in many African cities as well as in the US. We see these workshops as a starting point for the participants who are at the very beginning of their writing career. We accompany the writers beyond the workshops by offering them a platform on C& where they can publish their writings and through that get also in touch with other magazines. The texts on our website are mainly written by local authors. With the contributions of local writers, we also pursue a very concrete idea, namely to create a platform that reflects the diversity of topics and discourses in Africa and the global diaspora and that becomes a source for artists, cultural producers and art lovers alike.
The concept of our magazine is really focused on creating accessibility. For example, we deliberately chose not to have an in-house style, as is typical for large newspapers, in order to adapt the writing styles to a certain idea of how the magazine should sound. This is because we believe that the different styles of the authors are authentic and are informed by the way they see and judge things. Since we have chosen not to publish texts in an academic style, the articles also ensure accessibility for our readers who are not necessarily familiar with academic discussions and the jargon of art historical topics. Which leads to another important topic of ours. Especially in times like these, when the worldwide interest in a Black perspective has increased, we want to inform our readers and also take a stand in cultural debates when it comes to art historical canons. Very often contemporary art from Africa and the global diaspora is talked about as if it were something that has happened in the last 5 years, but there are many art histories to which young artists in Africa and its global diaspora refer. This is also the reason why we have historical pieces on our website that deal with the facts of the past.
What has been the response to #BlackLivesMatter movement in your sector?
When the Black Lives Matter movement reached cultural institutions in Europe, it was interesting to see how expressions of solidarity were made in response to the demands of street demonstrators for structural change. For us at C&, who also regularly work with museums, and other cultural institutions in our offline projects, we followed the discussions about what solidarity and structural change means for exactly those institutions that claim to represent society. Since news coverage mainly repeated hurtful images of Black death, we turned to colleagues in the US, but also in Africa and other parts of the global diaspora. We asked them for an explanation and offered them a safe platform to truly let their hearts speak about what is going on and how it affects them. It became a mighty wall of explanations reflecting how long curators, writers, artists and other cultural workers have been struggling against these very structures. https://www.contemporaryand.com/magazines/we-are/
Can you tell us more about HERE AND NOW at Museum Ludwig: Dynamic Spaces? Would you give ICOM UK members an example of your approach to this project?“Here and now: Dynamic Spaces” was an exhibition by C& in cooperation with the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. It showed our various online and offline projects and implementations, how we try to be a platform for knowledge production in our daily practice as an art magazine. The exhibition showed all our print editions, which we publish twice a year, and we also had a room where we showed two films: “We Need Prayers” by The Nest Collective and “Streetkid” by Cuss together with Vukani Ndebele, both of which were produced as part of our C& Commissions section. The exhibition also presented works by Nkiruka Oparah and Frida Orupabo, two contemporary positions whose artistic practice reflects questions and issues of today’s African Diaspora.
But the key of this exhibition was the C& Center of Unfinished Business, which deals with today’s colonial impact. It is a mobile reading room that has already toured various cultural institutions and museums. This reading room was developed from an online series of C& called “Inside the library”, in which we presented small libraries with rare art book collections. For us, the project of the Center is really about showing museum visitors that the colonial legacies are very deeply rooted in topics that they would not think are even affected by, but that they are omnipresent. In the reading room, for example, visitors will find a book about the Brücke collective next to a book about hip-hop and so on.
What do you hope that audiences take away from their experience of Dynamic Spaces? What do you hope the project will achieve?
Since the exhibition gave a good overview of all our online and offline projects, we hope that the public who did not know C& got an impression of our work. C& is primarily an online platform. This is a crucial part of the concept of C& as it ensures accessibility for a worldwide readership from Accra to Copenhagen to Sao Paulo. But we also believe that it is important to have physical projects and physical spaces where people meet and come together.
For the museum, which through this exhibition explored other perspectives, we naturally think that this can only be a first step to open up to a broader discussion about accessibility and structural change. Since we believe that the public must find new ways to approach different topics, we believe that this is also true for the museum.
Why did you choose to work with Museum Ludwig and what has been your experience of this partnership? What have been the benefits of this collaboration?
The Museum Ludwig is curating a series entitled “Here and Now”, in which it joins forces with artists and cultural practitioners who have a certain expertise that is not fully represented by the museum or its collection. We chose the museum because it is beginning to participate in projects which rethink its own position under specific questions raised by exhibitions like our show “Dynamic Spaces”.
What do you see as the future for Contemporary And (C&) and the museum sector in Germany?
We see and understand C& as a platform for a global readership that wants to inform about current trends and topics of contemporary art from Africa and its global diaspora. But we also believe that C& has become a driving force in initiating debate and discussion. In this respect, the magazine has become a safe place for BPOC artists and cultural producers to express their opinions without fear of rejection or censorship. C& was born out of the need to create a platform for what had been there for so long but was not represented by the so called canon or by institutions such as museums. We hope to continue this work, especially by being a driving force for change both on- and offline. As far as museums in Germany are concerned, I think that this eruptive moment of social outcry for change and justice could become a moment of real transformation if they are willing to step into spaces, they are not sure about. At this moment, some German museums have expressed their solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement by publishing an online declaration of solidarity, but for now these declarations can only be read as lip service. While we think these declarations are important, they are also long overdue. For us, they also raised many questions, because these statements have shown how much of what is currently being discussed has not yet been an issue in these institutions.
This has to be considered, and I think that museums do not deal with this moment as if they had understood that it is not just a singular moment, but something that has been there for years, if not decades. There is still much that needs to be heard and acknowledged. This is also the reason why the structural change cannot be completed by an online declaration of solidarity alone. It takes time, and it must grow from an inner understanding of these institutions. I am a strong advocate that the final change only comes with a feeling of unease. For the museums in Germany as well as for other European institutions, it only starts with reflecting on their current structures and asking themselves how diverse their museum staff is, how accessible they are as a museum, what their collection reflects and whom, etc.
In order to begin a real commitment to structural change, new positions must be created so that people can come into these institutions and participate in shaping the museum program, not just for one project, but in the long term and sustainably. In Germany there are qualified people with a certain level of expertise and professional experience, and they are available. It is up to these institutions to recognize and understand how long there have been initiatives and platforms working here. Of course, the museums depend on their input, and I think acting for them also means getting to know and reaching out to them.
Thank you so much Yvette for talking to ICOM UK. It has been fascinating to learn more about you, Contemporary And (C&) and the work being done to share current perspectives and themes in contemporary art from Africa and its global diaspora with audiences worldwide.
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