Looking back

 
Photography by Paul Kodio

Rencontres de Bamako – Biennale Africaine de la Photographie

Ousmane Diarra Shares his Meditations on the Biennale

The distinguished author looks back on a year of turmoil: on coups, wars and embargos, but also on artistic connection with the world.

C&’s Highlights of 2022 You Might Want to Read Again

Best of 2022

C&’s Highlights of 2022 You Might Want to Read Again

From the major art events that have shaped this year to a joyful celebration of Black lives and art: these are the editors favourite picks of 2022.

Untitled photograph-Old Benoni Location (circa 1950), Torrance Ngilima as part of Eja radini (2019), Madeyoulook.

documenta fifteen

Serine Ahefa Mekoun Dives into the Wisdom and Validity of Works of Art

Our author highlights the inspiring artistic positions of this year’s documenta that took place from 8 June to 25 September 2022 in Kassel, Germany.

Carrie Mae Weems, The Push, The Call, The Scream, The Dream, 2020. Installation View at Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, 2022. Photo: Hans D. Christ

The Evidence of Things Not Seen

Carrie Mae Weems Investigates US History through James Baldwin

The US artist’s first solo and retrospective exhibition in Germany takes the name of a Baldwin essay and features a variety of media.

Installation View

When Rain Clouds Gather

Archives of Womanhood and Blackness in South Africa

This exhibition at Norval Foundation shows a detailed history of pioneering Black South African female artists from 1940 to 2000.

Glenn Ligon, Installation View at 16. Istanbul Biennale. Short film

Looking Back

James Baldwin in Istanbul: Art and Activism in Exile

While in Istanbul Baldwin used fierce artistry to unmask the USA’s façade as the custodian of freedom and democracy, explains curator Gürsoy Doğtaş.

Detail from Black Noise #4 (installation of aquariums, sea water, iron, metal, steel, stones with sound). Photo by Lena Bergendahl.

Black Archives Sweden

Ina Nian Investigates The Weight of Silence

The artist explores Sweden’s iron production and its connection with the transatlantic slave…

Things Fall Together Fifty Years After Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe Exhibition

Things Fall Together Fifty Years After Things Fall Apart

C&’s Obidike Okafor reviews an exhibition celebrating a fifty-year old film adaptation of…

Alma Thomas, Air View of Spring Nursery (Detail), 1966. Acrylic on canvas. The Columbus Museum

Inventing Your Own Game

Alma W. Thomas and the Treasures of the Natural World

In the “post-war” period, many pioneering Black artists were largely neglected by the…

Collage by Caroline Böttcher. Courtesy the artist.

Dekoloniale Berlin

Something Whispers Among The Trees

One hundred and twenty-five years after it took place, the “Colonial Village” at…

Installation View

Invisible Inventories

Absent Figures: The Difficult Questions Restitution Raises

Being asked to call something an object can be troubling, as evidenced in…

Some of the pioneering Women. (Clockwise) Safi Faye, during the shooting of

Celebrating Female Pioneers

Where are the Women Image-Makers in African History?

On the occasion of International Women's Day, our author Ethel-Ruth Tawe looks toward…

Mupfure Church Hand, courtesy of the artist.

Marechera’s The House of Hunger

The Novel that Almost Shaped a Postmodern Postcolonial Africa

Artist Santiago Mostyn revisits The House of Hunger by Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera…

An assemblage depicting a couple pounding fufu while a child sits to the side. Photo: Kelvin Haizel

Akutia: Blindfolding the Sun and the Poetics of Peace

Agyeman Ossei’s Life Work

The retrospective at the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art in Tamale, Ghana reflects…

Installation view of Tendances et Confrontations, Palais de Justice, Dakar 1966. In the front

Exhibition Histories

Tendances et Confrontations

With its eclectic approach the exhibition Tendances et Confrontations from 1966 provided snapshots…

Ahmed Cherakoui, exhibition of works at the Krzywe Koło Gallery, Warsaw, 1961, collection Nourdine Cherkaoui. Courtesy of Zacheta.

Polish-Moroccan Artistic Relations

When Ahmed Cherkaoui Ignited Artistic Exchanges in Warsaw

An exhibition reflects on the experience of a Morocco’s leading modernist painter in…

Bamako Reaffirms its Place as a Photographic Hub

States of Mobility

Bamako Reaffirms its Place as a Photographic Hub

Mobility in the arts, geographical or otherwise, is often seen as almost a…

Josiah Tongogara as a young activist in Zambia. Installation view at Zimbabwe National Art Gallery. Photo: Tinashe Muchuri

Freedom in the Eyes of Josiah Tongogara

Portrait with Missing Childhood

The exhibition Freedom in the eyes of Josiah Tongogara at Zimbabwe’s National Gallery…

Installation View of James Barnor: A Retrospective, Nubuke Foundation Ghana.

Installation View #museumshutdown

James Barnor: A Retrospective

Hundreds of independent art and museums spaces were forced to close due to…

Santu Mofokeng, Rister Mkansi in the family kitchen Dan location, Tzaneen, Limpopo, South Africa Black and white, 35mm film, 2007.

Santu Mofokeng (1956 -2020)

A Vision from a Mystical Source

The late Santu Mofokeng was one of the few artists who managed to…

El Anatsui's project for the exhibition Who Knows Tomorrow, a monumental metal cloth installed on the façade of Berlin's Alte Nationalgalerie, 2010.

Looking Back

A Short History of the 2010s in Art

The 2010s not only saw the rise of new and urgent social movements…

Betye Saar, I’ll Bend But I Will Not Break, 1998. Mixed media tableau: vintage ironing board, flat iron, metal chin, white bed sheet, six wooden clothespins, cotton, clothesline and one rope hook, 80 x 96 x 36 in (203.2 x 243.8 x 91.4 cm), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gift of Lynda and Stewart Resnick through the 2018 Collectors Committee, © Betye Saar

Inventing Your Own Game

Betye Saar: The Majesty She Holds In Her Hands

In the post-war period, many pioneering Black artists were largely neglected by the…

Horace Imhotep, Ancestral Clay, 2018. Acrylic on canvas, 122 x 183 cm. Courtesy of ZuCot Gallery. Private collection

C& Special Edition #Detroit

Digging Deeper: Inside Horace Imhotep’s Ancestral Clay

Jasmine Sinclair Wilson on becoming Horace Imhotep's artwork.

Jack Whitten, Quantum Wall, VIII (For Arshile Gorky, My First Love in Painting), Detail, 2017. Acrylic on canvas, 122,6 x 122,6 cm © Courtesy the Jack Whitten Estate and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Genevieve Hanson

Inventing Your Own Game

Jack Whitten: A Painter’s Painter Gets His Long-Overdue Recognition

In the “post-war” period, many pioneering Black artists were largely neglected by the…

Installation view Africa Remix, 2004. Photo: Andreas M. Wiese.

Exhibition Histories

Africa Remix

In this series, C& is revisiting the most discussed, loved, hated, thought-provoking, and…

(both images) Francis X. Nnaggenda, without title. Collection and Image courtesy: Weltkulturen Museum

In Conversation with Francis Nnaggenda II

Art Crossroads with Ugandan Mastery 

By expediently excluding Ugandan masters from a rich East African heritage, the 2018…

Francis Nnaggenda, Title and Year unknown, from private collection Rose Rohrer.

In Conversation with Francis Nnaggenda I

A Lifetime Shaping Art and Education in Uganda

Prof. Francis Nnaggenda is a legendary art educator, sculptor, and painter whose artworks…

(left) Cover of Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (right) Lyle Ashton Harris, Brotherhood, Crossroads and Etcetera #3 [in collaboration with Thomas Allen Harris], 1994. Courtesy the artist.

C& Center of Unfinished Business

How Frantz Fanon Has Influenced Generations of Queer Artists

In this series, C& and ArtsEverywhere commission texts inspired by the books in…

Isaac Julien, True North Series No. 6, 2004. Courtesy the artist.

Echoes of the South Atlantic

Der Black Atlantic – Subject of (Counter)Memory

The project “Der Black Atlantic,” presented at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in…

Radha May, Installation View, When the Towel Drops Vol 1 Italy, Fabrica del Vapore, Milan, Italy, 2016

In Conversation with Radha May

The Collective Unearthing: Censored Scenes from Postwar Italian Cinema

The artist collective Radha May has created a work from scenes depicting expressions…

Malick Sidibé, Christmas evening. 1963.

Exhibition Histories

The Short Century

In this series, C& is revisiting the most discussed, loved, hated, thought-provoking, and…

When the Generals Ruled and Black Culture Mattered Less

Abdias do Nascimento

When the Generals Ruled and Black Culture Mattered Less

Abdias do Nascimento was a prominent Afro-Brazilian scholar and radical theater maker who…

International Congress of African Culture, 2017. Photo: National Gallery of Zimbabwe

A Groundbreaking Congress in Zimbabwe

How a Historical Art Conference in Africa Was Restaged

The International Congress for African Culture (ICAC) brought scores of international art practitioners…

Keyezua, Royal Generation, 2016. Courtesy of MOV'ART Gallery

In Conversation with Zoe Whitley

Thinking About South African Artists as the Makers of History

Zoe Whitley, a curator of international art at Tate Modern, is one of…

Mimi Cherono Ng’ok, Untitled (detail), 2014. Courtesy the artist and Tiwani Contemporary, London

C& and Aperture Magazine

Can African Critics Rewrite the Story of African Photography?

M. Neelika Jayawardane speaks with Emmanuel Iduma about the influential role - and…

Installation views of Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa exhibition held at the Whitechapel Gallery, 27 September – 26 November 1995. Courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery Archive

Exhibition Histories

Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa

In this series, C& is revisiting the most discussed, loved, hated, thought-provoking, and…

An ‘other’ stop on the global art trail: 2nd Johannesburg Biennale

Exhibition Histories

An ‘other’ stop on the global art trail: 2nd Johannesburg Biennale

In this series, C& is revisiting the most discussed, loved, hated, thought-provoking, and…

Africa Explores

Exhibition Histories

Africa Explores

In this series, C& is revisiting the most discussed, loved, hated, thought-provoking, and…

Magiciens de la Terre

Exhibition Histories

Magiciens de la Terre

In a new series, C& is revisiting the most discussed, loved, hated, thought-provoking,…

“An artist has to be a visionary”

magazines

“An artist has to be a visionary”

The Leopold Senghor award of Dak’art 2016 was given to the Egyptian/ Swiss…

A non-linear history of Dak’Art

Exhibition Histories

A non-linear history of Dak’Art

In this series, C& is revisiting the most discussed, loved, hated, thought-provoking, and…

Wim Botha, 'Time Machine', 2012, Mixed media installation, dimensions variable.

On museum

The New Church

Sean O'Toole visits South Africa’s first privately owned museum devoted exclusively to art…


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