Abstract

To colonise the African continent and later on expand its domination upon the rest of the world, Europe has denied history and by so doing history of art to Africa. This denial has infiltrated into all the fields of Euro-African relations and to some extent all human endeavors along the centuries.Standing from a decolonial point of view, this paper aims at questioning the art historical discourse on Africa so as to show how African art history moved from colonialist discourse to the need for decolonisation. First of all, this scientific work discusses how the discourse on African artistic productions aimed at vilifying the continent in the first centuries of western modernity in order to justify the colonisation. Further, it exemplifies how by heathening Africa, the latter has been dispossessed by organised exportations of her arts for the benefit of western museums. Finally, the paper provides some steps for decolonising African authentic aesthetics.