Rachid Khimoune grew up in a small mining town in Northern France where his Algerian parents had settled. It was there that he saw first hand the end of industrialisation: his father lost his job at the local mine and the family moved to the suburbs of Paris. The waves of urban immigration to the cities […]
Perhaps it is simply through good timing that I am rereading Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark and lingering over one sentence: the subject of the dream is the dreamer. Such it is with artist Kehinde Wiley’s continued complex relationships with the Black body.
I wasn’t given very much information. Stumbling into the secretive meeting I’d been invited to, an all female brigade greeted me quickly as they pored over a hand drawn map of targets. Drawing on an apparently endless supply of cigarettes, peppered sometimes with wine, they debated logistics. It being Paris Fashion Week, they decided Gucci, […]
Guest Post by Lara N. Dotson-Renta Paris has always been renowned for its culture and support of the arts. Yet, as France has grown into an ever more pluralistic society, the traditional image of what constitutes art in France must evolve as well. Younger generations of artists, many immigrants of African origin, are now reconfiguring […]
What is there to say about that other African election, the one in France? Sunday was the first of two rounds in this presidential contest, which is a lot more about Europe—specifically Brussels, but also Berlin—than it is about Africa. Still, it will have real effects on both shores of the Mediterranean and of the […]
You don’t stand in one place to watch a masquerade, as Chinua Achebe famously said. It moves. You move with it. Same goes for demonstrations. On Saturday a few hundred people marched in Paris for peace in Mali. Mostly Malians, as you’d think, but also a few dozen sympathetic observors, several journalists, a well-received Senegalese […]
In the introduction to The World According to Bylex Filip De Boeck and Koen Van Synghel describe the Congolese artist Pume Bylex as “not interested in the day-to-day reality of Kinshasa. [He] turns his attention to what lies beyond the horizon of the visible and the tangible (…) a world with perfection and harmony at […]
Sage poet Zoxea & Busta Flex battle it out in ‘C’est nous les reustas’: Youssoupha (a name you must be familiar with by now), Indila and Skalpovich Dreamin’:
At the occasion of the recent publication of Senegalese philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne’s book ‘African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson and the Idea of Negritude’ (originally published in French in 2007) and listening to this interview where he speaks about his new book, ‘Bergson Postcolonial’, I intended to write a short post wondering why it […]
Mokobe commentates on the actions of Rihannon, Naomi Campboule, Rachida Beckham and friends over a Coupé-Decalé riddim. The music production is pretty standard, but the video is at least funny. Update (3/19): Following heated reactions from fans, Mokobe took down the music video. In vague terms, he explains why he decided to do so here.
