“Afriques Capitales” at Parc de la Villette in Paris
My next stop was the exhibition Afriques Capitales curated by Simon Njami at the Parc de La Villette in Paris running from March 29, 2017 to May 28, 2017. The selection was very much based on Simon’s selection from last year Biennale de Dakar . For those who had not seen it it was a […]
Paris: African Art beyond the gallery
African contemporary art in Paris beyond the gallery and the museum. I just came back from two weeks in Paris and London where I checked out the extensive showing of African art. I am just amazed how the showing of Contemporary African art has taken off in Europe and in particular Paris. The efforts of […]
Emerging art scene in Nairobi. Part I
Meeting up with artists Beatrice Wanjiku and David Thuku at ARTLabAFrica in Nairobi. African contemporary art is gaining serious traction in Europe – lots of galleries, exhibitions, and an art fair were scheduled to show work from African artists this fall in London, and another art fair in November in Paris. That is really exciting. […]
Interview with Kenyan artist Beatrice Wanjiku
Beatrice Wanjiku as a female artist breaks away from Kenyan traditional expectations, in her art and in her life. The Quintessence of Loneliness III, 2016 Beatrice Wanjiku was born in the Ngong Hills near Nairobi in 1978. She did her art training at the Nairobi’s Buruburu Institute of Fine Arts from which she graduated […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
1:54 African Art Fair in London is spreading its wings.
LONDON WELCOMES AFRICAN CONTEMPORARY ART. This October was the second year that African art was making a showing in London during Frieze week and it was doubling in size! Named 1:54; 1 for one continent, 54 for 54 countries, the title was a reminder that Africa is not one country but a multitude of countries […]
The Joburg Art Fair 2014
The Getty Museum under Diane Frankel’s lead discovers African art and photography in Joburg. We landed in Joburg at the crack of dawn after a 15 hours flight, which while long was stress free! Listening to some of the other people we met up with at Joburg who had taken at least 24 hours to […]
A quick stop at Paa Joe on our way to Kumasi, Ghana
A touch of kitsch: Paa Joe’s sculpted coffins, On our way to Kumasi, we pulled up in front of this nondescript house/warehouse on the side of the road. We had decided to make a stop and see Paa Joe‘s work place and perhaps meet him . I had seen one of his sculpted coffins – […]
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