These photographs (above and below) by South African Rushay Booysen (from Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape province) forms part of the  “Africa Uploaded: Experiences Through The Lens” (offline) exhibit next month–December 7 till 31, 2010–in the United Arab Emirates “… curated by Annabelle Nwankwo-Mu’azu and under the patronage of Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka.”  The rationale for the exhibit: “… This exhibition focuses on the work of a groundbreaking generation of artists, capturing their experiences as ‘Afrophiles’ and cultural trailblazers. The experience is multi-sensory and employs photography, video projections and film.” Apart from Booysen, the featured artists–all photographers–are Angèle Etoundi Essamba (Cameroon), Uche James Iroha (Nigeria), Antony Kaminju (Kenya), Mandla Mbyakama (South Africa), Aida Muluneh (Ethiopia), Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine (Uganda/USA) and Lindeka Qampi (South Africa). Anybody passing through the UAE this month?

Further Reading

The people want to breathe

In Tunisia’s coastal city of Gabès, residents live in the shadow of the phosphate industry. As pollution deepens and repression returns, a new generation revives the struggle for life itself.

After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

The king of Kinshasa

Across five decades, Chéri Samba has chronicled the politics and poetry of everyday Congolese life, insisting that art belongs to the people who live it.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.