Curator Simon Njami is exposing the world to the continent’s creations, writes Aspasia Karras.

I collect Simon Njami from his hotel and head to the Goodman Gallery. I figure that I should take the curator who got 30000 visitors to his Africa Re- mix show at the Johannesburg Art Gallery on a walkabout to get an insight into the workings of his mind when he contemplates a set of art works. Anyone who can muster Jozi in such numbers for an African art show in Joubert Park must be onto something.

In his low, measured tones and sexy, French-accented English he explains how it is that he knows an excellent work of art on first sighting: “It’s when I have the feeling that I have not seen it before … you cannot define it but you know it when it works. It’s all subjective and you do not need to be a specialist to have a crush on a work of art.”

Still, he must know what works, given the international success of the Africa Re-mix. With over a million visitors internationally, in Tokyo, London, Paris, Stockholm and Dusseldorf, the Re-mix has done a great deal for the continent’s contemporary artists.

We discuss the recently opened Quai Branly Museum of African and Oceanic tribal art in Paris. His criticisms of the museum, which were very vocal in France, sum up the driving force behind his own work. “The people who are working at this museum are ethnographers. They don’t take into account Africa’s contemporary side and the people who produce the works.

“Even the architect, Jean Nouvelle, has a phantasm about Africa, he has never travelled here.

“Africa’s problem is that everyone has an idea about Africa. My job is to show them a mirror. They cannot define me or my continent without listening to what I have to say. Some people thought Africa was voiceless.”

The son of a dissident Cameroonian academic and a psychiatrist mother who fled the military junta, Simon reflects on the art world from the prism of his academic background.

I ask him about the international art circuit currently in full swing at the Frieze Art fair in London. “It’s always more or less the same crowd at Basel, Venice and Frieze,” he smiles wryly. “It’s like a magic circus, the international art crowd is a very closed milieu.”

His new curatorial project is the FNB-sponsored Johannesburg Art Fair — an African first — to be held in March next year. It will be the single largest collection of African and South African contemporary art, covering 5000m² of gallery space. Simon will curate a show for the fair that, unusually, will also be for sale.

“Nobody comes to Africa, which is probably why African artists have a brilliant future, they are not the usual suspects and they bring fresh blood, yet they are the top- selling 100 artists internationally.

“I dig and come up with fresh blood that I offer to a larger audience. There are a lot of preconceived ideas about Africa and preconceived ideas about Africa from within Africa — artists show us new possibilities of being African.”