Abidjan

Monday, August 12th, 2013

When Jean-Michel Basquiat went to Africa

Jean-Michel Basquiat, the first American artist of African descent to achieve international stardom, often referenced Africa or the African diaspora in his work. Take, for example, 1983′s “The Nile” (a painting that featured nods to Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Nile and the Nuba in Sudan) and “Gold Griot” (1984). So recently when I found a copy

Wednesday, April 10th, 2013

How to Paint Ghosts: An Interview with Ivorian artist Aboudia

“Artists don’t create reality they make phantasms”, using a kind of “fantastical technique to produce an artificial dream for the waking world”. At least that’s what Plato thought. In the paintings of Aboudia, we cannot be sure if the...

Wednesday, April 25th, 2012

Guggenheim’s map–Where is the rest of Africa?

Guest Post by Jennifer Bajorek and Erin Haney The recent announcement of the Guggenheim Foundation’s new “Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative” bears all of the hallmarks of the present era. It is funded by a bank....

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

Les Fantômes

A painting sits glowering on the wall of the Jack Bell Gallery in London. Figures daubed in bright colours stare out from the canvases against a dark background broken up by bits of newspaper cuttings. This is...

Friday, April 15th, 2011

Things will get better

Magic Systeme and Tiken Jah Fakoly tells their fellow Ivorians “Ca va aller.”

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

Orientalism in Sub-Saharan Africa

James North: Orientalism takes a different form in sub-Saharan Africa. There, Orientalists do not emphasize the “Islamic” angle quite as much, although they do sometimes suggest that a “fault line” running across the Sahel, with an expansive “Islam”...