World is Africa

Eddie Chambers is Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. He has been writing about African Diaspora and Black British art practices for several decades and his scholarship includes Black Artists in British Art (I. B. Tauris, 2014) and Roots and Culture: Cultural Politics in the Making of Black Britain (I. B. Tauris, 2016).

For decades, Eddie Chambers has been synonymous with incisive writing on Afro-Diasporic sonic and visual culture. True to form, the wide-ranging essays in World is Africa – from the aesthetic politics of the 1980s to jazz record sleeves to contemporary art – are at once precise and polemical. This is a vital companion to 1999’s Run Through the Jungle, and introduces readers to Chambers's capacious intellectual practice – as pressing as ever, his writing elaborates the ongoing project of righting art history's many elisions. World is Africa is essential reading for anyone interested in Black Atlantic culture and the ever-shifting landscape of diaspora scholarship.

• List of IllustrationsForeword, Patricia BickersAcknowledgementsIntroductionSection One - On Art History, Institutions, and Academia1 Section One, Introduction2 The Harmful Consequences of Postblack 3 Africa 05: Polemic 4 Dead Artists’ Society5 Black Artists and the Fetishisation of the 1980s 6 Black British Artists and Problems of Systemic Invisibility and Eradication: Creating Exhibition Histories of That Which Is Not There7 Framing Black ArtSection Two - History and Identity8 Section Two, Introduction9 ‘Handsworth Songs’ and the Archival Image 10 Black British and Other African Diaspora Artists Visualising Slavery 11 2000’s Got to be Black 12 Next We Change Earth 13 Keith Piper, Donald Rodney and the Artists’ Response to the Archive14 Black British PhotographySection Three - On Artists15 Section Three, Introduction16 Sokari Douglas Camp CBE 17 William Kentridge: The Main Complaint 18 Hurvin Anderson: Double consciousness19 Jonathan Jones: untitled (the tyranny of distance) 20 Vanley Burke: An Inglan Story, An Inglan History 21 Helen Wilson: Painting for a Brighter Future 22 Barbara Walker: Private Face 23 Barbara Walker: It’s a Bit Much 24 Reviewpiece: Ajamu & Sunil Gupta25 Pat Ward Williams: Isolated Incidents 26 Donald Rodney: Three Songs on Pain Light & Time 27 Ben Jones: In the Spirit, In the Flesh 28 Frank Bowling and the Enigma of Guyana 29 Charles White’s 10- and 12- Inch Vinyl Messages 30 Hew Locke’s Depictions of RoyaltySection Four - Black Artists in History31 Section Four, Introduction 32 Independence and Cultural Nationalism in Caribbean Art 33 Black Artists and the Greater London Council 34 Art and Society, Jonathan Greenland interview with Eddie Chambers Section Five – Criticize35 Section Five, Introduction36 Contemporary Art or Contemporary African Art?: The Inevitable Death of the Latter37 Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast: Cultural Diversity and the Visual Arts Sector: A Study of Policies, Initiatives and Attitudes 1976 – 2006: Afterword 38 Elvan Zabunyan, Black is a Color (A History of African American Art): Book review 39 “Black My Story, (Museum de Paviljoens, Netherlands, 2003): Book review 40 Criticize: Press Responses to Black Art an’ done and The Pan-Afrikan Connection exhibitions Section Six – Outernational41 Section Six, Introduction42 Àsìkò Goes Outernational 43 Jamaica Goes Outernational Index