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BOGUMIL JEWSIEWICKI, Cheri Samba: the hybridity of art/l'hybridite d'un art. Contemporary African Artists series, ed. Esther Dagan, Quebec: Galerie Armand African Art Publications, 1995, 104 pp., US$6200, ISBN 1 896371 00 0 (paperback).
Bogumil Jewsiewicki's Cheri Samba is the first of a promising series of monographs on contemporary African artists organised by the intrepid Esther Dagan, known for her solid and useful collections on African dance, drums, and `emotions in motion'. Jewsiewicki's view of Samba is not the paean for a recognised African talent that one might expect in this age of political correctness, although the illustrated paintings make their own statements about Samba's stunning artistic creativity and in-your-face social engagement. Rather Jewsiewicki's essay complements and looks beyond the excellent `Cheri Samba, his life and (im)pious works' by Jean-Pierre Jacquemin (in Cheri Samba: a retrospective, ed. W. Van den Bussche, n.d. but c. 1991). As Jacquemin's title suggests, one must not take Samba's bravado at face value, and Jewsiewicki moves from a view of the artist as `spokesman [since most are male] for the collective memory or . . . aesthetics of his society' that some have found a 'comforting' approach to...