THANKSTHANKSAFRICA was initiated as an artist project and
experiment and was made up of fictitious (albeit discursively robust idea of)
'African Art artist'. During its life-span (2010-2013), THANKSTHANKSAFRICA was
independently invited to participate in video and photo-based installations by
art-world personalities who later rescinded their invitations based on supposed
lack of 'authenticity' (as 'Black' 'Africans' - after a rather fixed,
nativistic notion of 'race'). With scant resources, THANKSTHANKSAFRICA went on willy-nilly
to carry out its Fake Art Art projects by proxy. In rejection of
the established professionalistic syncophancy that abounds Contemporary Art
today, TTA carried out its investigations on wholly irreverent, not made for
career 'action actions', plumbing the unfunded, unknown area of south vs south
and, in it inclusion of social media and use of language play, unsettling the
notion of 'African Art artist'. Etc. Etc.This was at a time when all 'African
Art' could art was 'our bodies in the Euro eyes how we cry' - something along
that shoddy line of performed slavitude often entirely funded by the european
nations whose interests these pseudo political works serve. At the time of its
now defunct online presence on social media, THANKSTHANKSAFRICA came to the
notice of certain so-called 'African Artists' essentialists, these well-funded,
overly applauded-by-the-establishment fucks across that continent who ply
'Africa' as their own essensio-racial poverty claim while sipping champagne in
wine sipping, white-shirt wearing 'arting' art professionalisms. These ones saw
THANKSTHANKSAFRICA's installations and posters, including the political tenor
in the posters as stuff to simply copy. Whereas for TTA, installation and
performance art are the domain of 'arting' i.e bona fide shams, i.e.
professionalisms, the sickness in the can. Etc. TTA's copycats could not tell
the jesting from the thing - (which TTA admits is a failure on TTA's part) -
and slavishly re-routed as if furor is a cut and paste. Overnight, TTA's past
posters became the verbatim copies for the purveyors of 'Africa' to make
derivative anti-Mugabe posters, or install biennial 'installation arting'.
Childhood years of public physical assaults and ensuing verbal abuse as
children of African mothers with missing foreigner fathers, the violence of
that onset rejection, to look upon the vapidity of parasites and global syncophancy
-- these were the stuff layered underneath TTA's posters and word play. But
nevermind. Mediocre purveyors of 'Art' with no indeed sense of Beauty or what,
putting their impoverished, highly-lauded 'arting art' out there, borrowing
verbatim TTA's Fake Art Art for their clichéd "theme-based- world! Stuff
THANKSTHANKSAFRICA invented! Their claims, according to them, had 'more'
authenticity' - a claim based solely on the narrowest position of that dastard
notion, 'race'. During its life time, THANKSTHANKSAFRICA was interested in
the nature of certain established relations alongside the question of
difference. How THANKSTHANKSAFRICA applied ambiguity and anonymity to carry out
its artistic and/or political investigations, including its play on 'hidden' authenticity,
reveals and was intended as commentary on the problem faced by artists who find
themselves unfixed in the conventional idea of nationality and place. THANKSTHANKSAFRICA
was concerned with social and political issues concerning Africa and performed
a range of inquiry into the social and the political, from acting as a pseudo
investigative reporter on online African News outlets under various 'TTA
members' (and thereby corrupting these spaces), to art and video installations
and street and war poetry projects (here, TTA inserted war poetry into glossy
magazines), including the spread of what TTA termed 'naijacentric posters' for
its project TITs.
TTA also carried out a free books giving project across West Africa (Reader in
Residence or RIR, Nigeria and Ghana) and home giving, trust-based project,
'free home residency' (or XIR: Person (x) In Residence) in which
THANKSTHANKSAFRICA gave up own home/apartment. THANKSTHANKSAFRICA is now
permanently closed and is no more. THANKSTHANKSAFRICA thanks supporters of
its past projects, in particular our friend the lady at FLACC (Belgium)
and the folks at FOCUS 10 Basel whom TTA never met, the council-council-council
for travel funding the airfare to West Africa. TTA also thanks google's folks
godaddy who, for some reason, have never once asked for monies for this site.
In the end, all are left by cake or by time and so we leave even google! TTA is
cake and fake. Adieus! Our Fake Art Art has come to an end. Long Live Africa,
home of our social pariah mothers (and more importantly beloved grandmothers) Land
of Darkness and Light, many truth and many colour, May the tears of your bold
children crying for change never end (or, if they do, may it be because they
are alive as ever, living with courage and will and having stuff to do - and
not just living in the cesspool of living deadness, no, that is europe and not
the future of Africa. Europe is death to everything that touches it. Africa is
Life for every instance every breath every mineral every ray every atom on earth.
(PS: 'Life' and 'death', what to say, what to make of these two illusions? But
there's a galaxy in-betwixt and its the grey area alien child who stands back
and sees the awe and the tremour and the magic and the experience of both all
at once, the lies in the truthiness, light and dark, dry and cold and
tremulous, awesome life on earth, Etc etc)). And so on and so on. Etc.
"In the context of an increasingly multicultural and multi-ethnic world, as the drive in art remains racial and/or tribal, the artist adopts strategies as a producer of 'the Real' and proposes themselves, or are themselves presented, tacitly or not, as 'more real', more 'ethnically' connected, more economically connected via ethnic concoctions. Etc Etc. The problem of these prejudices is not so much how they affect those established as members of the opposite group, but rather how much we punish those whose immediate place we feel unable to place. These grey areas dwellers bear the brunt of the oppositions. THANKSTHANKSAFRICA claim of 'African-born and raised' in light of its self-declaration as fictitious, non-existent and of mixed or specious heritage become part of the effects of the Real. THANKSTHANKSAFRICA asks what is the real if not production of its effects, what is the authentic if not made-up?" - TTA, fake curator 2012
- THANKSTHANKSAFRICA, December 19, 2013
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No
copy or file of images or prints made during the TTA experiment and
installations, in particular the Lagos photo and/or its organizations or
associates, is permitted to be saved or printed or sold, nor is any
valid for sale, whether in the past or at any other time. All images
purportedly sold under the thanksthanksafrica name or any artist name in
connection with TTA by the mentioned organization, Lagos photo and/or
its organizations or associates, are null and void and considered theft
and misuse. Under no circumstances were third parties given the rights
to print or sell or save or share files of images from TTA and its past
projects. All prints of graphic works and posters by thanksthanksafrica
are rubbish and disallowed from private or commercial ownership or use,
whether by claims of sale or gift or otherwise since such claims are
false and null and void.
A Selection of past projects as THANKSTHANKSAFRICA:
