It was with a certain feeling of vindication that I boarded the plane to attend the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale last October. Visiting Nelson Mandela's homeland for the first time can confirm one's belief in the victory of democracy over dictatorship, of open societies over dosed systems. It means that finally I too, a West African, am free to go to South Africa, and am free to give my opinion on directions in contemporary art there. For this Biennale is tied to the end of apartheid, and it owes its specificity to what deputy president Thabo Mbeki calls the African Renaissance.
My first surprise upon arrival was that I was lodged not in a downtown hotel amid skyscrapers and lots of traffic, the Johannesburg I was used to seeing in the movies, but in the suburbs, in a three-story colonial-style building, with a courtyard and indoor swimming pool, surrounded by leafy trees. All the visitors were given accommodations in the same area, even though the headquarters of the Biennale was located a thirty-minute ride away in Johannesburg proper, at the Africus Institute of Contemporary Art (AIAC), near the Market Theatre and the Diamond Building. I soon realized that we were put up in the suburbs for security reasons. In downtown Johannesburg, near the AIAC, the only people ! saw walking the streets were poor blacks. The affluent whites and the new black bourgeoisie passed by, well-ensconced, in their cars.
My second surprise came while waiting in front of my hotel for a taxi to the Biennale. In the distance, I saw a woman walking at a measured pace toward me. She wore a black beret and a washed-out blue sweater over a white T-shirt, and her long blue wool skirt went all the way down to her ankles to meet her thick rolled socks and flat tennis shoes. As she approached, I tried in vain to make eye contact, …
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