Dialogue with the Director Archives Dialogue with the Director
January | February 2007
Nearly two years ago, shortly after Saralyn Reece Hardy became director at the museum, she answered a knock on her door from Gitti Salami, a KU assistant professor of art history specializing in African art. Salami wanted to discuss an exhibition from UCLA's Fowler Museum of Cultural History that was touring nationally and still adding venues. "The Spencer needs to strongly consider bringing this to Kansas," Salami told Hardy. So began a series of conversations that eventually led to the Spencer signing on as a venue for A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal.
A Saint in the City delves deeply into the long history of Islamic arts in sub-Saharan Africa, investigating in detail the vibrant visual culture of the Mouride Way-a Sufi movement steeped in the mystical teachings of Sheikh Amadou Bamba (1853-1927). Holland Cotter, writing in The New York Times, called the exhibition a "superb visual essay on contemporary African Islamic art"-an assessment that is emblematic of the critical acclaim the show has enjoyed throughout its run. Recently, Hardy and Salami sat down to discuss the exhibition, which opens at the Spencer on Feb. 17 and continues through May 20. Their conversation follows.
Saralyn Reece Hardy: One of the many pleasures of the Spencer is the opportunity to tap into the expertise and passion of our faculty. As we consider exhibitions that should command priority and focus, one question we ask ourselves about all projects is simply "Why does it matter?" You have served at the museum as faculty curator for A Saint in the City since you came to my office with your compelling reasons for bringing it to Kansas. Could you please share with us why you think this exhibition is so important?
Gitti Salami: For me it functions on multiple levels. When I first came to Kansas, I really went into cultural shock. The kinds of materials that were regularly exhibited in this museum didn't help that situation. It seemed to me that the overall focus was on Euro-American culture with some Asian sprinkled in there but basically everything that pertains to my field of research, Africa, was missing. I'm concerned with non-Western cultures, which really means all formerly colonized peoples; at KU their cultural contributions currently sit on a shelf in Spooner Hall; they are not exhibited.
SRH: What was it about A Saint in the City that grabbed your attention?
GS: When this particular exhibition became available it seemed like a particularly suitable subject matter because not only does it draw attention to contemporary practices in Africa but it also deals with Islam. I thought it would be wonderful to have an exhibition that could help correct some of the stereotypes that have been created about this religion.
SRH: Certainly, we hope it will inspire constructive dialogues about these complex and important issues. This exhibition provides us with a gateway into a unique aspect of Islam-not the only aspect but certainly, one that is unfamiliar to many in the West, where the majority of people may only have heard of the Sunni and Shi'a Islamic sects.
And we will see a different kind of aesthetic in this exhibition, won't we? There's a distinctive visual language represented here. The exhibition catalogue, for instance, talks about how each of the letters has a body and a personality, and that the letters have mystical attributes that emerge through the art of calligraphy. So how should we prepare ourselves to see art in new ways and make the kinds of connections to people who have a different cultural perspective? How do we come to this as viewers?
GS: There are a lot of things that go into that. The aesthetic world we'll be seeing is not exclusively determined by Islam, though certainly some of it is. There are many works of art in the exhibition that deal with the mysticism around numerology, and the mysticism around the Arabic alphabet; the word of God as presented in the Quran. So that subject matter in itself creates an aesthetic with which many of us are not familiar.
SRH: So how would I see mysticism in this art? Would I see language? Would I see a different color palette?
GS: That aspect of it is not immediately accessible to people. One would have to speak Arabic and read the words to relate to the artwork in a very personal manner. Accessing the content of the artworks at that level will require studying the accompanying labels. The viewer will get a sense of the intensity of the interaction between religious devotion, calligraphy, poetry, and visual imagery. A replica of a marabou's devotional space in the museum, a shrine room that the viewer may enter, will especially help to facilitate this.
The aesthetic that will immediately confront people as they walk into the museum deals more broadly with Africa. There's an overwhelming color palette. There is a tendency in Africa to inundate the senses. In urban areas particularly, huge throngs of people are out on the street at all times. There is a lot of noise. There is constant visual stimulation everywhere around you. The exhibition tries to duplicate a sense of the urban African space; there are videos, there is music; there are a lot of images and objects; and a portion of the exhibition even duplicates a marketplace with vendor's stalls.
SRH: I think that's a very important point because one of the things we are trying to do at the Spencer is to not have one way of presenting works of art. Rather, we want to be open to allowing the art, audiences and context to dictate in some ways how we install it. We're very interested in exploring and experimenting with this attitude of an occasionally noisier, more colorful place.
GS: You know, all of the aspects of exhibition policies and politics make their way into aesthetics. In the West, we have this notion that every picture needs to be hung on a wall with lots of space around it and that the viewer has to have a certain distance from it-that each object is to be looked at as a pristine kind of thing, as something that has been elevated in status by its very being there.
Well, in Africa you can throw all of that out. Africa is not about the privileging of individuals nor is it about the privileging of objects. Africa is about people who relate to each other very closely, who function at least to some extent in kinship systems; the art and how people deal with it reflects this. If a work of art in an African gallery gets in a janitor's way, he'll just move it. Things are democratic, and nothing is ever more highly valued than people themselves and their needs.
SRH: The exhibition has a number of programs, and a symposium, but I think for the viewer, we hope that the exhibition represents a shift, that people will have a shift of some kind, in assumptions or even in the ability to take in different kinds of exhibition displays. Given that, as our sort of resident scholar in this area, in what areas would you hope this would provoke deeper thinking and deeper study? What would you like to see this exhibition promote at the university?
GS: That's a question that one could answer in many different ways. I hope that people will walk out of the exhibition with a clear conviction that Islam is not about violence. I think that comes out pretty clearly in the exhibition. I also hope that the exhibition will awaken an interest in Africa in the viewer; that it will leave our visitors wondering as to what else the continent may have in store for them.
It only takes eight hours to get from New York to Dakar. It is not that far away. Africa as a continent has been completely wiped from the map in many ways. I think we in Western society carry a lot of guilt about Africa, and we're afraid to take a closer look because we'd have to accept responsibility for all of the actions in the past that have led to Africa's current conditions. There's nothing in our culture that regularly prepares us for Africa. What reaches us from Africa in the West is always the same horror story, nightmarish scenes of violence, corruption and poverty. Everything that is good about Africa is edited out. This exhibition will do the opposite of that. It contains the vibrancy of Africa, a sense of aliveness that one cannot experience in the West; it just does not exist here.
