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Eiffel tower gives view of unique Australian art

Aboriginal Australian artist Lena Nyadbi's work is set to gain a new audience beginning on Thursday evening. Her newest piece has been installed atop the famous Quai Branly in Paris, and will be visible only from the Eiffel Tower.

Published: 6 June 2013 19:27 CEST
Eiffel tower gives view of unique Australian art
From June 6th, this work by Australian artist Lena Nyadbi on the roof of the Quai Branly, will be visible from the tower. Photo: Pierre Andrieu/AFP

Visitors to the Eiffel Tower get a little extra for the price of their entry ticket from Thursday with the unveiling of a new landmark on Paris's artistic landscape — or skyscape.

The new art work has been installed on a roof at the Quai Branly museum on the banks of the Seine, just a stone's throw from the iconic tower that is visited by more than seven million people every year.

From Thursday evening, those visitors will be able to admire a massive enlargement of a work by Australian Aboriginal artist Lena Nyadbi which has been stencilled on to the roof using rubberized paint.

The 700-square-metre (7,500 sq. ft) installation has been specifically designed so that it will be visible from several different levels of the tower.

Its prominence at the centre of a city regarded as the art capital of the world will make it likely to become the best known example of the art of Australia's indigenous peoples, described by the late critic Robert Hughes as "the last great art movement of the 20th Century."

As such, it also represents remarkable recognition for Nyadbi, an artist now in her late 70s who began her working life as a labourer on the arid cattle stations of northwestern Australia.

Her black and white abstract piece is entitled Dayiwul Lirlmim (Barramundi Scales) and is 46 times bigger than the ochre and charcoal original created as a visual interpretation of a creation story from the Gija people of Western Australia.

In the story, three women try to catch a barramundi. The fish gets away from the women but, as it escapes over rocks, it scatters its scales across the territory of the Gija in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia, thus providing an explanation of why that region came to be one of the world's leading sources of diamonds.

Nyadbi's work is already a permanent fixture in the museum as she created a mural, Jimbirla and Gemerre (spearheads and scarifications), that adorns one of the external walls.

Works by seven other Australian Aboriginal artists are featured on ceilings throughout the museum.

An unusually chilly spring in Paris ensured the rooftop paintwork –  using the same weatherproof paint used for the city's traffic signs –  was completed just in time for the opening, museum director Stephane Martin told AFP.

"I had a few nerves last week when it was still raining –  we badly needed a few dry days to get it finished."

To mark the opening of the new rooftop installation, Australia's embassy in Paris is hosting a parallel exhibition of works by eight Gija artists.

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ART

African-born director’s new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

One of the rare African-born figures to head a German cultural institution, Bonaventure Ndikung is aiming to highlight post-colonial multiculturalism at a Berlin arts centre with its roots in Western hegemony.

Published: 8 July 2023 10:13 CEST
African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old told AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

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