Paper short abstract:

As a mode of production craft has recently attracted the attention of a range of African artists and artists of African descent. Engaging a wider turn to craft, these artists have explored craft as a time-based medium, engaging time, history and memory in the process of making.

Paper long abstract:

Craft has recently attracted the attention of a range of African artists and artists of African descent. Engaging a wider turn to craft, these artists have explored craft as a time-based medium, engaging time, history and memory. Considering the legacy of Hegel's observations in his Philosophy of History on Africa's role in the development of the world for postcolonial conceptualisations of Africa, it is interesting that craft is taken up by African and African-American artists as a way of thinking time.

From the inception of colonisation, Africa has been perceived as a land devoid of art. The handicraft emerging from Africa was thought to be work of the devil, fetishes that should only be collected as evidence of the underdeveloped African mind, entirely in keeping with Hegel's concept of the continent as "the land of childhood, which lying beyond the day of self-conscious history, is enveloped in the dark mantle of Night" (Hegel, 1956, p. 91).

How surprising, therefore, that contemporary African artists and artists of African descent have recently re-engaged with the notion of craft in ways that defy Hegel's conceptualization of history in order to re-think time, temporality and world-making through craft. In this presentation, I will look at work by Martin Puryear (b. 1941, Washington D.C., USA), Sammy Baloji (b. 1978, Lubumbashi, DRC), and Kiluanji Kia Henda (b. 1979, Luanda), to examine how these artists conceptualize craft explore how their craft intersects with time in processes of making pasts and futures.