Dig Where You Stand on view from September 2 – October 9, 2022, is part of the fall program of The African Artists’ Foundation, and marks the first exhibition of a traveling show, taking place in several locations across Africa. The announced locations include: Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA), Tamale, Ghana, The African Artists’ Foundation (AAF) Lagos, Nigeria, White Cube, Lusanga, DR Congo, Palais de Lomé, Togo and Hangar Centre, Lisbon, Portugal.

Dig Where You Stand explores the regenerative potential of art within the region and its diasporas, offering a new model of engagement with the questions of decolonization, restitution, and repatriation, both in the art world and the broader economy on the African continent. Cultivating the reformative potential of art across the region by placing an emphasis on travel, migration and (dis)placement, the exhibition is shifting the decolonial paradigm away from Western museums towards a location-specific, solution-oriented approach, leaving behind a toolkit in each location for commencing regenerative economic processes. The artists and local communities explore the economies of the colonial systems that have historically marginalized vulnerable communities and find new methodologies in the art world, which reverse its value systems and return agency to exploited communities on the African continent. Featuring the works of Ibrahim Mahama, Renzo Martens and The Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC) among others, the exhibition curated by Azu Nwagbogu aims to promote contemporary African opus by facilitating a cultural exchange and contributing to communities with ideas rooted in liberation from the ongoing extractive processes in the economy.

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