Jumping off Stage Into An Embrace
“After studying art and then studying architecture, I never needed the clarity of being either a professional architect or being an artist, and found sound kind of middle ground that was contaminated from all sides.” Elizabeth Diller, 2020.
This isn’t our first rodeo. It’s our second to the museum with a city attached. Back in time to October 2015. The moated mountain that is the Guggenheim. Looking (hyphen optional) shipshape. It’s approached by foot along the Abandoibarra riverside walk under Louise Bourgeois’ 1999 arachnid sculpture Maman which resembles for all the world – Philippe Starck on steroids – a giant Juicy Salif Lemon Squeezer. Art or design?
While the Frank Gehry designed museum’s regenerating “effect”, a left bank titanium building as quarter, inspired a rash of grimly unsuccessful turn of the century cultural projects (nobody mention Sheffield’s National Centre for Popular Music, imitators failed to register the added ingredients of Bilbao’s mix. Not one but a multiplicity of super architect projects including Arata Isozaki’s two fingered 23 storey cloud bothering salute as well as even recognisable names such as Santiago Calatrava, Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid. A delightful 15th century historic quarter. Dramatic scenery. Great cuisine. Good looking locals. Together these ingredients all made a recipe for success. As Victor Hugo once quipped, “Everyone who has visited the Basque Country longs to return; it is a blessed land.”
Making Africa A Continent of Contemporary Design is the latest exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. The museum is closed to the public: we’re the first visitors. It’s curated by Petra Joos at the Guggenheim and Amelie Klein of Vitra Design Museum, Basel. The exhibition seeks to illustrate how design is steering change in Africa and presents the protagonists of this new epoch. Its context is globalisation through technology. “A part of this development is a new and open understanding of what design is,” explains Mateo Kries, Director of Vitra Design Museum. “It’s no longer limited to the creation of furniture, products, typography or fashion, but is very closely interwoven with the fields of photography, art, architecture and even urbanism.” He believes while this change is happening around the world today, it most clearly manifests itself in Africa.
Mateo’s counterpart Juan Ignacio Vidarte at the Guggenheim concurs, “It is in the intersection of innumerable creative fields that design holds a position as the focal point for multidisciplinary work. Making Africa successfully portrays the image of a continent that is beginning to move at this very moment.” C Stunners, 2012, eyewear sculptures by the Kenyan artist Cyrus Kabiru in the show’s Prologue section, are a metaphor for what’s to come. Who’s examining who? “We’re mutually examining ourselves,” Amelie contends. “The exhibition isn’t a totalising vision. Rather, a supplementary vision. Not an exhaustive dialogue – a starting point for our thoughts. One possible way, another way, of looking at the continent.” The exhibition cleverly conveys the diversity and complexity of Africa. After all, this is a landmass of one billion people.
Western misconceptions are diminished. Laughter replaces tears. “Something I got obsessed with is people dancing to Pharrell Williams’ video Happy!” smiles Amelie. “I really watched those videos, I dunno, for nights and nights in a row! There are dozens from Africa. Yet in our Westernised minds the continent is always struggling.” She selected the work of young South African photographer Jody Brand which depicts not only African street style but also party life and in doing so reflects a changing society. Jody’s images show there’s much more than struggle to Africa.
Like Mateo, Amelie believes “the continent is at the forefront of global technological change”. She continues, “Modernism was the result of change in Europe 100 years ago. What will we see coming out of this change?” The politics of representation are never far away. Who’s allowed to speak about Africa? The curators engaged in an intense three year preparation to quality. Their exhibition includes 75 recorded interviews with artists and designers. “In reality of course,” concedes Amelie, “there are millions and billions of different Africas. How can we speak about one Africa? From Cairo to Cape Town, there’s a lot in that!”
Making Africa attempts to answer many questions but the curators want visitors to go away asking new questions. And preferably seeing Africa in a new way or ways. “You will see art in this design show,” warns Amelie, “but I’ve used every single piece to make comment on design. That’s the thread that keeps everything together. I can make an argument for every single object on a key design issue.” One such issue is social and political commentary. Leanie van der Vyver’s Scary Beautiful, 2021, is a design statement – or is it art? – on cruelty in women’s fashion. Think historical ribcage crushing corsets or neck elongating braces. Leanie worked with shoe designer René van der Berg to create a pair of almost impossibly tall reversed high heels. Despite limiting the wearer’s mobility and controlling her silhouette to the extreme, the shoes are actually wearable. Segueing fashion to design and politics, Leanie asks the viewer to look anew at (not so) everyday apparel and what it represents.
The 120 contributing young thinkers and makers are a savvy and politically astute lot. They are a critical generation not afraid to speak out and are, perhaps, freer of the burden of colonialism. Making Africa doesn’t shy away from the darker side of the continent. South African artist Lucinda Mudge isn’t one to pull punches. Her hard hitting vases display home truths. “I use headlines from local crime story reports,” she says. I Will Kill You And Then I Will Eat You is emblazoned on the side of one of her vases. The other side, slogan free, is beautifully decorated in gold. Violence and beauty. One artist, duality of voice. Nothing is simply black or white. It’s a comment on not looking, on looking the other way. There’s more than one way to view a situation a design, an artwork. And a continent.
Parisian songstress Taali M bursts into song at the preview: “I’m gonna stand on the shoulders of giants…” Amelie informs us, “We have to rethink what design is. Is it art? Is it design? I don’t care! Design and art should be making bold statements about the future. Where do I come from? Where am I going? Who am I? If artists don’t make bold statements, if not them, who? Otherwise we will be stuck where we are. Period. Taali M sings: “Stand tall and rise above it all.”
Amelie keeps going, “Design is more than chairs It’s analogue and dialogue. We must speak about communications, systems, complexity – design is more than just objects. Critical design enhances change as it could or should be in the 21st century.” We agree modernism has gone. What awaits? Existential concerns aside, it’s 25 degrees outside. Hot, distractingly so, even for northern Spain, in late autumn. Where will we go? “Stand tall so tall I’ll be tall,” ends the statuesque Taali M to applause.
The Basque Country is famous for its nationalistic stance, but hosting Making Africa A Continent of Contemporary Design demonstrates its global outlook. The exhibition explores what’s beyond modernism while liberating visitors from Western myopia. Africa. The continent with a vision attached. And we’re back. Late spring 2026. Ruth Asawa Retrospective is the headlining exhibition curated by Thomas Weisel, Chief Curator of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in collaboration with Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães, Curator of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Works include looped wire sculptures, paper folds and sketches by the American artist renowned for making ordinary things special.
The Guggenheim Museum is aging well in physicality and popularity. On a Tuesday morning the public is queuing up the steps for the 10am opening. Victor Hugo was right about the allure of the Basque Country. And that was before Arata, Louise, Norman, Santiago, Zaha and most of all Frank left their mark on the cityscape.
This century the largest city in Basque Country is inextricably linked to one piece of adventurous built form. Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is something of a showstopper. Yet follow the curve of the River Nervión eastwards and high above Old Town rises another piece of adventurous built form erected just over half a century before the museum took shape and shifted the dial of cultural tourism forever.
The Ascensor de Begoña elevates the humble lift both physically and architecturally. Architect Rafael Fontán’s Brutalist reinforced concrete was built for moving people, not moving (stationary) art. In such a hilly city, it linked the 18th century El Arenal parkland with the medieval Old Town. A 45 metre high (the equivalent of about 13 storeys) elevated passageway connected the hillside to a square hollow vertical column containing a lift. Unfortunately, Ascensor de Begoña has been closed since 2014 over a maintenance dispute.
Bilbao’s medieval Old Town is literally overshadowed by Ascensor de Begoña and metaphorically overshadowed by the Guggenheim Museum. Nonetheless it is well worth exploring. The historic core of the city, like its Basque neighbour San Sebastián, is a neoclassical plaza. It looks older, but Plaza Nueva was officially opened in 1851. A long build gestation – which could explain its earlier appearance – was inevitable with three architects on board: Silvestre Pérez, Antonio Echevarría and Avelino Goikoetxea. Pintxo bars are aplenty on Plaza Nueva under the arched Doric arcade. The very dog friendly Tostao café and bakery (with its resident canine) faces onto ZIngira Kalea next to the river.
The turn of last century apartment blocks of Old Town have beautifully detailed winter gardens. Projecting balconies encased by glass and timber panels provide residents with all year round usability, noise insulation and nosying opportunities on neighbours. Who needs Gogglebox? Winter gardens are all the rage with London planning authorities. Nothing new under the sun.
On the far side of River Nervión set in the turn of the 20th century grid of development is. Architect José María Basterra’s Gothic design was completed in two parts: the spire was erected 14 years after the church was inaugurated in 1918. The gleaming white stone exterior of St Joseph’s (the ubiquitous Bilbao red pantile roofs hidden behind parapets) looks new under the sun.
While the city sleeps, we explore its streets like curious cats. The reflection of golden illumination from street lamps relieves the velvety darkness of the River Nervión. We prowl riverside along Paseo de Uribitart. Ascending Villarías Kalea, shop windows display goods but nobody’s browsing. On the far side of the river, in the Old Town, the scent of baking bread escapes from bakeries. The bells of St Nicolás’ aren’t a’pealing. We slink past the Dog’s Fountain on Txakur Kalea. A lone jogger runs by. Dawn’s about to crack this nocturne in black and gold.
