Tingatinga as Tourist Art: The Dialogue between the Producers and Clients

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LEIDEN UNIVERSITY

Tingatinga as Tourist Art

The Dialogue between the Producers and Clients

A DISSERTATION

for the degree

MASTER OF ARTS

Field of African Studies

By

Yiping Chen

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Acknowledgements

My gratitude goes first and foremost to my supervisor, Professor Maarten Mous, for his great interest in my research topic, which helped me to build up confidence in its feasibility at the initial stage. He also provided useful suggestions for my fieldwork in Tanzania. I was fortunate enough to have his patience in understanding my problems and my swinging research directions, and his constant encouragement based on his previous research experience. All of these were extremely helpful when I needed to get away from stress, and comb out a clear path to walk on.

My thanks also go to my host organization, Tingatinga Arts Cooperative Society (TACS). The board members, Iddi, Mbuka, Akilimali, Zena and Bavon showed great support for my research, sometimes even made me feel overwhelmed. I felt that I was accepted as a member when I was greeted nearly on my every step to and from work, when I was given free soda and cassava, when I was introduced to every guest that visited TACS’ office. I have had so many warm and lovely memories here that I would cherish for all my life. I owe huge thanks to my Tingatinga teacher, Mwalimu Mkura, for allowing me, a Mzungu, to learn Tingatinga in 2015. Without this experience, I would not be able to design and conduct this research in 2018. He also offered abundant useful information, most of which can be found in this thesis. As for other Tingatinga artists, Abdalla, Malikita, Sunday, Rubuni, Mwamedi, Mwatuka, how I hope that I could write all your names in this acknowledgement! Thank you all for participating in my research, teaching me trendy Swahili words, and chit-chatting with me every day. I also owe thanks to Mr. Dong Liu, Former Counselor and Mr. Tianfa Ye, secretary of the Embassy of the P.R.C in Tanzania, Ms. Florence Mattli, Swiss Ambassador to Tanzania, Ms. Mama Christine, Mama Angelika in Switzerland, Mama Kuniko and Masayo in Japan, Ms. Vivian Shaluwa of National Art Council of Tanzania, for participating in my research. Your accounts made my thesis more comprehensive and completed.

Lastly, I would like to say thanks to my dearest friends Huifang, Yuling, Yanping and Mengting. I will always miss the time that we had delicious Chinese food at the end of

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many tiring workdays in Tanzania. I’m also grateful for having you as my informants that I can disturb with endless questions.

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Abstract

Tingatinga has been categorized as ‘tourist art’ for decades, however so far there has been little attention on the actual influence of the tourist group on Tingatinga. By using the theory of dialogism, this research looks into the interactions between the producers and clients of Tingatinga, and summarizes its development as tourist art as a cycle of souvenirization, mass-production and customization.

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Chapter 1 Monologue: A Journey from the Field

Imbalanced Fame: An Implication of Tourist Art?

Named after its founder, Edward Saidi Tingatinga, Tingatinga has been recognized as a unique painting style originated from Tanzania and gradually gained its fame among an increasing number of the audience, especially those who are from foreign countries (TACS 1998), while domestically, it is much less known. I noticed this imbalance of fame when I failed to describe my destination, Tingatinga Arts Cooperative Society (TACS), to several bajaj1 and taxi drivers. TACS is the largest Tingatinga workshop in Dar es Salaam, and I painted as a weekend apprentice there for seven months between 2015 and 2016. At first, I thought this was merely due to their unfamiliarity of this place, after all, TACS is just a small compound hidden in uzunguni2. However, it came to my attention that what is more confusing for them, is the word ‘Tingatinga’. To my knowledge, Tingatinga refers to this specific painting style, but for most local people, they know this word as ‘tractor’, without any idea that it is related to art as well. When I told my wazungu3 friends about this, they all found it unbelievable because

some of them even heard about Tingatinga before arriving in Tanzania. How come such a well-known art style is unknown at home? My local friend handled this more calmly though he did not know what Tingatinga is as well. To speak more accurately, he had seen Tingatinga paintings, but he did not know it is called Tingatinga. ‘These are for

you wazungu.’ He said.

When someone is called ‘mzungu’, he/she is culturally alienated and is viewed as an ‘other’. Thus, my enthusiasm toward Tingatinga died down a bit when I heard it is a wazungu-exclusive art. It seemed a paradox that I went there every weekend as a getaway from typical wazungu leisure, but ends up biting another lure for wazungu. What is worse, I found Tingatinga is defined as ‘airport art’, ‘tourist art’ on Wikipedia4

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An auto rickshaw with three wheels which is popular in Tanzania.

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Literally translated into ‘white people’s area’.

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‘White people’, but now it generally refers to all Non-African.

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and other online articles. As a senior, not regarding age, Dar expatriate that speaks the local language, takes local transports, wears local fabric and enjoys (at least seemingly) local arts, I do not agree to be categorized as ‘a tourist’ and I certainly do not like the art that I enjoy to be tagged as ‘tourist art’, which sounds mean to me at that time, though neither the word ‘tourist’ or ‘art’ is negative.

Painting Tingatinga as A Mzungu Apprentice

It was effortless to find a teacher at TACS, especially when I told them that I was the MC at the awarding ceremony of Biennale Tingatinga Painting Exhibition held by the Chinese Embassy5. I chose an old artist called ‘Uno’ and started painting as an apprentice after agreeing on the amount of tuition. It was fun at the beginning. However, throughout the months of apprenticeship, our communication about Tingatinga painting is limited to:

- I want to paint an elephant next time.

- Good, tell me the size and the background color and I’ll prepare it for you. Whose

elephant do you want to paint?

(I picked one from hundreds of paintings on the wall. These are works from different artists.)

- Do you want me to sketch or you’ll do it by yourself? - I’ll sketch by myself.

And I just started by imitating an existing painting while Uno, sitting next to me, worked on his own paintings. He stood up to check my work every after a while, giving me a big smile or clapping, unless I did something nearly irreversible to my work. Gradually, I felt for most of the time I was being taught by no one, but Uno insisted that this is how every Tingatinga artist was trained.

When the seed of discontentment burgeoned in my heart, I began to view Tingatinga and Uno more objectively. Scenes that Uno tried to greet visitors at TACS in broken

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English, Japanese and Chinese, worked on the identical paintings for months, copied from other artist’s works, signed his name on his son’s work, came into my eyes more often. And Uno is not a single case, things like these happen every day on Tingatinga artists, at TACS and other Tingatinga workshops. I used to hold Tingatinga in esteem, but what I have witnessed during my apprentice time shook my mind. I began to understand where the tag of ‘tourist art’ comes from. After all, there are no waves without wind. The content, sizes, even selling tricks are based on their understanding of tourists, and these features, which I found out later, qualifies Tingatinga as typical

tourist art with the definition of ‘artworks produced by a social, cultural or ethnic group

for consumption by another’. (Hume 2014; Graburn1976; Shiner 1944)

I, as An ‘Other’

Taking a second thought about my motivation to learn Tingatinga, what I sought for in Tingatinga is an ‘authentic’ experience in Tanzania (Cohen 1988), which I found hard to achieve in a mzungu’s life. Then, how do I define ‘authenticity’? From my understanding at that time, before jumping into the academic debates over this concept, it simply means breaking away from my cultural otherness and blending into a local one, namely how people here actually live. But when I was asked to bring more clients, to pay for their lunch, to bring a HUAWEI smartphone when I come back from China, I realized that I was still living a life of an ‘other’ like my wazungu friends, the only difference is our willingness.

Until here, I come to reconcile with the concept of ‘tourist’, for I have realized the resistance to it is originated from the denial of my identity as an ‘other’. However, the concept of ‘tourist’ is not congruent to ‘other’. Coming back to ‘tourist art’, does it merely refer to the art consumed by tourists, as people who are travelling on the way? Has this narrow definition led to the omission of the influence on so-called ‘tourist art’ brought by the conceptual ‘others’, for example, the expatriates who purchase them as souvenirs to bring home or buyers in Japan who purchased them to add certain ‘African flavor’ to his/her home? These people are not considered as ‘tourists’, however, it does not mean they do not share the same touristic needs. In addition, since they make up a

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considerable percentage of audience group, at least in the case of Tingatinga6, by no means can they be left out from our discussion of ‘tourist art’.

Therefore, I believe it is crucial to bring together these ‘cultural others’ into the discussion of tourist art, and the first step is to incorporate these ‘cultural others’ into the ‘tourists’ we refer to in the phrase of ‘tourist art’, which I will specify in the next chapter.

Toward A Research Question

Coming to a self-recognition as a cultural other did bring in a better understanding of the scenes that I witnessed at TACS. They are Tingatinga artists’ adjustment to meet the audience’s needs. Each single scene suggests Tingatinga artists’ response to (a) certain need(s) of their audience group, the so-called ‘tourists’, and these are all supporting evidence of the argument that Tingatinga is tourist art. However, when and why did they begin to cater to these touristic needs? What are the touristic needs? How do Tingatinga artists manage to meet various touristic needs? Can we trace back the route that Tingatinga transformed into tourist art?

Departing from these questions, I came back to Tanzania at the beginning of 2018 to do my research that this thesis is based on. By connecting all the scenes in my mind, I formed my overarching research question: How has Tingatinga been developing as

tourist art?

To answer it, I did abundant supplementary readings to help me decode the scenes stored in my memory. Therefore, in Chapter 2, I present my critical thinking on current publications regarding Tingatinga itself, the uniqueness of Tingatinga as tourist art, the current typology of tourists and conceptualize ‘tourists’ in a new way. These discussions lead to a theoretical framework of artist-audience dialogue which I adopt from Bakhtin’s (1981) famous dialogism theory.

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In Chapter 3, I discuss the qualitative methodologies used during my fieldwork and explain how I analyze my data.

In Chapter 4, I give the necessary introduction of interlocutors, the artists and the tourists, and the context where dialogues occur, which is followed by Chapter 5, in which I provide an analysis of three patterns of Tingatinga’s transformation into tourist art, namely souvenirization, mass production and customization with a focus on the dialogic relationship between artists and tourists.

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Chapter 2 Academic Debate: Tingatinga, Tourist and

Tourist Art

A Brief Introduction of Tingatinga

Though Tingatinga is known as an art style today, it used to only refer to the founder of this school: Edward Tingatinga, who was born in Ruvuma as a Makua group member. He had never received any professional art training, yet he decided to paint, with the brushes, enamel paintings and ceiling boards he bought from a hardware shop. His initial paintings were simple animals with strange proportions. No matter it is due to his lack of capability7 or intentional exaggeration (Jung 2017), he found his works were liked by expatriates and tourists in Dar once his wife took them to Morogoro Stores8 for sale.

Very soon, Tingatinga’s paintings caught the attention of a British officer, Mr. Berger, who worked for National Development Cooperative (NDC) of Tanzania. With his support, Tingatinga signed a contract with NDC, agreeing on a weekly supply of new paintings at a fixed but considerable price to National Arts of Tanzania (NAT) Ltd., which was a public institution subject to NDC9. This contract was signed to promote national artworks and boosting their sales, and the art products involved are majorly Makonde wood sculptures and Edward Tingatinga’s artworks (Goscinny 2016 [2010]). It seems that everything was going in Edward Tingatinga’s favor. He even recruited some assistants from his family, who then became his apprentices. However, tragic death came to him in 1972, when he was shot to death in an accident (Mwasanga 1998), and left his painting work an open legacy.

His apprentices, and the following generations of apprentices, inherited and carry it upward to a height that it is recognized as an art school. The tourism boom since 1985 contributed to its dissemination and profitability even more. A developing agency,

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Interview TA88.

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Grocery Shops where most foreigners liked to go for shopping at that time.

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HELVETAS, assisted them to build a workshop (Mwidadi & Chilamboni 1998), gallery owners took artists for learning tours abroad (Shiraishi 1992; TACS 1998; Thorup 2010), an animation company made a cartoon with the name ‘Tingatinga’ (Augusta 2009). Tingatinga artists also actively respond to their audience through adjustments, which leads to the controversy of ‘tourist art’ over Tingatinga, and of course, my research on its transformation into ‘tourist art’.

Tingatinga and Tourist Art

As we mentioned before, tourist art is defined as artworks produced by a social, cultural or ethnic group for consumption by another (Hume 2014; Graburn1976; Shiner 1944), which in many cases, are related to adjectives such as ‘tribal’, ‘traditional’, ‘primitive’ and ‘authentic’ since most tourist artworks that researchers discuss about today were once produced for this group’s own daily or ritual consumption or to meet the group’s own unmodified aesthetic taste and decorative use.

Tingatinga art has been closely related to the Makua ethnic group since beginning, for over a decade, it was taught only to Makua members. Though a growing number of apprentices from other ethnic groups have joined, Makua members still dominate the Tingatinga artist group. In terms of its consumption, from the times of Edward Tingatinga to now, foreigners, mostly tourists have been their most stable customers. It seems that the Tingatinga art we know today fits perfectly into the definition of tourist art, but its path toward this category is different in many ways compared with many examples discussed in existing publications.

First, Tingatinga has never gone through a period when it was only consumed by its producer group. Even the first Tingatinga painting was painted to sell to foreigners, who have a much high affordability than Tanzanian local people at that time.

Second, Tingatinga does not have a solid ethnic background as most tourist artworks do. Its confirmable origin is in late 1960s when Edward Tingatinga began to paint. Though Augusta (2009) even traced it back to a Tingatinga Kingdom in the 17th century,

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I would like to point out that these arguments can only be treated as assumptions which have little supporting evidence. It is farfetched to allege an individual artist who painted animals and village lives on ceiling boards with enamel paints as a representative of his ethnic culture of wall painting with soil and stones. Therefore, I consider the Makua wall painting no more than an inspiration source.

This led to my third argument about Tingatinga, that is its confirmable origin is an individual artist’s works and it became a family work after its success at the tourist market.

Overall, it is interesting to see if Tingatinga is a unique case, or if there is an alternative developing track of tourist art that is relatively universal, by analyzing the research results.

Tourist Typologies

Over the years, researchers have raised various tourist typologies which has a tendency of taking more parameters (i.e. motivations, regions, travel activities etc.) into consideration. Gray (1970) builds a dichotomized model that divides tourists into ‘sunlust tourists’, who seek for leisure and relaxation, and ‘wanderlust tourists’ who are motivated by curiosity and a learning desire, which marks the beginning of the tourist-classification wave. Cohen’s (1972) proposes a four-fold tourist-classification, namely ‘drifters’, ‘explorers’, ‘individual mass tourists’ and ‘organized mass tourists’ which is based on their interaction with destination. Similarly, Plog (1973) divides tourists into ‘psychocentrics’ and ‘allocentrics’ by measuring their traits on a scale from dependency to venture. Smith (1977) formulates seven tourist types, ‘explorer’, ‘elite’, ‘off beat’, ‘unusual’, ‘incipient mass’, ‘mass’ and ‘charter’ based on the greatly varied modes of travel and the number of tourists involved in each. Another important typology is Pearce’s comprehensive quantitative typology of 15 traveler categories based on major role-related behaviors, ‘tourist’, ‘explorer’, ‘traveler’, ‘missionary’, ‘holidaymaker’, ‘oversea student’, ‘jetsetter’, ‘anthropologist’, ‘businessperson’, ‘hippie’, ‘migrant’, ‘international athlete’, ‘conservationist’, ‘oversea journalist’, ‘religious pilgrim’.

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Each typology is reasonable in its day, however, the number and types of tourists have both been multiplied along with the tourism development. There can be more categories and more parameters, but no matter it is tourists’ behaviors, motivations, experiences that we are talking about, they are rooted in tourist consciousness, which leads to my fundamental argument: tourist consciousness is not a patent of tourists (as who are categorized repeatedly in various ways).

MacCannell (1973) proposed a mode that tourists are modern men who set out to seek for ‘authenticity’ because they feel alienated or deliberately alienate themselves from their own society, which is perceived as ‘inauthentic’. This account is criticized for its narrowness that only includes ‘educated middle-class tourists from the western world’ by Graburn (1983), but there is one thing that I agree with MacCannell, ‘alienation’, and this is the core of what I understand as ‘touristic consciousness’. Not only do travelers on the way have this consciousness, but those who have not departed yet, those who have already come back, and those who live temporally in their destination but do not share the same mindset of local people. The ‘alienation’ from the society they belong to is what they have in common, and the only visible difference is their physical location. Therefore, I propose to categorize tourists according to the relation between their physical locations and destinations as: ‘tourists at home’, ‘tourists on the way’, and ‘tourists in residence’.

Type Description

Tourist at home a. People who have not departed from home, but desire to experience a specific destination or the whole world outside. They absorb knowledge and collect tokens from their dreaming destination through available sources in their society.

b. People who have come back from a trip/journey but are still in the mindset of tourists on the way. They are usually eager to share anecdotes on the way and collect tokens to show a personal bond with a destination.

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their major trait, which leads to practical considerations that might influence their touristic experience. Besides, their expectations from when they were at home and their expectations of how they and their trip/journey would be perceived when they are back are also closely related to their experience on the way.

Tourist in residence People who have a relatively longer, but still temporal stay in a destination. They might not visit popular tourist attractions as those who stay shortly do, but they view the destination from an alien’s standpoint. They belong to the broader group of expatriates.

Having specified the commonality and differences of these ‘cultural others’, I come back to the discussion of ‘tourist art’, the ‘tourist’ in which is now defined clearly. As mentioned above, tourist art is made or adjusted to cater to tourists’ needs, however, how this happens is my major research question. To answer this question, the first step is to confirm the existence of the influence of tourists on Tingatinga artists, which shall be argued in a broader sense, the influence of audience on artists.

Building a Theoretical Framework on Dialogism

The simplest deduction is audience’s influence on Tingatinga must be presented via Tingatinga artists’ work, which shows an interactive relation between these two parties. In fact, before the feedback from audience re-shaped Tingatinga, the being of Tingatinga itself has shaped the audience’ perceptions first. This deduction is supported by Tilly’s (1990) theory that subjectivity is a form of the objective. Förster and Kasfir (2013) explain it more specifically from the perspective of African art, that is, artworks are produced from the hand and mind of an artist and thus exist physically, but simultaneously, how it is perceived must also be viewed as a byproduct and be included when we discuss its being. Though Zangwill (1999) argues ardently against an audience-based art theory (Tolstoy 1955; Goodman 1968; Danto 1964& 1981; Dickie 1974& 1984; Levinson 1990) and points out that art has nothing essential to do with

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audience, he actually agrees to the theories mentioned above paradoxically by separating the objectivity and subjectivity of art.

It is on this fundamental agreement that audience do have an influence on art by mediating its being by discourses that I started constructing the theoretical framework, thus how to analyze the words and behaviors of both the artist and audience is the following question. It is undeniable that artworks are created by artists, but are artists the de facto dominant role in art creation? Why were audience’s opinions applied more often in recent Tingatinga works? When these questions occur, the issue regarding the (in)equality of parties involved in a dialogue caught my attention and formed the first reason for me to adopt Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism in this research.

The theory of ‘dialogism’ was originally used in literature criticism, but it also has implications for social analysis (Bakhtin 1981; Robinson 2011). In his dialogic worldview, all characters should be treated as subjects rather than objects and these subjects’ positions are unfixed in fluid contexts. Similar to Bakhtin’s theory, Kasfir (2007) raises a more specific theory to apply in researches regarding artistic innovation. She argues, to answer the question, ‘how does the new actually happen?’, it is necessary to move constantly back and forth between two levels of practice: the activities that result in the production of concrete objects, and the other one, often ignored, that engages structure and habitus, which requires a broader understanding of contexts. Bakhtin’s dialogism theory also emphasizes the unfinalization of dialogues, which is the second reason that I adopt it in this research. He considers all thoughts are dialogic, more specifically, a dialogue is the response to the previous dialogues and will also be responded by the future dialogues. During this process, all concepts are re-described endlessly and thus changed gradually until a new concept occurs and the cycle goes on. This open-ended process is what I define as a dialogic chain in this research regarding Tingatinga, which I use as the overall theoretical framework to analyze the discursive and fluid developing route of Tingatinga as tourist art. In the case of Tingatinga, tourist art is not an end-point, but one stage or one possibility of its presentation brought by the fluid artist-audience relationship that is reflected on material objects.

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Chapter 3 Methodology: Capturing Dialogues

Research Objects

Referring to my research question, my major research objects are Tingatinga artists and tourists who have contributed to Tingatinga’s transformation into tourist art. I categorize them as tourists at home, on the way and in residence.

In terms of Tingatinga artists, most of them are based in major tourism regions in Tanzania, such as Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, Arusha, Mwanza etc. A few of them have made their way to Kenya, Uganda and even further, Germany, Japan and have settled there. After a serious consideration, I chose Tingatinga artists at TACS as my major research object for the following reasons:

First, I have established personal relationships with several artists at TACS in 2015 when I learned Tingatinga painting there, which provides me a general understanding and makes it easier to target and gain trust of informants.

Second, TACS is the largest Tingatinga artist group with 56 current members and over ten candidate members10_{, which allows me to conduct participant observation and}

interviews efficiently. TACS is also known as the go-to place to buy Tingatinga in the opinion of many expatriates based on their experience and also many short-term tourists according to Trip Apps and books.

Third, its former being was Tingatinga Arts Partnership, which was established as the first official Tingatinga artist community, thus many old Tingatinga artists at TACSwere close to the first-generation Tingatinga artists. It is very helpful to gain valid historic information through them, which is essential for the analysis of artist-audience dialogues before my time.

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Usually descendants of Tingatinga artists. They can inherit the workspace of their family or be assigned a new workspace, and are observed as candidate members before being accepted by TACS officially.

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Fourth, TACS is an important connecting point between artists and tourists at home. For instance, gallery owners and cultural tour organizers must inform the management team of TACS, whom are also Tingatinga artists, then place bulk orders, or arrange artists, activities and schedules. Therefore, through the management team, I can get in touch with these agencies who would provide me feedbacks from tourists at home. In terms of the three types of the audience, I build contacts with them via different ways respectively. It is easy to find tourists on the way, since TACS is located in Dar es Salaam, the economic capital of Tanzania which has busiest tourist traffic in Tanzania (JNIA, 2017). They can be found at tourism attractions, hotels, shopping centers, cafés, where are called Uzunguni by local people. Tourists in residence can be found in Uzunguni as well. However, except my street interview regarding their knowledge of Tingatinga was conducted there, the other in-depth ones are all conducted at TACS, or a juice bar nearby. As for tourists at home, as I have mentioned above, one way is via agencies; the other way is based on my personal relationship for some of my friends in China used to buy Tingatinga through me.

Participant Observation

My research requires observations of artists-audience interactions and sometimes individual interviews afterwards, therefore, participant observation is essential for this research. It is unreplaceable for identifying both potential individual audience and artists to interview by capturing the words or body languages during talks, especially individual audience, because they do not sit at workshop all day. Instead, they only show up for a short time, which also made my observation an alternation of long-time waiting and intermittent high concentration. Fortunately, after a while, some artists had figured out my interest of observing clients that sometimes they would even come to the office to inform me, ‘wageni wamekuja.’11

Participant observation also allows me to gain a better understanding of artists’ accounts

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such as the displaying order of finished paintings, the low productivity in rainy seasons etc. The working and living condition of Tingatinga artists, which are important bricks when constructing contexts of dialogues, are not easily exposed in verbal words, but can be subtly observed and summarized from their daily lives. Sometimes they are not easily understandable, therefore, I also take participant observation as a necessary stage to generate new questions before conducting interviews.

Interviews

I had been reading Goscinny (2016) and Thorup’s (2010) publications on Tingatinga which included brief artist profiles that helped me to gain a primary understanding of potential informants and form interview questions accordingly. My initial interviews aim to know about artists’ basic information such as years of practicing Tingatinga art, reasons of painting, relationship with their teachers, experience of oversea cultural communications12, based on which following questions about apprenticeship, living condition, opinions on the current situation of Tingatinga and its promotion etc. were generated and eventually led me to research results. Meanwhile, I take interviews as a way of confirming the results I got from former ones. Since I view Tingatinga artists as a group, it is essential to tease out the shared elements from the issues they mentioned and build further interview questions on these commonalities.

1) Open Interviews

Most of the interviews with Tingatinga artists were conducted openly because the workspace at TACS is very limited and artists sit side by side. Openness is what they have already been used to and therefore I believe open interviews enable Tingatinga artists to be more at ease and give natural and inornate responses. Another advantage is that artists sitting aside would correct or replenish instantly the information that my interviewee provided and sometimes even trigger a heated discussion.

I also had open interviews with tourists and expatriates. For most of the time, I found

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it difficult to stop them for an in-depth talk because there was little time for me to build and solidify our relationship since most of them came to do shopping, which sometimes means they did not intend to be disturbed by research interviews. I had to place my focus on observation, which is less distractive, and questionnaires, which show a clear time limit and provide options so as to save their time. However, there are also people who showed great interest and were willing to share their experience in details, in this case, I would interview them when they walked around TACS. Though the privacy of our interviews is usually sacrificed, it could bring in a longer span of interview.

2) Private Interviews

I arrange one-on-one interviews for the artists who implied that they would like to have an in-depth conversation with me at TACS office which provides more privacy and it also suggests my serious expectations of their responses. I also tend to arrange private interviews when my informants are elder members to show my special respect to them. This practice is based on my internship experience at TACS, when I found that the director usually called elder members into the office for serious talks while younger ones are less invited into office. Meanwhile, I found the artists sitting around an elder artist tend to give similar answers after listening to his words, which might lead to a one-sided result that eventually influence the research. Therefore, I tend to separate elder members from the younger ones when having interviews.

When it comes to agencies such as National Arts Council (BASATA)13, private interviews are also preferred and usually take place at the interviewee’s office.

3) Email Interviews

Most of the art brokers of Tingatinga are based in foreign countries such as Switzerland, Japan and China, therefore I conduct interviews with them via email after being introduced to them via TACS. Email interviews allow the interviewees sufficient time to form their answers, and save the time of transcribing, however, problems such as long waiting and the limitation of a detailed inquiry exist as well.

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4) Home interviews

There are a few Tingatinga artists who work at home and do not show up at TACS, which in my opinion leads to less exposure to the audience. Therefore, I pay visits to their home to discuss about their relations with the audience. Home visits also enable me to have a clear understanding of the traffic problems and economic constraints mentioned by most artists.

5) Street Interviews

To gain a general understanding of Tanzanian’s and tourists’ perceptions of Tingatinga, I carried out street interviews in Dar es Salaam.

For local people, I have most interviews done at bus stops to take the advantage of the constellation of potential interviewees with different characteristics. In addition, a bus stop provides an open environment, therefore, I do not need to repeat my research introduction since most of them might have listened to my previous conversations with other interviewees before I approached them. From the perspective of potential interviewees, they can decide whether to participate before my approaching as well, which saves time for both sides.

For tourists, I conduct my short interviews in Uzunguni, mainly in Slipway where tourists go for a slow-rhythm rest often, and some others in hotel lobbies, cafés and cinemas.

Questionnaires

I designed a questionnaire targeting on visitors at TACS. I combine the usage of questionnaires with interviews so that my potential respondents could get a quick idea about the research introduction, types of questions and time cost. After getting consent, I would read the questions to them, and offer options only if they hesitate about what to say. In this way, I provide a gesture that I want to save their time and ease the atmosphere. I would ask extra questions if I found the respondent is very interested, or has abundant time, or has unique insights.

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I did not intend to use questionnaires before several failures of approaching visitors at TACS. Most of them were in a rush, or did not want to participate in a research, which might sound too serious for a relaxing trip. I also found it time-consuming to explain my purpose and do self-introduction repeatedly. Therefore, I changed my strategies. First, I bought an unpainted canvas with frame and wrote brief self-introduction and the expected time length of my interview. Then I put it in front of my stand, the position of which depended on which artist was absent, then I waited for visitors to come like the artists do. Those who are not interested would walk pass me directly, but fortunately, my board often succeeded in attracting visitors to participate in my research, which raised my work efficiency significantly.

Data Analysis

Most of my data are recordings which need to be transcribed. To save time, I took notes on my laptop during interviews with my phone aside recording the talk. I sorted these notes twice a week, and highlighted the keywords in both texts and the title of the documents for easier reference during my writing process. Recordings were saved with keywords for the same purpose. I transcribed selective parts of recordings as potential parts to quote in my thesis. In addition, my data consists of abundant pictures too. Six of the authentic Edward Tingatinga’s works were provided by the Swiss Embassy in Tanzania. A few paintings of the 20th century shown in this thesis were found online because there was no stock at TACS nor National Museum. The other pictures were

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taken by myself. All these photos were put in different portfolios, and the photos taken by myself were stored chronologically with keywords such as ‘Korean

tourist+order+giraffe family’ as titles. When I found questions from the data, I would

go back to my informants and start a new round of interviews.

Besides, I wrote fieldwork diaries and stored them chronologically with keywords. Diary writing helps to replenish my notes and stimulate self-reflections which contributes to my thinking over the influence of my personal bias on this research.

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Chapter 4 Interlocutors in a Fluid Context: Fifty Years of

Tingatinga

Leaping from Individual to National Art

Edward Tingatinga is a lucky artist. Though he only enjoyed a four-year art career, he gained enormous success that made him a renowned and wealthy man.

His paintings are simple in style (TACS 1998), which is demonstrated clearly in the unicolor background14, the singled-out animal motifs in a static pose. It would be fair to say that his major efforts were put to make the illustrated animals recognizable for his audience. Taking his classic work, the Cheetah(Fig.1), as an example, a side view of the cheetah makes it possible for audience to capture all its salient features at one glance, such as four long thin legs, a whip-like tail, deep chest, and spots all over its body. Meanwhile, he gives a front view of its head instead of a side one to further emphasize its facial features, such as its characteristic black tear-like streaks.

Like most self-taught artists, Tingatinga did not stop seeking for progress during his painting practice. There is a clear tendency of adding more figures, including animals as subjects and trees, flowers or artifacts such as bottles as décor. As we can see from

14

Sometimes he also used two colors to represent sky and ground.

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the painting below, Two Peacocks on a Tree (Fig.2), apart from maintaining his habit of presenting the side that shows features the best, i.e. a side view of peacocks’ heads to show beaks and head ornament, he tried to include two peacock figures in one painting together with a tree as décor, which brought a scene into his painting. He also arranged these two peacocks standing in different positions, one facing the audience, one standing with its back, showing its characteristic feature, the train.

Despite the simplicity of style and the slow progress, Edward Tingatinga’s work won the attraction of many foreigners, most of whom by then were expatriates15. The Chairman of the East Africa Art Biennale Association, Professor Jengo commented on

15

Interview TA122.

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this phenomenon during an interview:

Why do Europeans like Tingatinga so much? Because it fits into their conception of Africa, how it is supposed to be like. They think all the techniques we use in painting are from the Western world, they think we did not have art before colonization. If you give a brush to a European who’s not trained professionally, he would paint like this (early Tingatinga) as well16.

In my understanding, what Jengo points out here is the reason why many foreigners are attracted to Tingatinga is its crudeness, a reflection of a real Africa that has not been influenced by any external invasion. Thus, it is a reasonable assumption that foreigners’ stereotype of Africa lowered their expectations of techniques, or, any kinds of sophistication, from Tingatinga, which is a just-discovered, authentic African art. Though the mainstream discourse showed an optimistic attitude toward the revival of Africa, the colonial ideology, which considered Africa as essentially incapable, was still covered inside (Shiner 1994). Thus, what this pseudo-optimism brings in are various ‘discoveries’ of the naiveté of Africa.

There is another confirmable reason that contributed to foreigners’ fondness for Tingatinga. For a long time, Makonde wood sculptures were dominant in the Tanzanian art arena, and few other art forms were witnessed and recorded17. Therefore, Tingatinga entered the arena, but was not faced with any competition. Instead, his paintings catered to foreigners’ imagination of Africa on one hand, on the other hand, they fit into the national Ujamaa policy which values rural authenticity (Nyerere, 1962). Though the Tanzanian government itself put more concentration on economy reconstruction and left little virtual support to the cultural section (Jengo 1985), its subordinate institutions, such as NDC took this responsibility of promoting domestic arts, though the one who initiated, Mr. Berger, was British. NDC’s intervention gifted Tingatinga a name of ‘national art’ and gained it more foreign audience since its major mean of promotion is artwork export.

Therefore, we can conclude this narration of the initial phase of Tingatinga by saying it

16

Interview OP7-8.

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was majorly supported by foreigners. Though I did not apply the assertion that Edward Tingatinga was inspired by tempera paintings sold in streets, it would not be wrong to say the foreign intervention of this art came in haphazardly soon after he began to paint. Apprenticeship Interwoven with Familyhood

Tingatinga’s first six apprentices are all from his (extended) family and were trained under the ‘watch-and-learn’ mode. This training mode, like how many other non-academic African artists are trained, emphasizes imitation as the proper and natural path towards competence (Kasfir 1999). It is also due to the unprofessionalism of Edward Tingatinga as an instructor, and his little intention to accept apprentices at first. Five out of his six apprentices came to him when they were jobless, which was a bit hazardous at Ujamaa time18, and started by being Edward Tingatinga’s assistances. ‘Ujamaa’ can be roughly translated into ‘familyhood’. In the most practical way, it means sharing what one have with one’s family members, and this was exactly what Edward Tingatinga did.

The intertwining of apprenticeship and familyhood was solidified by these early apprentices after Edward Tingatinga’s death. Outward exclusiveness and inward inclusiveness formed the most conspicuous feature of the Tingatinga artist community. In terms of the ourward exclusiveness, until 1990, only people from Makua ethnic group, preferably Mlaponi clan19, were qualified to learn Tingatinga. Even today, there is an invisible wall between ‘family members’ and ‘outsiders’. Apprentices from other ethnic group, must pay tuition for learning Tingatinga. As Mkura explained:

If you are from Makua group, and I am your brother, why would I charge you? I’ll just tell you to sit down and learn. But if you are from Mwera, I’ll tell you to pay, but not a big amount.20

This restriction regarding ‘familyhood’ was sometimes loosened to ‘neighborhood21’,

18

Jobless urban young people were often vilificated as ‘exploiters’ and would be repatriated into rural villages during Ujamaa time.

19

EdwardTingatinga’s clan.

20

Interview TA 110.

21

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but it was very rare.

As for the inward inclusiveness, dozens of young family members took up Tingatinga as their temporary job and ditched it when they found a stable one, since Tingatinga had proved to be a reliable family-exclusive job provider. This evident profit-driven participation based on kinship dragged down the overall quality of Tingatinga works and fostered an unwritten reciprocal rule which contributes to Tingatinga artists’ tolerance of copying deeds. Some artists take being copied as a gesture of providing help:

They copied my work because they saw my paintings sell. Their own paintings do not sell well. They need money… if they could earn money by copying my art, it’s fine for me.22

Copying becomes a hybrid of the benevolence from the ‘familyhood’ ideology and the ‘watch-and-learn’ training mode, which does not suggest an absence of originality, but a slow fostering process of it. Left are paintings of a buffalo of Edward Tingating and his apprentice Simon Mpata, who ‘continued to be essentially faithful to the original style of his brother Tingatinga (after his death)’ (Goscinny 2017). There is a conspicuous similarity between two paintings, the buffalo, as the major motif, was illustrated in the same way. The only changed part is décor.

We cannot allege how Tingatinga would turn out to be if Edward Tingatinga lived longer and this imitating practice continued to exist, because a major breakaway from his original style

22

Interview TA 91.

Fig.3 The Buffalo of Tingatinga

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appeared after he passed away. Without the master’s works to refer to, apprentices have to work with what they understand as ‘Tingatinga style’, and this catalyzed an innovation trend.

Apart from this passive breakaway, innovation also occurs in the below condition:

I learn fast and I paint well, so the customers like to buy my works, sometimes my sales are even better than my teacher’s… He told me that our works are too similar now, so it is time for me to make some change…though I know mine has already gone beyond his.23

In practice, this change does not need to be a major one, thanks to the benevolence rooted in ‘familyhood’, a small one such as changing dots to circles would get the apprentice a ‘pass’ from his teacher. Therefore, rather than criticizing Tingatinga artists as ‘copy cats’ and assert it as a negative influence brought by tourists, it is essential to understand this practice in the context of apprenticeship and familyhood.

Going Abroad, Staying Native

The master’s falling led to the silence of Tingatinga art for a long time, only small-scale private exhibitions were held at some expatriate patrons’ residences in nearly a decade. Things began to look up in 1980s. Tingatinga artists were invited to exhibitions abroad one after another, and Japan was the main destination. However, most artists described their job at the exhibitions as ‘live painting’. They were required to wear African prints and paint aside while the ready-made works were displaying on wall, which is a vivid scene of what MacCannell (1973) depicted as ‘staged authenticity’. This practice goes on even until today, and more on-stage interactive performances are included such as tasting Tanzanian food, experiencing painting at school and companies.

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Fig.5 Tingatinga Exhibition in Japan

Apart from these covert commercial shows, Tingatinga artists were invited to cultural communication tours to mingle with artists from other regions too. However, the earlier tours and exhibitions were predominated by the host side, as many non-academically trained African artists realized. Kasifir (1999) describes these exhibitions as follows:

The scenario in that case is the hoped-for dialogue between authentically ‘naive’ artist and ‘sophisticated’ foreign critics and audience, which frequently, in fact, reveals the sophistication of the artists and naiveté of the critics and audience.

As for Tingatinga artists themselves, they sensed neither the commercial shows nor the cultural communication was in their favor, but they still appreciated the chance, and absorbed exotic elements, regarding both commerce and painting, into their works (example see Fig.6). Besides, the artists invited abroad also gain bigger fame than their fellows which sometimes attract more orders.

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Artist-Tourist Encounter at Workshop

Tingatinga artists were not merely special guests to be gazed at in all exhibitions they participated, an exhibition held by HELVETAS in Switzerland brought great changes to them in 1996. Christine Hatz, the leading person, narrates it in details:

The HELVETAS campaign was the result of a happy coincidence: It was the time when development agencies discovered ‘culture’ as a way to raise awareness for their idealistic goals. It would remind people that not all of Africa was poor, tragic, politically unsettled…When we made a small Tingatinga exhibition at the Swiss Tropical Institute in Basel: People were enthusiastic about this new side of “Africa” they discovered in these paintings.24

The most delightful result of this successful exhibition is the money gained from selling paintings were used to build a workshop, which is the physical premises of TACS today. Workshop, as both an economic institution that allows first-hand contact between artists and audience, and a social space of learning and interaction among artists themselves (Förster& Kasfir 2013), provides more possibilities for the development of Tingatinga, and majorly contributes to its transformation into tourist art.

Before having a workshop, the artist-audience interactions were very limited due to a major preference of painting at home, inherited from the Edward Tingatinga times. Though the dialogues between artist and audience have never stopped, the frequency had never been as high as those that take place in the workshop. Apart from the tourists who go for paintings, there are also many of them go for sightseeing, who sometimes take photos of the working scene of artists and the shabby surroundings.

Meanwhile, Tingatinga artists gained the opportunity to observe their audience as well. Since most Tingatinga artists depend on their work for a living, to figure out what audience like and which audience is more generous became a skill that they are keen to master. This skill, together with their painting skills would then be demonstrated in their artworks as a response to what they learned from audience, which, as I have

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conceptualized, formed a typical artist-audience dialogue. One after another, these single dialogues chain up and pull Tingatinga towards the direction of tourist art.

The Lack of Governmental Support

Unlike the curious tourists, domestic officers seldom pay visits to TACS. The latest one took place at the end of January, 2018:

The minister of Natural Resources and Tourism, Dr. Kigwangalla visited TACS… His schedule also includes visiting the Nyerere Museum and Mwenge Ebony market, which are popular tourist sites in Dar. During the visit, the Chairman of TACS introduced the history and the current situation of Tingatinga to Dr. Kigwangalla … After a brief tour around TACS, Dr. Kigwangalla sat aside Charinda, an old artist, and listened to his introduction of his unfinished painting work… Charinda confirmed that this is the first visit paid by the Ministry of Tourism, and it is also several years ago since Tanzanian officials visited TACS25.

This visit demonstrates the important position of Tingatinga in the field of tourism, however, the contribution that Tingatinga made for boosting Tanzanian tourism has not resulted in favorable support, such as tax reduction or export encouragement.

Indeed, though it is obvious that Tingatinga has a close relation to tourism, it is not supervised by the ministry of Tourism institutionally. In fact, all Tingatinga workshops, including TACS, are under the direct supervision of the National Arts Council (BASATA). BASATA was established in 1984 with the responsibility of facilitating the production and consumption of good art works and services. But in the case of Tingatinga, little assistance has been provided so far in either production or consumption. Though highly expected, no trainings, selling opportunities have been provided since the establishment of BASATA, instead, these were offered mostly by foreign individuals and institutions. BASATA’s supporting role with regards to domestic arts is thus degraded to supporting events initiated by foreign powers, which

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can only be seen when BASATA officers are invited to address. The former Ambassador at the Tanzanian Embassy in Japan, the Ambassador at the Swiss Embassy in Tanzania and the former Cultural Counselor at the Chinese Embassy in Tanzania etc., all have initiated and supported various art events after their visits26. An anonymous BASATA officer explained this situation this way:

We have to get our funds from the government… we provide Tingatinga artists with consulting services, which is usually charged in other countries.27

It is true that the national budget that goes to arts is much less compared to other sectors. In the fiscal year of 2016/17, only Tsh 16.7 billion was allocated for Recreation, Culture and Religion, making up 0.057% of the overall budget (URT 2016). Thereinto, only Tsh 3 billion was set aside to support arts, creative industry and sports projects (Allafrica 2016). The consequent lack of governmental support goes against Tingatinga artists’ expectation of further promotion and higher sales volume, especially when Tingatinga has been propagated as ‘national art’ since 1970s. As a result, it intensifies Tingatinga artists’ dependence on their familiar tourist market which has been steady and reliable for decades.

Therefore, in the next chapter, I provide my research results for my overarching question: How has Tingatinga been developing as tourist art?

26

These events include: Tingatinga display at Japanese EXPO in 2005, Biennale Tingatinga Painting Exhibition in 2015, the publishing of A Concise Study on Contemporary Art in Tanzania in 2016 etc.

27

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Chapter 5 A Dialogue Chain: The Souvenirization, Mass

Production and Customization of Tingatinga

Souvenir and Tourist Art

A souvenir is something bought or kept to remind someone of a holiday, place, or event (Collins 2017). As basic as it is, its relation with the collectors, often tourists, has arisen a wide range of discussions in domains such as aesthetics, economy and philosophy etc (Elomba & Yun 2018; Paraskevaidis & Andriotis 2015, Graburn 1973). Meanwhile, the expansion of tourist-oriented souvenir market has also been narrowing down the common understanding of souvenirs to cheap, portable and crudely-made products (Lasusa 2007). To avoid possible misunderstandings resulting from the varied interpretations of ‘souvenir’, I must clarify that this research is based only on its most literal and basic meaning, thus, I start my argument with the birth of a souvenir, rather than its presentation.

An object that exists physically is exposed in discourses at the same time (Tilly 1990), and a souvenir is a good example by referring to its definition. Whether mass-produced or non-commercial, an object becomes souvenir to satisfy a collective touristic need, which is to build up an emotional connection with the collector and a certain destination, to substantiate the authenticity of the trip.

Referring to my previous discussion on tourist art, it is evident that tourist art is only a means of presentation of souvenirs, rather than a synonym for ‘souvenir’ in Lasusa’s (2007) discussion, or an end-point on various changing paths towards tourist art in Graburn’s model [1984(1973)]. Instead, I view souvenirization as the first step on the path towards tourist art and I present my case study on Tingatinga as follows.

The Souvenirization of Tingatinga

It is not easy for one to find an object that reflects one’s emotional link to a certain place, and it is the same for souvenir producers. As an effective response to tourists’ expectations, the unchanged, well-known and typical geographic and cultural symbols

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are widely applied on souvenirs. Unintentionally or intentionally, the fact that Edward Tingatinga’s major motifs are wildlife, the pride of Tanzania, qualified his works to be purchased as souvenirs even before the modifications his fellow artists later made . Having grasped this universal need, Tingatinga artists added more overt geographical features by creating new motifs and designs. A typical example is the motif of Kilimanjaro. It was initiated by Jaffary Aussi, who had his personal exhibitions in Japan in 1987, and came back painting Kilimanjaro in the background. At around the same time, a new design called Mbuga appeared28_{. It is a combination of animal motifs with}

a sky-and-savannah background, and the new Kilimanaro motif was incorporated in it soon. This design has maximized Tanzania’s geographic features. Until today, Mbuga is still one of the best-sellers of Tingatinga.

After setting up the connection between Tingatinga and tourists by modifying the content, the next concern is to expand the market, and this is where mass-production comes in and makes Tingatinga fit better into the stereotype of portable, duplicable and cheap souvenirs.

28

Interview TA110. Mbuga means ‘savannah’.

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The Mass-production of Tingatinga

1) Changes led by Technique Development

Portability is one of the most important features of souvenirs, it is also one of the major reasons that tourists choose Tingatinga to bring home nowadays29. However, at the initial stage of Tingatinga, transportation was a big obstacle for it to reach out to customers. For over twenty years, Tingatinga artists had been painting on ceiling boards, which refers to a 3mm-thick compressed hardboard panel that is commonly used to cover the ceiling. Though there were complaints, and the artists themselves also suffered from the fact that the number of tourists had increased since 1985 (Salazar 2009), but each of them were only able to purchase few paintings, the practice remained unchanged until a customer came with canvas. After an adaption period to this new, light, cheap material, Tingatinga artists abandoned ceiling boards for good. The lightness of canvas also reduced the cost of bulk transportation to other countries, which also provides an easier access for tourists at home. As for the artists, they enjoy an increased income led by larger demand and slightly lower cost as well.

This change of the carrier also resulted in a change of the painting process and presentation of Tingatinga paintings. Several steps were added before applying background colors. Artists must nail the canvas onto frames, then apply a layer of white paint so the paint added on it would not sink in and spread uncontrollably. After drying, artists would use a razor blade to get rid of the extra caking parts to achieve a smooth and soft surface. After applying colors on the first layer, it must be dried up before painting on the next layer. The time of each drying process is about an hour, or even

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longer in rainy seasons. As a result, most Tingatinga artists usually paint several paintings at a time, so that they could utilize the intervals efficiently (Fig.8). The change to canvas was followed by another wave. Around 1990, an increasing number of customers came to Tingatinga artists with objects such as plates, pencils, cloth hangers and asked them to paint on them (Fig. 9).

Fig.9 New Painting on plates in 1993

Products were sold, and these ideas borrowed from customers were incorporated into the later practice.

The appropriation is very frugal. It is easily noticeable that most of these items are made

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of carved wood, which is provided by a group of Makonde wood sculpture craftsmen, whom TACS has been sharing their workshop with since 2000. These craftsmen worked side by side with Tingatinga artists, producing frames, small sculptures shaped as fish, birds, Christmas trees, and later, Tingatinga artists would paint on them and have them sold in shops as souvenirs(Fig.10). This cooperation reduced the cost of materials significantly and benefited both groups, but the types of product they could collaborate on are still limited to wooden objects. Other objects that Tingatinga artists paint on to sell include bottles and plastic plates, which are easy to access and cost little.

Fig. 10 Painting on Wooden Tortoises

Whether on canvas or other carriers, painting the same or similar contents helps to save time and paints, which also accounts for Tingatinga artists’ preference of self-duplication.

2) Self-duplication

Not all existing works are suitable for self-duplication. What is duplicated is not only an artwork, but an artist’s success of producing souvenirs which he or she believes could be gained from other customers as well. The steady flow of tourists provides the

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first precondition for Tingatinga artists’ practice of repetition. From 1970 to 2016, the number of the tourists to Tanzania had increased from 58,819 to over 1.2 million (Salazar 2009, URT 2016). Their common interest of souvenir collecting has secured a large and stable market for Tingatinga artists. What is more important, most of them tend to have an open attitude towards the phenomenon of repetition as long as they get the souvenirs they like, which constitutes the second precondition for the prevalence of self-duplication. As a comment on TACS on TripAdvisor shows:

Many of the works are unoriginal. I found the same scene painted by different artists in different colours, but you can't tell it's a copy of other paintings when it's hanging up on your wall.30

What this comment suggests is that the uniqueness lost in duplication can be regained easily once it is taken back home as a souvenir that links up this collector and the destination. Similar ideas are also shared by some of my tourist informants. For example, I pointed out that crudely-made paintings are usually not signed to a tourist, but she showed an indifferent attitude:

I don’t need their signatures, they would not make the paintings worthier of collecting…I just want my friends to know immediately after seeing them, ‘ah, these are from Tanzania’31.

On the side of Tingatinga artists, their common economic constraints also pushed them to duplicate their previous successful works as a safe choice of guaranteeing incomes. More than half of artists at TACS paint only one or two motifs due to their understandings of customers’ preferences, despite the fact that they are able to paint others as well32. An artist that only paints the fish-ring design explained this way:

This one, I started it two days ago, I painted seven identical ones a time, until now, I have already sold three… when I sell paintings, I would see if I have money today, if I don’t, then I cannot decline their offer… I sold my paintings, and my life goes on.33

30

Miken 898, Haggle and Smile, online comments retrieved from https://cn.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-

g293748-d7068656-Reviews-or10-Tingatinga_Arts_Co_operative_Society-Dar_es_Salaam_Dar_Es_Salaam_Region.html on 24-05-2018.

31_{Interview T9.} 32

Field Notes, from 20-01-2018 to 20-03-2018 when I was doing an internship project of building TACS artists’ profiles.

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While the contents of Tingatinga paintings are limited under the financial pressure, the sizes of paintings are increasing for the same reason. As an artist explained:

A small size helps to get quick money. If you paint in a big size, you’ll have to tolerate the waiting for two or three weeks. If you paint in a small size, tomorrow you earn money, the day after tomorrow you earn money… I need food every day, but my money would have run out until I finished this big painting…34

The direct result of the prevalence of self-duplication is the practice of storage. Artists are not only the producers of Tingatinga, but also their salesmen. It is their job to get prepared for each customer who steps into the workshop. Though most customers can accept duplication, not all of them have sufficient time to wait. Among the three types of tourists that I defined, tourists on the way place the least orders due to their short stay. Below is a table which shows the duration of stay in Dar of 30 tourists who purchased Tingatinga but did not place an order at TACS.

Length of Duration (day) <1 1-3 4-7 >7

Number 2 23 4 1

(data collected in March, 2018)

It is also worth noticing that most clients put their visit to TACS in their last days in Dar, together with visiting a ‘local market’ such as Mwenge Ebony Market as a souvenir collection trip. Even for tourists that have sufficient time, most of them said that they cannot come back to TACS again to pick up their order due to a fixed schedule, whether they are with a group or not. Other reasons include safety consideration of travelling alone and a long distance from hotel.

Therefore, quite a lot of Tingatinga artists keep producing replicas to ensure an abundant personal stock as an attempt to guarantee a steady income, and it is these individual stocks, multiplied by the number of artists, that makes the workshop a warehouse full of similar Tingatinga. One Tingatinga artist shared his opinion:

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A client came in, expecting to buy a mbuga painting. You don’t have that, so the client bought it from another painter… You must get prepared, so you don’t lose your business… You don’t know the client you see likes lions or elephants, so you prepare both… but most clients like mbuga, so I always have mbuga paintings on wall35.

What this artist points out is not only the reason why similar works have occupied TACS, but also the phenomenon of copying from others, which is the other means of mass-production.

1) Copying from Others

As a social space of learning and interaction, a workshop offers artists a perfect place to learn from those who have better sales. Since all Tingatinga artists are trained under the ‘watch-and-learn’ mode, it is not difficult for them to learn once they are permitted. Though Tingatinga art has been limited among a certain group for a long time, inside the group, however, there are few restrictions due to the interwoven familyhood and apprenticeship. As we have introduced in Chapter 4, most Tingatinga artists show a positive attitude to being imitated36. Therefore, this mutual learning can often be translated into copying deeds, which aggravate the mass-production of Tingatinga artworks.

The copied works are usually bestsellers of other artists, which is easy to judge by sales volume. However, the overarching emphasis on sales has caused one problem, that is, the line between ‘a good painting’ and ‘a painting sells well’ is blurred. As a Tingatinga artist described:

When you are working on a painting, different people come and stop in front of it, inquiring its price, and this is when you know it is a good one.37

In like manner, sales have also become the criterion of a Tingatinga artist’s capability, which is an explicit depreciation of individual painting ability, styles, creativity etc.

35

Interview TA65.

36

There are also artists who have declared that others are forbidden to copy his works, such as Charinda.

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Tingatinga as Tourist Art: The Dialogue between the Producers and Clients

LEIDEN UNIVERSITY