To the superficial observer or the uninitiated art lover, ancient artifacts may be good for the eyes only. However, aesthetic appreciation of arts and artifacts is one thing, while their historic and cultural value quite another thing. If you stand before the famous Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” painting, you may wonder what the artist was trying to convey to the audience through the young woman’s enigmatic smile and enjoy the search for meaning. Or let us take an example closer to home.
A European art lover or dealer may see only the facial features of the men and women depicted in wooden or metal masks without, however, trying to know where, how and by whom the masks were made and what purpose they served in the past or serve now. The superficial meaning and deeper understanding of art are worlds apart. An artifact has meaning beyond its mere surface appearance and conveys enigmatic meanings like Mona Lisa’s smile.
Art work is a physical object that may have an aesthetic and or conceptual value. Art has also a deeper meaning, including the production, expression or realm, according to aesthetic principles of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance. The modern criminal art dealers for instance, see only the superficial aspect of African artifacts and sell them to the equally ignorant second or third dealer until they land in the hands of people who see in the artifacts deeper meanings or utilitarian functions. The second meaning of art includes, “the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria works of art collectively, as paintings, sculpture or drawings.” Criminal art dealers must have this meaning in mind when they engage in illegal transactions.
The significance of historical and artistic objects therefore varies with who is in their possession. To the art keeper in the Pompidou Centre, the main job maybe to safeguard African objects of art as old prizes from the colonial era that need to be kept as objects of appreciation and sometimes wonder or amusement so that tourists may see them as visual mementos from their Paris days. But to Africans living thousands of kilometers from the Paris gallery, they represent their identity as people of a unique geographic and social milieu, charged with symbolism meaning and dimensions that include political ones. The said artifacts landed in the Pompidou Centre because they were, sorry to say it, stolen from African colonies by dehumanizing and alienating African identity and philosophy and putting them as objects of exhibition to be seen by non-African people who often laugh at the sight of the objects rather than appreciate or explore their symbolisms or meanings to the original creators of the objects.
In the first place, this kind of alienation is a criminal act like abducting someone’s baby by force and selling it to foreigners in a distant land. The second crime may be the complicity in the transfer and sale of the art objects in the clandestine market by depriving the true owners of the opportunity to sharing the in comes from such a transaction. So, African artifacts are often stolen twice and sold several times while the genuine owners are unaware of such actions.
The safe return of Africa’s artistic and cultural bounties is still a hotly debated issue whenever symposiums, workshops or exhibitions are staged inside or outside of Africa. This is also one of the open wounds of the African “collective psyche” that is still festering in European metropolises since the end of colonialism. The barons of the clandestine art and culture markets and their accomplices sitting in comfortable offices in Paris, Brussels, Berlin or Rome are simply ignoring the plights of hundreds of millions of Africans.
It is as if African heritages do not matter at all or have no owners or claimants and thus can be sold or bought like any commodity in the market. Worse still, the lucrative nature of the deals in stolen artifacts makes it almost impossible to trace back and arrest the guilty parties at every step along the road. The criminal networks of the global art market are not only deaf and dumb but also invisible and the networks are also very complex. This is because the stakes are very high and the actors are well organized, like the Mafiosi.
Within the labyrinthine world of the criminal networks, there is an uninterrupted flow of money and power while Africa is bleeding white. Meanwhile, Africa is losing its historical and cultural gems that could otherwise be used as inspiration for creativity and as sources of pride and symbol of mental emancipation. During colonialism, Europeans sold Africans as slaves while they are now steeling and selling their heritages that are more expensive than the slaves of the past.
Meanwhile the black market in African arts objects or artifacts is not small time business. The objects that make the rounds of the internet in the online art market are not only numerous. They are also unseen by the public so far, because once they change hands these objects tend to disappear together with their aesthetic and market values. They change hands in the dark tunnels of the global art market that have no names but only signs or numbers.
According to the latest information, there are an estimated 70000 African objects at the Museum of Quai Branly in France, 69 000 at the British Museum, 37 000 at the Welt Museum in Austria, and 75 000 objects at the future Humboldt forum in German, as well as 180 000 at the Royal Museum in Belgium. Looking at these impressive figures, one has the impression that the colonial powers stolen and taken away African slaves rather than inanimate objects. According to these figures, more than 90% of Africa’s cultural heritage is believed to be located in Europe.
That is why the African art market is huge by any comparison. While the size of the African art business is estimated to reach something like 1.8 billion USD, the black market must be tenfold bigger than this one. How many criminal dealers are involved and how they built their empire is something that can baffle the mind and anger those who see in the African artifacts, the alienation of the entire African continent.
Some of Africa’s artifacts and cultural heritages have also global significance and the most famous African artifact is known as Tomb of Tutankhamun, dating back some 3300 years to Egypt’s New Kingdom. The tomb of King tut was discovered in 1922 by a team of archeologists led by Howard Carter, a British Egyptologist. It is quite amazing to note that Europeans are not only engaged in the original alienation of African artifacts but also in the discovery and now in the illegal transactions of the same African heritages.
Discussions regarding the negative impacts of European colonialism are often limited to the conquest of territory and the exploitation of rare minerals or the deportation of slaves. The illegal art market does all this plus the alienation of the mental and imaginative products of Africans that took place at a time when Europeans were living in caves.
How to reclaim the lost African art objects with historic significance is something that has always captured the imaginations of Africans who see in these objects the theft of the products of African imagination, African identities and African legitimate properties that were taken away from them through sheer brutality and deception. There are several campaigns waged in many parts of the world and mainly in Europe to reclaim Africa’s lost treasures. They call the process or the efforts to reclaim these objects, “the repatriation of African lost artifacts”.
Restitution or repatriation of artifacts is generally defined as, “the return of the cultural property, often referring to ancient or looted art, to their country of origin or former owners or their heirs. In the American Foreign Policy magazine published in May 2022, and entitled “Africa’s Struggle for its Art: A Debate Frozen in Time”, it is stated that intellectuals.
After African countries achieved independence in the 1960s, efforts have been made by African institutions as well as by prominent academics and intellectuals to secure the safe return of the tens of thousands of ancients artifacts that have been taken to Europe during the colonial era. Although some positive results have been achieved, their efforts have not still produced the desired impacts largely because of the resistance of authorities in many European countries. “Most recently, Nigeria and Germany signed a deal for the return of hundreds of artifacts known as the Benin bronzes.”
Although Ethiopia largely avoided the colonial loot of precious objects, it has been able to secure the return of some of the treasures taken to Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries when the British and Italians set foot in this part of Africa for one reason or another, as well as historical pieces taken during the British expedition back in 1868 have been returned to the country thanks to the spirit of bilateral cooperation for the return of the artifacts.
More recently, pieces from the obelisk of Axum which was taken to Rome by the Italian fascist authorities was returned to its original site in northern Ethiopia. Italy had agreed to return the Axum stele in an agreement it signed back in 1947. The monument to the Lion of Judah was returned in 1967 and most recently another stele from Axum was returned on 22 April 2005 and the final piece was returned on 25 April 2005.
The complete return of African historical treasures has proved very slow and difficult to achieve because of an estimated half a million historical and cultural pieces are still languishing in European museums as they are being exposed to continued thefts and illegal trade. Whatever the challenges, Africa will certainly continue to reclaim its lost treasures. The rightful owners of these treasures are bound to continue the struggle as part of Africa’s efforts to reclaim its spiritual and material identities without which its history remains incomplete.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD THURSDAY 14 DECEMBER 2023
