Ivorian designer Loza Maléombho’s #AlienEdits series elevates the selfie

Susan Sontag declared in her discerning 1977 book On Photography, “Photography has become almost as widely practiced an amusement as sex or dancing – which means that, like every mass…..

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3 mins read

December 17, 2014

5 Questions for a Filmmaker–Philippe Lacôte

Philippe Lacôte grew up in Abidjan, next to a movie theater named The Magic. After linguistic studies and a stint in radio, he started making film at age twenty-two. Among…..

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6 mins read

January 16, 2014

The Tenor from Abidjan

The Tenor from Abidjan follows Landry Assokoly, a young man from Côte d’Ivoire, as he follows his dream to become a famous opera singer. Landry’s hope is to study at a…..

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4 mins read

August 12, 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…..

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6 mins read

April 10, 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…..

7 mins read

April 25, 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…..

4 mins read

November 1, 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…..

Less than a minute read

April 15, 2011

Things will get better

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

2 mins read

April 12, 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…..

1 min read

April 11, 2011

'In the end, just a guy in a bad Hawaiian shirt without a clue'

That’s how Alexis Okeowo (on Twitter) sums up the end of the four-month stand-off against democracy by Cote d’Ivoire’s former Life President, Laurent Gbagbo. The New York Times has the…..