C& Magazine
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Reflecting on a residency program between Lamu Kenya and Basel Switzerland, writer Ann Mbuti asks regarding the paradoxes of artistic impact: What does it mean to conduct artistic research in a context shaped by asymmetries of power and histories of extraction? What forms of exchange are possible? What forms of care are required?
The curator of the upcoming 2026 Venice Biennale, chief curator of Zeitz MOCAA, and founder of RAW Material Company has passed away at age fifty-seven.
Formerly at Zeitz MOCAA, the curator is appointed to lead the Africa collection and enhance community engagement at Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.
C& regularly takes a look into book collections holding rare publications. This time, Keren Lasme chooses five books from the feminist library AWU in Dakar.
Haja Fanta takes a look at the long-awaited biennial, questioning its conceptual coherence while admiring its composition and drawing out its continued importance.
Having started as a vlogger, the artist uses her biography to create shared reference points beyond self-referentiality, writes Guilherme Vilhena Martins.
Six international art experts have been appointed to documenta’s new Finding Committee to search for artistic director of Documenta 16 in 2027.
For her exhibition at Foam Amsterdam in 2023, Lebohang Kganye receives the prestigious prize endowed with £30,000.
Find here some first impressions of the exhibition curated by Adriano Pedrosa.
From theory and exile to exhibiting and the art market, this interview spans various aspects of Chamekh’s life and approach to making art.
Managed by the Institute of Creative Repair, the exhibition, titled Quiet Ground, is curated by Portia Malatjie and will feature new work by MADEYOULOOK.
Adwoa Amoah, artist, curator, and co-director of Foundation for Contemporary Art – Ghana, asked regular visitors of the library to pick their favorite book.
The 30th Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize goes to Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem.
Curated by Diane Lima, Grada Kilomba, Hélio Menezes and Manuel Borja-Villel, the 35th edition of the São Paulo Bienal includes 121 participants from various countries, with an emphasis on artists of indigenous and African descent.
The artist discusses her practice in the context of changing climatic realities and how symbolic actions can have an impact.
This first joint issue between C& and C&AL invites organizations, artists, and activists from Black and Indigenous perspectives to discuss, contextualize, and reflect on the relationship between neocolonial structures and the climate crisis in their local contexts.
As we launch our new C& Artists' Edition, we revisit our interview with Agnes Waruguru from 2020 and asked her about the process behind the new work.
Mukwazhi's presents a new body of work consisting of textile paintings and video works at Secession, Vienna running through 16 April 2023.
An essay written from a conversation with the artist about her journey in self-discovery as a Black woman and the role of self-development in her work. Here, we dig deeper into what makes Marlou Fernanda visualize her inner dialogues with a creative force that is challenging the white-cis male-dominated Dutch art world.
Commander is succeeding the outgoing and founding deputy director, Kinshasha Holman Conwill, and takes up her new role on 30 January.
The £25,000 prize honours Ryan's "personal and poetic way she extends the language of sculpture". An exhibition of her work among the other three shortlisted artists is at Tate Liverpool until 19 March 2023.
Amandine Nana has opened a mobile cultural space that engages with Black art practices in contemporary and historical contexts.
The very personal photographic series "Wearing the Inside Out" by Hady Barry captures the lives of the Guinean artist’s extended family and friends.
The Heinz Family Foundation recognizes the artists for their enduring impact in the arts with its coveted award of $250.000.
At Mattatoio in Rome, the group exhibition reflects on the hypermodern (dis)order of the world and examines the question of what will remain.
A new grant will support a juried competition that selects four local Black artists per year for a solo show at the Museum of the African Diaspora.
Running for 100 days through 25 September, the 15th edition of documenta in Kassel, Germany, opens its door. Find some first impressions here.
Taking place in two stages, exhibitions and events will run from 17 November to 17 December 2022 and from 9 February to 11 March 2023.
Here are some installation views of the 59th Venice Biennale taking place from 23 April to 27 November 2022 curated by Cecilia Alemani.
The Toronto Biennale of Art honored Camille Turner, whose work reveals colonial Canada's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.
ANNA and Latitudes, two female-centric South African brands, have joined forces to create an new art award nurture a new generation of women artists.
In a recent exhibition, the London-based photographic arts organization Autograph ABP addressed multi-perspective takes on Covid by British photographers.
Enos Nyamor looks back at a year in the arts marked by collective mourning as a cosmic bond between Africa and the diaspora.
Arts Collaboratory commissioned Kabelo Malatsie to respond to their network and the outcome is a sonic essay with Zimbabwean artist Robert Machiri.
C& spoke to the Kenyan-German artist duo about their creative process, merged identity and about producing works that aim to look “beyond differences”.
The Swiss artist speaks to us about internet culture as a way to reconnect with Black and Brown queer communities.
With C&, the sisters based in Amsterdam and Düsseldorf spoke about communal processes in their art.
Contemporary And: Tell us about yourself, who you are and what motivates you. Rashid Shabazz: At my core, I am a lifelong student of culture and art and a fierce advocate for the rights and freedoms of all people. I am originally from Brooklyn, New York, but moved to Newport News in Virginia at eight …
Art Basel and BMW announcing Julien Creuzet as the winner of the BMW Art Journey 2021. The international jury unanimously selected him from a shortlist of three artists represented by galleries originally selected for this year’s Art Basel in Hong Kong. Julien Creuzet (born 1986) lives and works in Montreuil, France. In his work he …
The African Futures Institute (AFI), headquartered in Accra, Ghana, is a new venture that aims to offer a radically different and innovative educational experience to Ghanaian, African and international students, as well as provide an important local and global platform for conversations, exhibitions and publications on architecture and related disciplines. With an average age of …
The Goethe-Institut confers the official decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany to honour individuals who have performed outstanding service for international cultural dialogue. The ceremony celebrating the awardees of the 2021 Goethe Medal will take place as a digital live stream on 28 August, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s birthday. The theme of this year’s …
Contemporary And: Your artistic practice combines drawings with short looped animations that present enigmatic, ambiguous scenes. Massinissa Selmani: My looped animations display a mix of comedy and tragedy, both types of narrative being tied to the environment in which I grew up. The works I have created so far last for a few seconds; they …
With Dalila Dalléas Bouzar, Ndidi Dike, Enam Gbewonyo, Bouchra Khalili, Gosette Lubondo, Myriam Mihindou, Wangechi Mutu, Otobong Nkanga, Josèfa Ntjam, Selly Raby Kane, Na Chainkua Reindorf, Mary Sibande Curators: Nadine Hounkpatin and Céline Seror
Since 2000, the Preis der Nationalgalerie honours important young positions in international art and will be awarded for the eleventh time in 2021. The award winners and nominees have since been among the defining protagonists of contemporary art. The shortlist for the award ceremony in October has now been set and includes: Lamin Fofana (lives in …
Rosemary Karuga was a true pioneer – one could say, that the history of women’s art in Kenya starts with her. She was born in 1928 in Meru, Kenya and was the first female student at Makarere University’s School of Fine Art in Kampala, Uganda, where she studied from 1950 to 1952 design, painting and …
I recently attended the current exhibition at Berlin’s Alte Nationalgalerie called Dekadenz und dunkle Träumeor Decadence and Dark Dreams. A friend who studies art history invited me, as some of her friends had told her how much they had enjoyed it. I thought it might be a good idea to have a brief look at …
Not Fully Human, Not Human at All takes its name from Donna Haraway’s essay Ecce Homo, Ain’t (Ar’n’t) I a Woman, and Inappropriate/d Others, a text which challenges the “universal” claims of Enlightenment Humanism in order to propose conditions of what she calls “non-generic” collective humanity. In this text, Haraway refers to Hortense Spillers’ description …
The Studio Museum in Harlem’s Director and Chief Curator Thelma Golden announced that Los Angeles-based artist Cauleen Smith has been selected as the winner of the fifteenth annual Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize. Thelma Golden said, “Cauleen Smith’s endlessly generative imagination embraces and transforms multitudes, from the ceremony of church banners to the visions of …
From 2010 to date Raphael Chikukwa has served the National Gallery of Zimbabwe as Chief Curator and Deputy Director. The Board of Trustees announced today, that he is since beginning of September in charge of his new position as Executive Director. With regards to Chikukwa’s appointment, Dr. Solomon Guramatunhu, the Chairman of the National Gallery of …
Each year’s Berlin Biennale is put together by a different group of curators. Thus, this art event is influenced by their perceptions of society and the modern world. The Biennale explores artistic developments and presents the unfamiliar against the backdrop of the city, its people and their relationship to art. The slow opening of the 11th …
The eighth edition of 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London will take place at Somerset House 8 – 10 October 2020. As a smaller and more intimate version, with a myriad of great art and discussions, the scaled-down fair will see 25 international galleries representing a selection of the best contemporary artists from Africa and its …
The history of technology is inseparable from the history of Africans. From the automaton as a proxy for a Black subject to West African weaving as code, Nelly Y. Pinkrah writes about reimagining the digital.
For people of Black African heritage, identifying with Blackness is the glue that connects us, argues Minna Salami, author of Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone. In this long read extracted from her book, Salami talks us through the sociohistorical context of Blackness and how it can offer a conceptual space of freedom; of reconfiguration, revelation, and revolution.
Contemporary And: Your video installation is titled oxygène (oxygen) and the projection features nude women in a bathtub. Is there a relationship between the title and the subjects filmed? Amine Oulmakki: Oxygen is vital to the body’s energy flow. I wanted to work with female friends who are involved in art and join them in asking …
After more than 50 years of automobile production and a commitment to manufacture the Chevrolet Cruze until 2021, the facility was officially unallocated by GM and stopped production in March 2019. Employees in Lordstown have been faced with the difficult decision to transfer to plants in other parts of the country. For many, this means dividing their …
Anton Wilhelm Amo (* around 1700 — † after 1753) is considered to be the first Black academic and philosopher in Germany. His work was largely pushed to the margins and rendered obscure. Amo studied philosophy and law in Halle and positioned himself with his dissertations on the mind-body problem (1734) at the University of …
A new generation of young painters in Europe are using internet languages to create multilayered aesthetics and narratives. Revising traditional techniques with a digital sensibility, these artists are opening themselves and the medium up to previously unconsidered possibilities. In this series, Digital Strokes, we highlight some of these young artists. First up is Sola Olulode, who combines wax, ink, bleach, textiles and paint in an exploration of Yoruba techniques to create works featuring queer love, writes Olamiju Fajemisin.
Mobility in the arts, geographical or otherwise, is often seen as almost a requirement. However, COVID-19 has put to the test this very idea and aspiration. In the series "States of Mobility" we have selected texts that probe assumptions of movement in relation to people on the African continent and beyond. In this Q&A with Celeste Hamilton Dennis, Guyanese-American curator Grace Aneiza Ali talks about her exhibition Liminal Space at Harlem’s Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute in 2017, in which artists from Guyana and its Diaspora explore migration.
This year’s FotoFest Biennial was supposed to take place March 8–April 19, 2020. FotoFest’s central exhibition, lecture, and film programs for the FotoFest Biennial 2020, AFRICAN COSMOLOGIES – Photography, Time, and the Other, explores artists from the continent and its global diaspora, linking notions of blackness untethered to the specificity of geography or chronology. The exhibition is curated by Mark Sealy, Director of …
The Gordon Parks Foundation/Steidl Book Prize serves as a publishing platform for artists whose practice reflects and extends the legacy of Gordon Parks. Conceived by The Gordon Parks Foundation and Steidl, the Göttingen, Germany-based art book publisher, the Prize goes to artists whose work exemplifies Parks’ commitment to using photography as a powerful tool for advancing …
Despite its colonial history, the Nordics don’t have large communities of people of African descent as in other areas in Europe. This has contributed to many Afro-Scandinavians growing up in isolation with a complex sense of belonging. Today, however, there are a number of artists embracing their layered history and identity which they explore through multiple art practices. In the series The Nordics: Out of the Shadows we meet some of these artists. Sandra Mujinga’s exhibition SONW: Shadow of New Worlds at Bergen Kunsthall is her largest solo presentation to date. The artist presents sculpture, photographs, and large-scale video installations in Norway, as well as a performance of her play You Are All You Need. She draws on world-building and sci-fi through her various media. C& talked to Mujinga about hiding as a strategy to manoeuvre through the dark, about belonging in different spaces, and about where all the Black people go.
Opened in 2005 in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena arts district, MoAD, a contemporary art museum, celebrates Black cultures, ignites challenging conversations, and inspires learning through the global lens of the African Diaspora. Monetta White, a native San Franciscan has been involved with MoAD since its inception. “My passion is to sustain African American culture and …
Contemporary And: How can body language and dance tell powerful stories despite being a little bit abstract? Jennifer Harge: The body is filled with histories and memories held in the flesh, the blood stream, the viscera, and I think the power of movement language comes from these energies. Either in the ways one might work …
. The artists are: Kelani Abass (Nigeria), Mohamed Abdelkarim (Egypt), Soraya Abu Nabaa (Dominican Republic / USA), Immaculate Mali Anderu (Uganda), Wendimagegn Belete (Ethiopia), Zineb Benjelloun (Morocco), Lina Ben Rejeb (Tunisia), Rehema Chachage (Tanzania), Ishita Chakraborty (India), Kyoo Choix (South Korea), Aisha Jemila Daniels (USA), Annalee Davis (Barbados), Ali El-Darsa (Lebanon / Canada), Badr El …
Nigerian-Belgian Otobong Nkanga, whose first UK show opened last week at Tate St Ives, is the winner of the inaugural Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award Programme. The award grants the artist a prize sum of 100,000 USD, a solo exhibition at the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Norway in the autumn of 2020, and an acquisition budget …
The 12th edition of the Bamako Encounters – African Biennale of Photography will take place in Mali from November 30, 2019 to January 31, 2020. Titled “Streams of Consciousness,” after the eponymous 1977 record by Abdullah Ibrahim and Max Roach, the exhibition was conceived by artistic director Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and a curatorial team …
How do we put into form the many connections we have as being part of a global diaspora? How do we create our own language? What are our shared histories or do we remember them the same way? Does someone from Detroit define herself as part of a Black Diaspora with the same implicitness as …
By virtue of its subject matter and the fact that it is being presented in a major institution the exhibition "Black Models: From Géricault to Matisse", represents a first for France. Taking place at the Musée d’Orsay, it addresses the importance of Black models in the creation of art by identifying them and renaming artworks accordingly, writes Dagara Dakin.
The Palais de Lomé, a historic building converted into a dynamic center for arts and culture in Togo, opens to the public in September 2019. Elisa Pierandrei speaks to its director, Sonia Lawson, about the challenges and opportunities facing this venue without parallel in West Africa.
The Netherlands Curator: Benno Tempel Egypt Curator: Ahmed Chiha Madagascar Curator: Rina Ralay Ranaivo, Emmanuel Daydé South Africa Curators: Nkule Mabaso, Nomusa Makhubu Finland The Miracle Workers Collective United Kingdom Curator: Zoe Whitley Mozambique Curator: Lidija K. Khachatourian Seychelles Curator: Martin Kennedy Zimbabwe Curator: Raphael Chikukwa …
One of the best known prizes for the visual arts in the world, the Turner Prize aims to promote public debate around new developments in contemporary British art. Established in 1984, the prize is named after JMWTurner (1775-1851) and aims to promote public interest in contemporary British art. It is awarded to a British artist …
The 58th Venice Biennale is entitled “May You Live in Interesting Times” and is curated by Ralph Rugoff, director of the Hayward Gallery in London. The Exhibition will develop from the Central Pavilion (Giardini) to the Arsenale, and will include 79 artists from all over the world. The list includes 13 artists of African descent: Njideka Akunyili …
LineGuage is something I had never seen before – or perhaps “read” before, because it possesses the elements of a bestseller. The exhibition is a conversation starter around the rarely discussed continuous co-creation of imagery between African artists and writers over the past six decades. Like a novel, it divides into three engaging and revealing …
Frieze announces the selected artists for the launch of Frieze Sculpture in New York, presented at Rockefeller Center in partnership with Tishman Speyer. Curator Brett Littman (Director of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in Long Island City, New York) has selected and placed new and significant works by 14 international artists; all presented by world-leading galleries. Including many artists showing public sculpture in …
Koyo Kouoh brings two decades of experience as an international curator and cultural producer to her new role. As the founding Artistic Director of the thought-provoking RAW Material Company, a centre for art, knowledge and society in Dakar, she developed numerous art programmes and published widely on contemporary art. She has served as Curator of …
For the forthcoming edition, the three curators will collaboratively devise the biennial’s curatorial framework encompassing exhibitions, performances, publishing projects, and public programmes. “The three curators come from diverse backgrounds with a wealth of international experience across the fields of contemporary art, architecture, and design,” states Folakunle Oshun, the biennial’s founding director. “All three curators have strong …
The Dominican author, curator and filmmaker Alanna Lockward died unexpectedly in Santo Domingo on January 7, 2019. She was 57 years old.
Europe’s cultural sector is still reeling from a report presented to the French president Emmanuel Macron last Friday. The report entitled The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics was commissioned by Macron as part of his efforts to jumpstart political discussions around the repatriation of cultural heritage. The prominent scholars Bénédicte …
Situated between the Mediterranean sea and Atlantic ocean, Morocco’s geographical position is embedded with a charged history that can start many conversations. The 4th Biennale Internationale de Casablanca (BIC), entitled Tales from the Water Margins, uses the country’s ambivalent connection to water as a basis for its curatorial strategy. This kind of overall theme can …
PinchukArtCentre (Kyiv, Ukraine) announces the artist shortlist for the 5th edition of the Future Generation Art Prize. Selected from over 5,800 entries by artists across 158 countries, the final list includes 21 artists and artist collectives, spanning five continents. Established by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation in 2009, 2019 marks the 10th anniversary of the prize’s …
Frieze London has given its Focus Stand Prize to blank gallery for its presentation at the fair, which is on view in the capital city through October 7. The prize is awarded annually to a gallery participating in the fair’s “Focus” section, which is devoted to galleries that are 12 years old or younger. blank …
Opening at Paramount Pictures Studios in Hollywood from February 14 through February 17, 2019, Frieze Los Angeles will join Frieze New York, Frieze London and Frieze Masters at the forefront of the international art fair calendar, celebrating Los Angeles’ position as a global arts center and destination. Taking place in a bespoke structure designed by …
The Studio Museum in Harlem, today announced the appointment of Legacy Russell as Associate Curator, Exhibitions. “I am deeply honored to be joining the curatorial team at The Studio Museum in Harlem during a momentous period of growth, collaborating with inspiring colleagues as we turn the page together toward an exciting new chapter in the …
Merging sound and memory, Keleketla! is the South African project that put together a series of events for the 10th Berlin Biennale that included a club night and an artist’s talk. Artist Jota Mombaça writes about their artistic position of using sound to resist oblivion and exploring contradiction as composition.
Johanna Unzueta’s topic is labor. Not just in the social and historical sense but also in the fabrication of her own art. Unzueta often constructs work that is based on industrial elements and objects – her sculpture series of grain elevators, cooling towers, and windmills is just one example. Currently based in New York, the artist still has strong links with the art scene in her native Chile, a scene that inspires her lighthearted take on the heavy objects she works with. With C&’s Theresa Sigmund she speaks about industrial buildings, natural ink, and a new generation of Chilean artists.
On April 19, 2018 the Assembly of the Mitte district of the city of Berlin has decided, after two years of preparation, to change the names of some streets of the African quarter, by now commemorating the heroes of the resistance to colonialism and no longer the colonial protagonists. The necessary changes for the transformation …
C& América Latina: When you gave a keynote at the Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism (JWTC), a conference on “The Theory of the South”, you provocatively said that you would question the existence of a theory of the South and rather would believe that there might be a “South of theory.” What did you …
Contemporary And (C&): Thuli, can you tell us about the history of Bag Factory Artists’ Studios and how you came to work there? Thuli Mlambo-James: The Bag Factory Artists’ Studios were founded in 1991. It was the first non-profit visual arts space in South Africa to cater to artists in need of studio space. Since …
Contemporary And (C&): How did you move from writing to performance? And how do they come together? Jota Mombaça: I think my writing has influenced my performance and vice versa. There are several topics in common between my work as a writer and my work as performer, such as coloniality, embodied struggles, global violence, politics …
The International Biennial of Casablanca announced its 2018 curatorial committee during a conference held by Christine Eyene, Artistic Director of the biennial’s fourth edition. The committee is composed of the following curators and scholars: Dr. Ethel Brooks, Yasmina Naji, Ema Tavola and Françoise Vergès. The purpose of this committee is to contribute practices, knowledge and …
. doual’art is a center for contemporary art established in Douala in 1991. It presents work by local and international artists in the field of visual arts. Its library includes more than six thousand specialist books on this subject. But doual’art is best known for its achievements in the urban space with, to date, an …
The Whitney Museum of American Art announced that the 2019 Whitney Biennial will be co-curated by Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley, members of the Museum’s curatorial staff. The Whitney’s signature survey of the current state of contemporary art in the U.S., the Biennial goes on view in May 2019. In announcing the selection of the …
When in 1993 a councilor of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets dismissed Rachel Whiteread’s Turner Prize-winning House as “entertainment for the gallery-going classes of Hampstead,” he may have aired the frustrations of a community that needed parkland more than non-functional art. But he also implicitly flagged a question that has attended the Turner Prize …
Art spaces are springing up everywhere in Lagos. However, at this defining stage it still is crucial to nurture that same scene. In the whole of Nigeria there are new galleries and collectors finding their way into the artscape. Yet, there aren’t enough workshops or residencies to withstand this massive expansion. Seven years into its …
The Smithsonian Institution announced last Wednesday that Augustus (Gus) Casely-Hayford, an author, curator and broadcaster on African history and culture, will be the new director of the National Museum of African Art. He will take up the role in February 2018. He is a research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at …
Mostapha Romli, Founding President of the International Biennial of Casablanca, has announced the nomination of Christine Eyene as Artistic Director of its 4th edition. He states: “We are very pleased that Christine Eyene has accepted our invitation to take on the artistic direction of this 4th edition. Her experience and innovative approach will lead the …
As part of a unique “book residency project” between documenta 14’s aneducation and the C& Center of unfinished Business two libraries get in conversation with each other: The collection of books of the C& Center, presented at the if a Galerie in Berlin focussing on aspects of colonial legacies and contemporary societies. Whereas the library …
The image below is a ready-made found by a friend checking the map of Kassel in the Google Earth app. I am calling it a ready-made because, in Kassel, art and weaponized power are more entangled than one might realize at first sight. Germany has one of the world’s biggest weapon industries, and because Kassel …
South African photographer Guy Tillim was named the winner of the 2017 HCB Award, presented by the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris, for his “Museum of the Revolution” project, which documents residual signs of revolution and colonialism across cities in Africa. The HCB Award supports the creation of a photography project which could not be achieved without this …
C&: How would you describe your professional path in terms of your interest in artistic expression? Paul-Henri S. Assako Assako: My interest in art, particularly visual arts, was born out of an opportunity the late Sister Anne-Marie Hamon gave me in 1995: to practice drawing and painting during vacations and on the weekends. That interest …
New technologies have helped and hindered the development of photography on the continent, photographer Akinbode Akinbiyi tells Rahima Gambo.
In recent years specialized contemporary African sales have become more common at auction houses around the world such as Bonhams in London, Arthouse Contemporary Limited in Lagos, Circle Art Agency in Nairobi, and Piasa in Paris. On May 16th, 2017 Sotheby’s London joined in with its inaugural Modern and Contemporary African Art sale. While the …
Here are some installation views of the art work we spotted during the opening week at 57th Venice Biennale at Arsenale and Giardini. SOUTH AFRICA PAVILION US PAVILION By loading the post, you agree to Instagram’s privacy policy.Learn more Load post Always unblock Instagram posts EGYPT PAVILION PHILIPPINES PAVILION . NEW ZEALAND PAVILION .
Three decades after Magiciens de la terre (Magicians of the World), a provocative 1989 exhibition that aimed to bring to light the globality of art (1), Afriques Capitales takes up the challenge of decentralizing the story of contemporary art as it inhabits the Grande Halle de La Villette. Spirited away into a labyrinthine re-imagining of …
In the series Curriculum of Connections, we bring together critical voices, ideas, and projects working towards educational, artistic, and research practices. In this space, we learn, unlearn, and co-investigate old and new territories of knowledge systems, collaborations, and imagination. Martha Kazungu: Could you briefly explain why and how you started Àsìkò. Bisi Silva: Àsìkò started for …
Multimedia artist Kemang Wa Lehulere talks to C& about the artist Gladys Mgudlandlu, the notion of displacement, and the excavation of hidden works played out in his new show, Bird Song, currently on view at Deutsche Bank KunstHalle in Berlin. C&: Going down memory lane, the first time we met was in 2008 at the …
The Goethe-Institut and the Grohs family have announced a prize in memory of Henrike Grohs, who died on 13 March 2016 in a terrorist attack in the Ivory Coast. The Henrike Grohs Prize honours the lifetime achievements of the former Head of the Goethe-Institut in Abidjan. The award would like to continue her special cause …
Our author Magnus Rosengarten talks to California-based artist EJ Hill about Trump, activism and the restorative potential of using the body in art
. Founded under the sign of the painter Wifredo Lam (1902-1982), the Havana Biennial had among its main conceptual axes the question of the African influence in Cuban culture. For the creators of the Biennial, Lam’s personal trajectory — son of a Chinese father and a Cuban mother of African-Spanish descent — embodied not …
. In the summer of 2013, I visited the KW institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. I was transported through a creative experience that I will never forget: Kader Attia’s solo show, REPAIR. 5 Acts, curated by Ellen Blumenstein. The curatorial journey laid out as the visitor travelled through the space was deliberate, revealing …
Fundação Bienal de São Paulo has appointed Jochen Volz as the curator of Brazil’s official delegation to the 57th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia. Jochen Volz (1971, Braunschweig, Germany – based in São Paulo) was the curator of the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo (September 7 to December 11, 2016). The art critic …
Paris can also boast of a fair for contemporary African art now. But the “AKAA – Also known as Africa” welcomes works with African themes as well. I have my first a déjà vu approaching the fair’s first stall: the London October Gallery has the same small jerry can head by Romuald Hazoumé on display …
. Agwu Enekwachi: Art collection is not a common pastime for most people. So at what time did you discover your interest? When did you collect your first piece? Prince Yemisi Shyllon: I was born with a certain art talent, but it was not nurtured fully due to the bias against art in comparison to …
In the last decade, the city of São Paulo has seen a flourishing of productions that, using dance or theater as a base, face Black experience and examine how this reality mobilizes artistic acts within the labyrinths of the Diaspora. These are dramaturgic approaches which capture and recreate memories, interpreting history from perspectives …
C&: What does new technology mean to you in your art practice and also in your private life? Isaac Kariuki: Technology is something I’m growing more and more reliant and comfortable with in my personal and professional life and I’m still trying to figure out if that is a good or bad thing. I …
I would suggest Kendrick Lamar´s Alright as a soundtrack to this piece. Imagine how conflicting it can be for young black Brazilians to create their identity while growing up surrounded by mostly negative references to blackness. Brazil received more slaves than any other country in the Americas – around 40% of the people forced …
Associação Cultural Videobrasil and Sesc São Paulo announce the guest curators for the 20th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil, slated for 2017 in São Paulo. Brazil’s Ana Pato, Beatriz Lemos and Diego Matos, and Portugal’s João Laia will be in charge of artist selection for this edition alongside Solange Farkas, chief curator of the Festival that …
Our author Gauthier Lesturgie took a closer at the retrospective exhibition dedicated to legendary studio portraitist Seydou Keïta
The Gallery of African Art in London (GAFRA) is showing “Global African Profiles”, an exhibition by Angolan artist Daniela Ribeiro and her Nigerian counterpart Ndidi Emefiele. With Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, a participant of C&’s critical writing workshop that took place in Lagos last year, they discussed living between continents and how their works relate to each …
C&: The artistic community was very much involved in the Egyptian revolution and you participated on various levels. How would you describe the situation in Cairo now, five years later? Heba Y. Amin: Unfortunately we are in a very difficult place, collectively speaking. There is an extreme crackdown on freedom of expression. We are living …
Cultures have constructed a wide array of attributes around the figure of the father. But now fathers are taken to pieces in a Berlin exhibition called “Father Figures Are Hard To Find”. A group of five curators – Alicia Agustín, Raoul Klooker, Markues, Tucké Royale and Vince Tillotson – challenges normative narratives and seeks for alternative …
South African artist Kemang Wa Lehulere is Deutsche Bank’s new “Artist of the Year” 2017. He will present his first institutional solo exhibition in Germany at the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle in Berlin in spring 2017. “Kemang Wa Lehulere is a refined artist of the highest order. He explores the relevance of the artistic gesture in post-Apartheid …
Participating Galleries Part II Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Seattle, Founded 2012 ruby onyinyechi amanze, Born 1982, Booth # 532 Confronted with the notion of identities, Lagos-born, Brooklyn-based ruby onyinyechi amanze expresses a detachment with the social assumption that a single geography is necessary to ground an individual. She firmly excludes the concept of belonging to a place …
‘The Work Between Us: Black British Artists and Exhibition Histories’ [The Work Between Us – Full Symposium Programme] was held at The Bluecoat, Liverpool. This is a research context that I would not usually jump into (especially right at the end of my PhD) however, it examined contexts of curating and translating (trans)cultures, and the placement …
The exhibition Patterns for (Re)cognition at the Basel Kunsthalle, which ran from 13 February to 25 May 2015, was described as “the largest exhibition to date” of the work of Vincent Meessen, but also as the largest show yet of the abstract artwork of Djilatendo. If the exhibition leaflet spares no superlatives about …
C&: It might sound a bit sappy, but do you believe in the power of an art exhibition as a transformative event able to appeal to what Willy Brandt once called our “Weltvernunft” or “world reason”? By us, we mean all the players involved from visitors to artists to curators. Okwui Enwezor: Well, I do not …
Massa Lemu: I would like to start by commenting on the amazing texture of the surfaces of your massive pieces in your solo show “Traces” at Commune 1 in Cape Town last year. Your old work shares this granitic texture (if I may say so) but there is a degree of transformation in the new …
Lisson Gallery announces its representation of John Akomfrah. A hugely respected artist and filmmaker, Akomfrah’s works are characterised by their investigations into memory, post-colonialism, temporality and aesthetics and often explore the experience of the African diaspora in Europe and the USA. Akomfrah was a founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective, which started …
The Brooklyn Museum’s current exhibition Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks, which runs until the end of August, features eight notebooks that contain previously unseen words and drawings from the 1980s made by Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), alongside some larger works containing text, drawing, collage and painting. Although it has been nearly 30 years since Basquiat finished these …
In the 1970s, a Congolese painter named Tshibumba Kanda Matulu began to paint a history of what was then Zaire. This history, as the anthropologist Johannes Fabian pointed out when he collaborated with Kanda Matulu on a book some years later, was “not just a story, but an argument and a plea.” History is of …
The 19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil | Southern Panoramas will award a greater number of prizes. In addition to the Grand Prize worth BRL 75000 in cash (gross) and nine residency prizes, the 19th Festival will see the launch of a special award: the SP-Arte Prize. Eligible artists include the 53 artists selected to participate in an exhibition and …
This year’s Principal Prince Claus Award goes to Iranian photographer Newsha Tavakolian. Among the other 10 Laureates are Nigerian performance artist Jelili Atiku, Amakhosi , a theatre and cultural organization from Zimbabwe, Cameroonian filmmaker Jean-Pierre Bekolo , and Y’en a Marre , a collective of hip-hop musicians and journalists from Senegal. All 2015 Laureates will receive their Award at a ceremony held in the …
With a career that expands over two decades, Odili Donald Odita’s abstract paintings burst with tension and colourful patterns. They convey messages dealing with the politics of identity such as displacement and discrimination. From being an African in America to police brutality in the US, the Nigerian-born, Philadelphia-based visual artist caught up with our author …
The british architect David Adjaye talks about his projects and current solo show at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. Basia Lewandowska Cummings: This is the most extensive survey of your career to date. Where do you start in assembling such varied material? David Adjaye: The concept for the show is to reveal a process in …
C&: Mihret, you are one of the initiators of Netsa Art Village. What was the idea behind this project? Mihret Kebede: The idea behind establishing Netsa Art Village was to create a space for the practice of contemporary art. Once you are out of art school here in Addis, there is nowhere to go. Unlike …
Thabiso Sekgala was born in Soweto in 1981. He studied photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg and participated in various photography master classes. He was awarded a Tierney Fellowship 2010; received an honorable mention in the Ernest Cole Award and was nominated for the Paul Huff Award in 2011. In 2013 he had residencies in both the Künstlerhaus …
In the series Curriculum of Connections, we bring together critical voices, ideas, and projects working towards educational, artistic, and research practices. In this space, we learn, unlearn, and co-investigate old and new territories of knowledge systems, collaborations, and imagination. . For more than five decades, Alle School of Fine Arts and Design, the only art school …
C&: The title “Giving Contours to Shadows” is in reference to Édouard Glissant‘s concept of opacity. What led you to choose it? Bonaventure Ndikung: Glissant’s idea of opacity essentially means that we cannot necessarily recount history without gaps. That is particularly apparent when you consider the example of the Caribbean. If you take people …
Colonial Method Throughout colonial history, occidental forces seeking to capitalize on natural and human resources in their respective colonies employed the dehumanization of natives as a strategy to justify and maintain subjection on a massive scale. It was a project designed to equate the west with “civilization” and the rest with savagery, barbarism and the …
In December 1993, Nelson Mandela guest-edited the Christmas issue of Vogue’s French edition. In agreeing to work on this special issue, Mandela, whose death on 5 December has prompted a global outpouring of grief, praise and warm remembrance, was following in the footsteps of the Russian-born painter Marc Chagall, Italian film director Frederico …
MMK/C&: The exhibition’s point of departure is Dante‘s “Divine Comedy”. In the run-up to the exhibition, how relevant was it for you to actually engage with Dante’s work? Nicène Kossentini: When Simon Njami invited me to create an artwork on the theme of Dante’s Divine Comedy and more specifically on the theme of purgatory, the …
The Salon Urbain de Douala (SUD) is an exception among festivals of contemporary African art. Sponsored by the Cameroonian organization doual’art, SUD’s goal is not so much to give pride of place to African artists as it is to give art pride of place in the lives of the residents of Douala. The theme of …
Em’Kal Eyongakpa is the second artist to be featured in C& Art Space.
When I heard that Jane Alexander’s work would be shown in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights neighbourhood, I wondered how the work I always associated with South Africa would translate here, in Manhattan. The invitation to the opening of the show, “Surveys (from the Cape of Good Hope)” …
For Bamako-based cultural manager Igo Lassana Diarra, the crisis in Mali turns art and culture into its own battlefield.
