The Venice Hustle
How an Italian hotelier came to represent Kenya at the Venice Biennale.
Art
Performing Society’s Provocations
Comedian Mpho "Popps" Modikoane is the spokesman of South Africa's "Born Frees."
Tomorrow is the Question
Afrofuturism and engaging prophetically with history.
Which Art History in Africa?
As an art writer working in Africa, I have no available model to craft an entire practice of writing books on contemporary art in Uganda.
The importance of cultural preservation
The multimedia artist Tunde Owolabi brings Aso-Oke weaving to gallery spaces.
The Triptych: On the personal stories of three of contemporary art’s freshest black voices
Ever wonder what inspires an artist to paste red-lipped Cheshire cat grins over the mouths of
Decolonising white Berlin
The myth of an all-white, Christian German society largely persists. So does the idea that anyone
Kenya gets an Art Fair
Kenyan artists have to grapple with a number of challenges, including how to use digital platforms to promote and sell art at a fair price.
The limits of the idea of “alternative Africas”
How much energy should we invest in counterfactuals like: What if a diminished Europe, devastated by a plague, did not produce colonial powers, how might Africa’s history have unfolded?
The Bullshit Files: The “Mandela Ray Ban Sculpture”
Public art, the vandalism of Nelson Mandela’s legacy for commerce and the spoiling of public space in Cape Town.
Dakar booms with life
The youthful and creative art scene in Senegal's capital is the subject of director Sandra Krampelhuber’s documentary film, "100% Dakar."
Kampala Gets an Art Biennale
The need to move the art discussion away from Darwinian interests in gorillas to the concern for new audiences for contemporary art in Africa.
Brett Bailey, The Barbican and Black Britons
If "Exhibit B" truly offered the profound critique of slavery and colonialism its creators claimed, why the outrage? Why object to confronting silenced, gazing human “tableaux”?
The Afropeans are Coming
We asked the participants at a symposium in Austria on European Africans to reflect on what an Afropean is. We edited it into a short video.
Black Europe and Body Politics
The collective BE.BOP works to introduce a decolonial way of thinking about the visual arts in Europe and Africa.
Probing Subliminal Violence
The artist Mohau Modisakeng mines the contours of colonial and post-colonial history.
A review Dak’art 2014 (II)
Halfway through my visit to the International Exhibition of this year’s ambitious edition of Dak’art: the
Trouble in the Village
Dak'Art is the only art contemporary biennale of its scope with a mandate to include all artists of African descent.
Africans in South Asia
The long histories of Africans in South Asia, including the case of Africans arriving as slaves in India and whose descendants are still in India and Pakistan.
The African presence in Western Art
Interview with curators Sylviane Diouf (Schomburg Center) and Joaneath Spicer (Walters Art Museum) about the African presence in Western and Asian art.