Toyin Ojih Odutola at Jack Shainman gallery
Total commitment to the art of mark-making. Toyin Ojih Odutola just had her fourth solo show at Jack Shainman Gallery. Odutola’s medium of choice is drawing. She is quite aware of the inherent challenge to restricting her practice to drawing, which has always been considered in Western art as secondary to painting. Yet she embraces […]
Zina Saro-Wiwa’s Mangrove Banquet at the Blaffer Museum
. Creativity, fecundity and the magical: Zina celebrates the women from the Niger Delta. Barely back from Lagos I turn around and fly to Houston not too thrilled about being on a plane again but very much looking forward to attending Zina Saro-Wiwa’s Mangrove Banquet at the Blaffer Museum where she is having her […]
Artist Zina Saro-Wiwa first solo show at the Blaffer Museum in Houston
A transformative force in the Niger Delta: Through the art of performance Zina Saro-Wiwa highlights the importance of the people’s emotional and spiritual relationship to the environment. Loaded and painful history has a funny way of leading us on roads far away from our beginnings to avoid reckoning with our past and delay our coming […]
Best Wishes For A Joyous and Peaceful New Year
KONGO: POWER AND MAJESTY but also beauty and emotion…. ANCESTRAL SHRINE FIGURE: SEATED FEMALE. KONGO PEOPLES; YOMBE GROUP, 19TH – EARLY 20TH CENTURY. Read Holland Cotter’s review
Contemporary African Art: 1:54 greeted with enthusiasm in London
Diverse and manageable Art fair! What can be better..as far as art fairs go. The Contemporary African Art fair 1:54, the brainchild of Tourai El Glaoui, took place in London a couple weeks ago for its third London edition at the Somerset House. The word was clearly out that it was the place to be; […]
African Photography at the Metropolitan Museum
This summer I had the good fortune to be asked to write an essay on the photographic work of Nigerian photographer George Osodi .As a result I found myself esconced in the Metropolitan Museum Watson Library doing research and struggling over each word of each sentence! This was not to be a blog post but […]
African Design at the Vitra Design Museum
Breaking new ground: Contemporary Design from Africa. Life has changed a bit recently and I am reconnecting with my French past. I now spend some time during the summer months in a cute little bergerie nestled on a hill at the foot of the Luberon mountains. Surrounded by olive trees growing on terraces and with […]
Exhibition of African Artists:”Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner”
Contemporary African Artists at Richard Taittinger in New York city. One has to hand it to New York. There is no need to take a plane to be immersed in another culture. I was on my way to the Lower East Side to attend the opening of an exhibition on African artists at the Richard […]
George Osodi: Nigeria Monarchs
George Osodi who is internationally famous for his powerful photographic series on the damage being done on the environment and life in the oil rich Niger delta, is now celebrating Nigerian cultural heritage. His new series Nigeria Monarchs on view in a splendid exhibition Royals & Regalia: Inside the palaces of Nigeria’s Monarchs at the Newark […]
Hassan Hajjaj: An Inventive Fusion of time and culture
I met Hassan Hajjaj at a casual dinner given by Christa Clarke who was hosting a few guests at the occasion of the opening of two photographic exhibitions at the Newark museum: Hassan Hajjij ‘s My Rock Stars and Georges Osodi’s Royals & Regalia. The curator of African arts at the Newark museum, Christa Clarke […]
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