Tanzania has slightly more than 120 ethnic groups, some of which were organized into chiefdoms during the colonial period. In regions that did not have traditional chiefs, the colonial administration opted to create them. During independence, the burden of creating national unity fell to Julius Kambarage Nyerere, the first president of Tanganyika (now Tanzania). Under Nyerere, Tanzania adopted a brand of socialism called Ujamaa or “African socialism” in 1967. Nyerere announced the shift in the Arusha Declaration six years after independence. Some scholars, such as Sam Maghimbi (2012), view this form of socialism as purely focused on agrarian reform or as a branch of utopian socialism. The present article explores how visual artistic production was shaped by socialism in Tanzania during the Ujamaa period (1967–1985), by the dismantling of socialism under neoliberal reform (1985–present), and by the effects of postsocialist changes that theorists like Katherine Verdery describe as “the...
The Making of Contemporary Art in Tanzania
Elias Jengo is an associate professor in Fine Art at the Department of Creative Arts, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, teaching art history and painting part-time since his retirement in 1996. He was a Fulbright Artist in Residence fellow at Kent State University, Stark College in 2004–2005. [email protected]
Elias Jengo is an associate professor in Fine Art at the Department of Creative Arts, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, teaching art history and painting part-time since his retirement in 1996. He was a Fulbright Artist in Residence fellow at Kent State University, Stark College in 2004–2005. [email protected]
Elias Jengo; The Making of Contemporary Art in Tanzania. African Arts 2021; 54 (3): 50–61. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00599
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