In this article starting from a critical analysis of one of the most important traditional African art exhibitions held in Italy (Africa. Capolavori da un continente, GAM - Gallery of Modern Art, Turin, October 2, 2003 - February 15, 2004) we analyze the interplay of references and discrepancies involving collective imaginary and exhibition practices, theoretical frameworks and common sense, in their shaping our perception of Africa. The prevailing aesthetic vision of African art has taken it away from history and everyday life. A result that has been obtained through the use of the categories of "classical" and "primitive" that, beyond the differences between them, find a point of convergence in their timelessness. The exhibition that took place in Turin shows us that beyond the anti-classicism implied by the link between African art and modernist primitivism (both of them far away from the mimetic realism of classical and Renaissance art) a solid classical background remains in place. Transcending the opposition between art and culture, between aesthetic and ethnographic view is possible, however, trying to make an aesthetic experience of the objects that is culturally different, if we wonder about the variety and specificity of aesthetic codes that govern the production of objects and images in other cultures.