Abstract

PORTO, Nuno. Cokwe art and ethnography: before and after Marie-Louise Bastin. Etnográfica [online]. 2015, vol.19, n.1, pp.139-168. ISSN 0873-6561.

Departing from Marie-Louise Bastin’s research visit to the Dundo Museum in 1956 and the publication of both volumes of Cokwe Decorative Arts (1961), I analyze contemporary recurrences of the context of production of categories of “African art” and its consumption in Angola as “national art”. The colonial context in which Cokwe material culture, classified as ethnography, become classified as art, enabled a transition which developed in relationship to a new policy of development of the Dundo Museum. The analysis of this process is critical to understand local and global relationships mediated by the category of African art and its colonial efficacy, as well as it is illuminating of present-day politics, expressed in art terms, in contemporary Angola.

Keywords : Angola; African art; contemporary art; ethnography; Luanda Triennial.

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