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UK artist Tracey Emin airs views at Art Basel

British artist Tracey Emin seems stressed and ruffled as she weaves through crowds of deep-pocketed collectors to reach three of her pieces on prominent display at Art Basel.

UK artist Tracey Emin airs views at Art Basel
Tracey Emin: 'Heightened commerciality on an extreme level.' Photo: Getty Images North America/AFP

“It's a trade fair, isn't it?” she told AFP in an interview at the largest contemporary art fair on the planet, which opened to the public Thursday.

“People are shopping.”
   
Emin, one of Britain's most famous living artists, said showing her work at the Lehmann Maupin gallery booth at Basel, inside halls teeming with art enthusiasts and investors, was very different to exhibiting in dedicated museums and galleries.
   
“It's heightened commerciality on an extreme level,” she said.

“You've got billionaires and millionaires and art lovers that are getting in from all over the world, and they have come here to buy art.”
   
A vast array of artworks by 20th century masters like Picasso, Calder and Warhol, mixed in with today's cutting edge creations are on display across 284 galleries at the fair.
   
The 51-year-old artist, who entered the art scene more than two decades ago as part of the wild Young British Artists movement, says she thinks investing in art is a good thing — “much better than buying other things, like gold bars.”
   
But investment in art just to turn a buck is something she has no patience for.
   
“I don't like flippers. I don't like people who buy the work and then flip it. I've no respect for them whatsoever.” 
   
Emin, known for her raw openness and often sexually provocative works, said attending Art Basel, where she is set to be honoured on Saturday, “is absolutely exhausting,” forcing her to face crowds of fans and hop from reception to party.

Confident and strong 

But fairs have a clear advantage too, she said.
   
“It's really brilliant at fairs because you can stand behind people and hear what they are saying,” she said, nodding towards a couple studying an embroidery of her crotch.
   
“I'm instantly recognizable, and it's really great when they turn around and they see me,” she said with a wry smile.
   
“If they say something nice, then it's good, but if it's negative, then it's a lot of fun for me, I can assure you. I am very confident and strong about my work, so it doesn't really get to me, but it's good fun.”
   
Emin's most famous work is perhaps “My Bed”, a 1998 installation consisting of a rumpled bed surrounded by the intimate debris of empty bottles of vodka, cigarette packets and condoms, which sold at auction last year for $3.8 million.
   
That piece is currently showing at Tate Britain, alongside six of her recent figure drawings and two oil paintings by Francis Bacon.
   
She also has around 50 of her often highly sexualized works on display at Vienna's Leopold Museum, alongside 15 similar, if tamer drawings and poems by Egon Schiele, one of her great inspirations.
   
She said she was also planning a show alongside another one of her influences, Norwegian master Edvard Munch, in 2019, and “there's a possibility of Rodin.”
   
“It's all going into place,” she said.
   
Emin admits that her previous “bad girl” image has shifted over the years as she has become a staple of the art world establishment.
   
“Things have to change,” she said.

“I can't carry on as I was when I was 28. It's impossible.
   
“I'm buying full-piece swimsuits now. I bought myself a leaf collector the other day, so I'm slowly catching up with my age.” 
   
Regardless of her age or where she is in the world, Emin said she always brought her water colours and sketch books with her.
   
“Wherever I am, I'm always working,” she said.

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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.

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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