Hybrid and Unapologetic: Common Efforts Across Cultures
Drawing inspiration from cultural theorist Mieke Bal’s Traveling Concepts in the Humanities (1946–), I have explored and analysed the exhibition Common Efforts by South African painter Lulama Wolf (1993–) and late Danish sculptor Sonja Ferlov Mancoba (1911–1984). Bal emphasises the importance of approaching cultural analysis with an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on methods and insights from multiple fields to gain a more holistic understanding of objects and practices. Through the concept of hybridity, I examine the complexity of Ferlov Mancoba’s practice and its significance when exhibited alongside Wolf’s paintings.
According to Bal, hybridity originated in biology, implying as its “other” an authentic or pure specimen and presuming that hybridity leads to sterility. This notion, prevalent in imperialist discourse with its racist overtones, has since traveled across disciplines to indicate an idealized state of postcolonial diversity.
The concept of hybridity has “traveled” across time and disciplines—from biology to literature, through Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) and postcolonial theory, particularly Homi K. Bhabha (1949–), and into the social and political realm. In the foreword to Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multicultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism (2015), Bhabha describes hybridity as a form of incipient critique that does not come from the outside but works within the cultural design of the present, reshaping our understanding of the “gaps” that link signs of similarity with emergent signifiers of otherness.
To understand how Ferlov Mancoba’s practice might be reinterpreted in this light, I invite the concept of hybridity into dialogue with the exhibition Common Efforts.
Common Efforts: An Exhibition by Lulama Wolf and Sonja Ferlov Mancoba
Common Efforts is the title of one of Ferlov Mancoba’s sculptures; for this exhibition, Wolf borrowed the title to emphasize the two artists’ shared love for community. The exhibition was created in dialogue across generations and continents. The sculptures and paintings seem interwoven within the small space located in Copenhagen’s meatpacking district.
The sculptures were created by a woman born north of Copenhagen in 1911, who later moved to Paris to pursue her artistic career. Ferlov Mancoba developed an early admiration for “Primitive Art” through visits with her parents’ friends, collectors specializing in African native art. At that time, hybridity was not associated with positivity: in the 1920s and 1930s, art from non-Western cultures was often dismissed as degenerate, hybrid (non-human), or the product of “inferior races.” Ferlov Mancoba’s early work was thus heavily influenced by primitivist styles, a practice that may have been difficult for the Danish public to fully grasp.
Upon moving to Paris in the 1930s, Ferlov Mancoba shifted from painting to sculpture and fell in love with South African painter Ernst Mancoba. This multicultural, mixed-race artistic partnership—comprising a Caucasian woman creating work strongly influenced by African aesthetics—may explain why cultural appropriation was not highlighted in the recent exhibition. Instead, Wolf, a young African female artist, emphasized the similarities between the two artists’ practices and the positive contributions of cultural hybridity.
The hybridity of Ferlov Mancoba’s sculptures demonstrates how art can transcend cultural norms and biases: using Western materials rarely seen in Africa, she infused them with primitivist forms that create an almost spiritual experience. The dialogue between Ferlov Mancoba and Wolf—between a white woman ahead of her time and a contemporary Black artist inspired by traditional African art practices—weaves a compelling interconnection across time, space, and culture.
This multicultural, hybrid exhibition highlights shared human experiences, moving beyond notions of racial hierarchy and, in the words of Bal, embodies an idealized state of postcolonial diversity.
Photo: Eighteen (V1 Gallery)
