The 12th edition of Bamako Encounters Photography Biennial announces its curatorial team that includes Artistic Director Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, the co-curators Aziza Harmel, Astrid Sokona Lepoultier and Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh. The Photographer Akinbode Akinbiyi and Seydou Camera will be the artistic advisers.

Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (born in 1977 in Yaoundé, Cameroon), is an independent curator, author and biotechnologist. He is founder and artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary Berlin. He was curator-at-large for documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel, and guest curator of the 2018 Dak’Art Biennale in Senegal. Together with the Miracle Workers Collective, he will curate the Finland Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019. He is currently guest professor in curatorial studies and sound art at the Städelschule in Frankfurt and has been appointed as the artistic director of Sonsbeek 2020, a quadrennial contemporary art exhibition in Arnhem, the Netherlands.

Recent curatorial projects include: Geographies of Imagination: Dis-Othering as A Method, SAVVY Contemporary, 2018; Whose Land have I Lit on Now? Contemplations on the Notions of Hostipitality, SAVVY Contemporary, 2018; The Conundrum of Imagination, Leopold Museum Vienna/ Wienerfestwochen, 2017; Every Time A Ear di Soun — a documenta 14 Radio Program, SAVVY Contemporary, 2017; An Age of our Own Making in Holbæk, MCA Roskilde and Kunsthal Charlottenborg Copenhagen, 2016-17.

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CO-CURATORS

Aziza Harmel is an independent curator based in Tunis, Tunisia. She was awarded her Masters of Fine Art by the Dutch Art Institute in Arnhem. Aziza worked in Documenta 14, Steirischer Herbst 2018 and elsewhere. She is currently co-curating a research program on curatorial knowledge, Qayyem, which will be roaming between Mass Alexandria (Alexandria), MMAG Foundation (Amman) and l’Appartement 22 (Rabat). Some of her recent exhibitions include Jaou Tunis 2018, where she curated the Air Pavilion titled Ruins are mortal do as they live. Her work revolves around ghostly matters, regimes of visibility, secrecy and public secrecy.

Astrid Sokona Lepoultier is an independent curator based in Paris, France and Bamako, Mali. After a degree in Hospitality Management – Finance, Real Estate and Revenue Management, she completed a Master’s degree in Trade and Diffusion of Contemporary Art. In addition to having been in charge for a collection dedicated to modern and contemporary African art, she worked in different cultural events such as the Rencontres de Bamako in 2017 as assistant-curator. She curated the 1st and 2nd editions of BICIM Amie des Arts (Groupe BNP Paribas) in Mali in 2018 and 2019.

Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh is an artist, curator and writer based in Kumasi, Ghana. He has co-curated ‘Silence Between the Lines: Anagrams of Emancipated Futures’ (2015) and ‘Orderly Disorderly’ (2017), both organized by blaxTARLINES KUMASI. Ohene-Ayeh recently curated ‘Spectacles. Speculations…’ (2018)– featuring 16 artists from Ghana, Holland and Colombia, in Kumasi. He is currently a PhD student at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana.