ARTICLE WRITTEN BY PENIEL FEATURED ON THE GUARDIAN NG - Africans Are Full Of Aesthetics

July 14, 2021 12:14 AM

PENIEL’S ARTICLE FEATURED ON GUARDIAN NG; Africans Are Full Of Aesthetics - the danger of a stereotype 

One thing that has become imperative when amplifying the beauty that is the African culture is that the narrator does well to make the distinction between Africans as a people with a strong sense of aesthetics, and Africans as a form of artwork themselves.

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And then there is the second failure- In a bid to compensate for the earlier wrong, the media has tried to focus on the artistry and cultural dynamics of the African people but is now portraying a romanticised image of Africans as being simple-minded beings whose only inclinations are in arts, culture, and aesthetics, and whose sense of wholesomeness can be got solely from creative expressions, even if everything else is going wrong.

This is simply not true.

This overly artistic image of Africa as an alternative to the depleted image of Africa is still in itself a stereotype, and we as Africans should not accept this oversimplified version of ourselves. It is condescending to think that all that Africans are capable of is only creative expression...

This article was written by Peniel Okwuchukwu and was first published on the Guardian NG , July 2021 Sunday Magazine. To read the full article, visit Africans Are Full Of Aesthetics: The Danger Of A Stereotype | The Guardian Nigeria News - Nigeria and World News — Guardian Life — The Guardian Nigeria News – Nigeria and World News