Tokyo is seeing a remarkable confluence of Afro-Japanese artistic expression and thought, with three ongoing shows presenting unique dialogues between Japanese, African American and African aesthetics and culture — highlighting a significant expansion of Japan’s art world.
At the Mori Art Museum, Theaster Gates' “Afro-Mingei” blends African American culture with Japanese folk-art traditions. At the newly opened Space Un — helmed by Edna Dumas, of the Hermes-affiliated Dumas family — the Dakar-based artist Aliou Diack’s exhibit “Anastomosis” delves into the interrelation of humans and nature, drawing parallels between Senegal and Japan. At Marubeni Gallery, “Wafrica: In Search of a Third Aesthetic” by Serge Mouangue, a Cameroon-born, Paris-based artist, juxtaposes African and Japanese elements, such as kimonos, masks and sculptures, to create a novel visual paradigm.
In “Afro-Mingei,” Chicago-based artist and academic Gates introduces his titular concept, which is deeply influenced by both his studies of Japanese ceramics since 2004 in Tokoname, Aichi Prefecture, and his African American heritage. The solo exhibition — billed as the largest ever by a Black artist in Japan — ambitiously fuses Japan’s mingei (literally “art of the people”) tradition with the “Black is Beautiful” movement from the United States’ civil rights era to find overlaps in aesthetics, politics and spiritual approaches.
Reflecting on his practice, Gates says during a joint press interview, “I’m interested in the life of things. I’m interested in preserving the life within things and not destroying the life within things. That feels very Japanese and also very African, in terms of a belief that in this body of water, gods live there, (and) that this rock that sits on this hill has spiritual power because of its geography and scale, because of its immovability, because it survived a great catastrophe.”
The exhibition includes ceramics made in Tokoname, sculptural pieces inspired by Chicago’s music scene and an installation featuring a church organ. It honors traditional crafts and cultural movements of the past while exploring contemporary issues of race, identity and politics — more of a philosophical proposition than simply a blend of dazzling Afro-Japanese aesthetics. Gates coined the term “Afro-mingei” to describe his unique framework.
“Mingei, in part, seemed to be resistance from the outside,” he says, “from the West, from the three-piece suit with the gold chain watch, with a kind of impeding capitalism that was on the rise in the early 1920s. The kind that would mean the individual artisan or the workshop might be replaced. ‘Black is Beautiful’ also seemed like a resistance, but a resistance within the country between one group of people and another. Mingei seems to be like the ability to say, ‘Who I am is beautiful. What we do is beautiful. What we have done is beautiful.’ So, in that sense, both mingei and ‘Black is Beautiful’ are trying to resist and preserve.”
Space Un in Minamiaoyama is Tokyo's first platform dedicated to contemporary African art and occupies a Afro-Japanese-styled facility designed by architect Go Hasegawa. It features a ceiling imitating shoji doors, lights that correspond to the sunlight at the time in the home region of the exhibiting artist and plants native to Africa growing by the entrance.
In Space Un’s inaugural exhibition, “Anastomosis,” wilderness and folklore permeate Diack’s work, and the artist paints not with oil or acrylic paint but with locally sourced pigments — including medicinal herbs — to vividly depict this. His paintings were created at Yoshino Cedar House, Space Un’s residency in Yoshino, Nara Prefecture. In a statement, Diack emphasizes the shared appreciation for nature in both Japanese and Senegalese cultures: “I think above all, we share this true appreciation for the Earth — a true recognition and gratitude for all it gives us.”
Dumas, co-founder of Space Un alongside actor and artist Yuta Nakano and cultural entrepreneur Lothar Eckstein, reflects on the gallery’s purpose, telling The Japan Times, “The idea was born many years ago. I arrived in Japan in the mid-1990s and studied at International Christian University because many young Japanese students seemed to find themselves in a respectful and welcoming spiritual place. That's why, after experiencing this feeling, I realized it was very similar to that of certain African countries. After coming back to Europe, I thought that it was necessary to bring these two cultures together. I was fascinated by the similarities.”
Meanwhile, Mouangue's “Wafrica: In Search of a Third Aesthetic” at the Marubeni Gallery, near the Imperial Palace, represents a bold but visually seamless meeting between African and Japanese artistic traditions. This harmony, Mouangue explains, is exactly what he intended — to have audiences see the two cultures’ aesthetics embrace and think that it looks “obvious.”
For example, the Cameroonian artist — based in France since childhood — reimagines traditional African masks with Japanese lacquer and crafts intricate kimonos from African fabrics, thereby creating hybrid forms that challenge conventional notions of identity and tradition. But these are done so well that it’s as if you’re immediately familiar with Mouangue’s creations. “I would like people from both West Africa and Japan to recognize their commonalities,” Mouangue says. “But more than that, to readdress the idea of identity. Because identity is one thing, and the fantasy around it is something else.
“There are many world conflicts today; I’m not naming them, we know where they are. And they all have ‘identity’ as a crisis. I'm not solving them here — just saying, ‘Let's chill out a bit.’”
Like Gates and Diack, Mouangue has inserted his view of animism and the shared tendency of Africa and Japan to ascribe something holy, alive and personal to the natural world and its objects — visible in “Wafrica” sculptures containing other faces inside them. But Mouangue finds it misleading to compare a continent with a country, stating, “Africa is huge. Let’s talk about Cameroon.”
Mouangue further stresses that his approach is not about fusion but about juxtaposition — arriving at something new while keeping the components intact. It's a process that has involved working with several master Japanese craftsmen. At first, he thought it would be difficult to ask them to work with African materials. “But Japanese people in general tend to be very curious — eager to discover and learn,” Mouangue says. “It wasn't too difficult to sit down and say, ‘Shall we collaborate?’”
The simultaneous presence of these three shows in Tokyo suggests that this is not merely serendipitous but reflective of a movement within the international arts scene; a convergence of traditions and practices that emphasizes not only the individual achievements of Gates, Diack and Mouangue but also underscores the broader cultural connections that inform their work.
But why now, and why in this unplanned, interlaced way across Tokyo?
“I think Japan is seeking to heighten its status by showcasing contemporary art from Africa or by African American artists in an attempt to align itself with the global art scene,” Dumas says. “Although, of course, there have been cultural exchanges between Japan and Africa for quite some time.”
This is echoed by Mouangue, who sees this exchange as a result of some fatigue in the interactions between Japan and the West. “Japan notices other alternatives, and there is no longer a need to go through Europe or the U.S. Communication between Japan and Africa can happen more dynamically and directly without any validation from the West.
“I think Japan is evolving into a moment where its relationship with foreigners, as well as with the outside world, is slightly changing. That makes a passage possible,” Mouangue says, adding what sounds like a nod to kintsugi, the Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery with gold and silver. “You know, it’s like when something has slightly cracked, and there’s light that comes out.”
The tradition of Japan integrating its arts and culture with influences from Europe and America won’t be curbed by these three sole exhibitions, of course, but they demonstrate how both Japan and Africa, and stories about the African American experience, benefit from this revitalizing dialectic. Artistic exchanges that illuminate shared themes of identity, spirituality and craftsmanship, despite their perceived distance, reveal commonality — and hopefully inspire similar necessary initiatives elsewhere in Asia.
“I believe it remains a challenge to fully appreciate the diverse cultural contexts and artistic expressions in contemporary African art,” says Dumas. “For far too long, African art has been unfairly labeled as primitive and unsophisticated, despite the fact that some of the most intricate and compelling works of art have originated from Africa.”
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