The battle of Adwa, 1896, lives long in the memory of Ethiopians. Forces under King Menelik II killed 6,000 Italian soldiers and took a further 3,000 captive. According to Ethiopian artist Wendwesen Kebede, the victory over white invaders is a symbol of “solidarity of all downtrodden people of the world”. The upset lived long in Italian memories, too; in October 1935 a vengeful Mussolini invaded Abyssinia, exiling its ruler Haile Selassie to Britain and hauling an ancient obelisk of the Axumite empire off to Rome in triumph. It has since been returned to its rightful place at the largest megalithic tomb in the world.
A park in Wimbledon is Afua Hirsch’s unlikely starting point for African Renaissance: When Art Meets Power, her three-part travelogue to Ethiopia (the former Abyssinia), Senegal and Kenya. Hirsch grew up in the London neighbourhood and was curious about its bust of Haile Selassie, frequently adorned with flowers and prayers. Her scrutiny of this “complex and flawed figure” and his troubled legacy lies at the heart of the programme, but first she investigates a more distant history.
The sophistication of the Axumite culture, roughly contemporaneous with the Mayans, she argues, formed an “inconvenient truth” for European invaders bent on domination. Victorian missionaries, for example, seemed not to be aware that the country had converted to Christianity in the fourth century.
Hirsch covers a lot of ground in an hour, with a brief to investigate art, history and culture. This takes her from the ancient mountaintop church of St John with its lively biblical murals, where spry elders worship after a gruelling hike, to the African HQ of the United Nations in Addis Ababa, for which the Slade-educated artist Afewerk Tekle created a dazzling stained glass triptych. The artwork, in the service of pan-African liberation, was commissioned by the Emperor himself.
Selassie also granted land to Jamaican Rastafarians wishing to return to Africa, despite being bemused at being hailed by them as a living god. After the autocratic Emperor fell for the second and final time, Ethiopians turned against the Rastas. Visiting the few now remaining in the village saddens Hirsch: “They’re still searching for a sense of belonging.”
Ethiopia’s more recent history encompasses both Mengistu’s Red Terror and periods of devastating drought. After the communist era with its incongruous Soviet Realism style of victorious African workers, indigenous arts have been going through a renaissance. Kebede’s canvases are stunning, though traditional music proves a tricky listen, and the slippery wit of traditional Azmari troubadours is perhaps lost in translation. Hirsch argues that the “forbidding language” of Ethiopia helped protect its cultural traditions against globalising forces; as might the country’s rumoured possession of the Ark of the Covenant, tucked safely away from prying televisual eyes.
★★★★★
On BBC4 from August 17 at 9pm
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BBC4’s African Renaissance is a dazzling investigation of art, power and culture - Financial Times
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