Neocolonialism or not neocolonialism?

Anna Balint Puskas

Babinga woman performing Yeli

The drawings for the Top 100 2020 are evolving into illustrations for songs with multiple images. Most of the music in the list are sourced from well documented anthropological recordings. Data, photos, and contextual information is available for many of the recordings. The amount of text in these drawings is also increasing and the attitude towards the drawings is closer to the drawings for the top 100 I did in the beginning in the early 1990s. I do like the juxtaposition of drawings of the performer and the recorder, who is in many cases a Frenchman. This idea I intend to explore further in the works for the next series that I'm going to start soon. For the Top 100 2021 I intend to use oil paint on 11 x 14 inch canvases, horizontally oriented and containing double portraits. I think it will be interesting to portray the musicians from all parts of the world, mostly women, next to a portrait of the ethnomusicologist who is mostly a white middle-aged European. These are not intended to become criticism for an attitude resembling neocolonialism but rather an honest juxtaposition of subject and object. Both as individuals.

Babinga

Babinga Ceremony
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2020

The woman in the painting already appeared once behind Andre Didier in a painting I did not too long ago. Then I removed her. The photograph from which I pulled her image did not appear in the photo of Andre Didier but appeared on a separate photo that was also taken by Gilbert Rouget stemming from the same Ogooué-Congo Mission of 1946. Chant magique en partant pour la chasse au filet is unlike the work song that was illustrated in the Didier painting a recording of a ceremony. This was the reason the image was removed. For this track the image is more appropriate and may very well be depicting the actual person dancing in front of the chanting chorus of women that feature in Roget's photograph.