Looking back

 
Still from Dahomey by Matt Diop.

(EN) Restitution

Tracing the Then and Now of Restitution Through Mati Diop’s Documentary Fantasy Dahomey

Can the French restitution of some of Benin’s royal treasures constitute a new beginning? Mati Diop’s new film, Dahomey, delves this question.

Installation view of ’60 Years: the NCAI Collection’ at the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute, Kenya.

Letter from Nairobi

An Exhibition Aims at Accessibility Against a Backdrop of Protest in Kenya’s Capital

Mūhunyo Maina reviews a pertinent exhibition at NCAI, following protests against the 2024 Finance Bill, exploring ways to democratize art viewing.

Henok Melkamzer, Untitled (Detail), 2023. Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation. Photo: Shafeek Nalakath Kareem

Sharjah Art Museum

Positioning Telsem in Global Art History with Henok Melkamzer

A comprehensive survey offers insights into the Ethiopian painter’s career and makes the case for multiple modernisms.

Photography by Paul Kodio

Rencontres de Bamako – Biennale Africaine de la Photographie

Ousmane Diarra nous fait part de ses méditations sur la Biennale

L'auteur revient sur une année de bouleversements : coups d’État, guerres et embargos, mais aussi sur les liens artistiques tissés avec le monde.

Les meilleurs articles 2022 de C& que vous aimerez sans doute relire

Best of 2022

Les meilleurs articles 2022 de C& que vous aimerez sans doute relire

Des événements incontournables du monde de l’art ayant marqué cette année à la célébration joyeuse de l’art noir, voici les favoris pour l’année 2022

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

documenta fifteen

Serine Ahefa Mekoun plonge dans les sagesses et le bien-fondé des œuvres d’art

Notre autrice met le focus sur des perspectives artistiques inspirantes de la documenta qui s’est déroulée du 8 juin au 25 septembre 2022 à Kassel.

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…

Cinquante ans après Things Fall Apart, tout s’emboîte

Chinua Achebe Exhibition

Cinquante ans après Things Fall Apart, tout s’emboîte

Obidike Okafor fait la critique pour C& d’une exposition célébrant une adaptation filmique…

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

Inventer son propre terrain

Alma W. Thomas et les trésors du monde naturel

Après la guerre, de nombreux artistes de couleur se sont vus rejetés par…

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

Par son approche éclectique, l'exposition Tendances et Confrontations de 1966 offrait des instantanés…

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 : Cette majesté qu’elle tient entre ses mains

Après la guerre, de nombreux artistes de couleur se sont vus rejetés par…

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

C& Special Edition #Detroit

Explorer les profondeurs depuis le cœur d’Ancestral Clay d’Horace Imhotep

Jasmine Sinclair Wilson et son immersion dans l’œuvre d’art d’Horace Imhotep.

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 : Un peintre de peintre reçoit une reconnaissance bien méritée

Après la guerre, de nombreux artistes de couleur se sont vus rejetés par…

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

Histoires d'expositions

Africa Remix

Dans cette série, C& revisite les expositions les plus discutées, les plus appréciées,…

(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.

Échos de l’Atlantique Sud

L’Atlantique noir, sujet d’une (contre-)mémoire

Le projet « Der Black Atlantic », présenté à la Haus der Kulturen…

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.

Histoires d'expositions

The Short Century

Dans cette série, C& revisite les expositions les plus discutées, les plus appréciées,…

À l’époque où les généraux régnaient et où la culture noire importait moins

Abdias do Nascimento

À l’époque où les généraux régnaient et où la culture noire importait moins

Érudit afro-brésilien et homme de théâtre radical, Abdias do Nascimento gêna la présence…

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

Histoires d'expositions

Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa

Dans cette série, C& revisite les expositions les plus discutées, les plus appréciées,…

Une « autre » halte sur la piste de l’art global : la 2e Biennale de Johannesburg

Histoires d’expositions

Une « autre » halte sur la piste de l’art global : la 2e Biennale de Johannesburg

Dans cette série, C& revisite les expositions les plus discutées, appréciées, détestées ou…

Africa Explores

Histoires d'expositions

Africa Explores

Dans cette série, C& revisite les expositions les plus discutées, les plus appréciées,…

Magiciens de la Terre

Histoires d'expositions

Magiciens de la Terre

Dans une nouvelle série, C& revisite les expositions les plus discutées, les plus…

« 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…

Pour une histoire non linéaire de Dak’Art

Histoires d'expositions

Pour une histoire non linéaire de Dak’Art

Dans cette série, C& revisite les expositions les plus discutées, les plus appréciées,…

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…