African Art and Agency in the Workshop

The role of the workshop in the creation of African art is the subject of this revelatory book. In the group setting of the workshop, innovation and imitation collide, artists share ideas and techniques, and creative expression flourishes. African Art and Agency in the Workshop examines the variety of workshops, from those which are politically driven or tourist oriented, to those based on historical patronage or allied to current artistic trends. Fifteen lively essays explore the impact of the workshop on the production of artists such as Zimbabwean stone sculptors, master potters from Cameroon, wood carvers from Nigeria, and others from across the continent.

Sidney Littlefield Kasfir is Professor Emerita of Art History at Emory University. She is author of African Art and the Colonial Encounter (IUP, 2007).

Till Förster is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel.

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Rethinking the Workshop \ Till Förster and Sidney Littlefield Kasfir
The Contributions to This Book \ Sidney Littlefield Kasfir and Till Förster
Part 1. Production, Education, and Learning
1. Grace Dieu Mission in South Africa: Defining the Modern Art Workshop in Africa \ Elizabeth Morton
2. Follow the Wood: Carving and Political Cosmology in Oku, Cameroon \ Nicolas Argenti
3. Masters, Trend-makers, and Producers: The Village of Nsei, Cameroon, as a Multisited Pottery Workshop \ Silvia Forni
4. An Artist's Notes on the Triangle Workshops, Zambia and South Africa \ Namubiru Rose Kirumira and Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

Part 2. Audience and Encounters
5. Stitched-up Women, Pinned-down Men: Gender Politics in Weya and Mapula Needlework, Zimbabwe and South Africa \ Brenda Schmahmann
6. Rethinking Mbari Mbayo: Osogbo Workshops in the 1960s, Nigeria \ Chika Okeke-Agulu
7. Working on the Small Difference: Notes on the Making of Sculpture in Tengenenge, Zimbabwe \ Christine Scherer
8. Navigating Nairobi: Artists in a Workshop System, Kenya \ Jessica Gerschultz

Part 3. Patronage and Domination
9. Lewanika's Workshop and the Vision of Lozi Arts, Zambia \ Karen E. Milbourne
10. Artesaos da Nossa Pátria: Makonde Blackwood Sculptors, Cooperatives, and the Art of Socialist Revolution in Postcolonial Mozambique \ Alexander Bortolot
11. Frank McEwen and Joram Mariga: Patron and Artist in the Rhodesian Workshop School Setting, Zimbabwe \ Elizabeth Morton
12. "A Matter of Must": Continuities and Change in the Adugbologe Woodcarving Workshop in Abeokuta, Nigeria \ Norma H. Wolff

Part 4. Comparative Aspects
13. Work and Workshop: The Iteration of Style and Genre in Two Workshop Settings, Côte d'Ivoire and Cameroon \ Till Förster
14. Apprentices and Entrepreneurs: The Workshop and Style Uniformity in Sub-Saharan Africa \ Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

Coda: Apprentices and Entrepreneurs Revisited: Twenty Years of Workshop Changes, 1987-2007 \ Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

Contributors
Index