Bringing together a group of artists from different generations, this exhibition will address how photography, film, audio, and more have been used to reimagine Africa’s diverse cultures and historical narratives.

Moving beyond a traditional photography exhibition, the show seeks to explore the many ways images travel across histories and geographies. Using themes of spirituality, identity, urbanism and climate emergency, the exhibition will guide the viewer through dream-like utopias and bustling cityscapes viewed from the artists’ perspectives.

For further information at Tate Modern website.

New Photography 2023: Kelani Abass, Akinbode Akinbiyi, Yagazie Emezi, Amanda Iheme, Abraham Oghobase, Karl Ohiri, Logo Oluwamuyiwa. On view exhibition explores the photographic work of seven artists, all at various stages in their careers, who are united by their critical use of photographic forms and their ties to the artistic scene in the port city of Lagos (Èkó), Nigeria. 

For further information at The Museum of Modern Art website.

Led by Farid Belkahia alongside Mohammed Chabâa, Mohamed Melehi and others, this pioneering school paved the way for a new generation of socially engaged modern artists who formed an influential avant-garde network.

Works by 21 artists will be brought together to demonstrate the wide variety of the Moroccan ‘new wave’, from vibrant abstract paintings and urban murals to applied arts, typography, graphics and interior design.

The exhibition will also include a selection of rarely-seen print archives, vintage journals, documentary photographs and films.

For further information at Tate St Ive website.

The exhibition is organized in three thematic sections that unite Mofokeng’s and Goldblatt’s works: Earthscapes, Edifices and Sociality.

Both men set out to picture everyday life and experience in South Africa during Apartheid and its aftermath. But where they are often positioned in contrast to one another, with Goldblatt understood as the insightful social documentarian and Mofokeng as the visionary poet, this exhibition aims to question such a separation and to allow the images to traverse preconceived labels and patterns of perception. By combining their works in novel ways the exhibition seeks to draw out the distinctiveness of each while questioning the binaries through which they are customarily viewed.

For further information at The Walther Collection website.

Ceremonial umbrellas have been a documented part of Asante custom since at least the 18th century. As early as 1701, a Dutch emissary was versed enough in their importance to come bearing one as a gift on his first visit to the Asante king. A form of regalia reserved only for chiefs, they represented power, prestige and control. To sit beneath their shade was to display the qualities of ‘coolness and inner spiritual peace’, regarded as essential attributes for a ruler. 

For further information at Gallery 1957 website.

This exhibition brings together an exhaustive selection of works of this self-taught artist, whose rise to fame started off in a small studio in Bamako (Mali), which at the time was the capital of former French Sudan. The inventiveness of the mise en scene, the modernity of the photographs and the fresh approach to the subjects photographed, made Keïta a celebrity in his own country: thousands of Malians and travelers from West Africa came to have their photographs taken by Seydou Keïta between 1948 and 1962. 

For further information at Galerie Nathalie Obadia website.

The Encounter: Barbara Chase-Riboud/Alberto Giacometti explores the common ground between two sculptors who looked to the past in order to reimagine the art of their time.

In their sculptures, Chase-Riboud and Giacometti both returned again and again to the human form. Giacometti often started with clay, modeling his works by hand before casting them in plaster. Chase-Riboud, who also became an acclaimed poet and novelist, favored the ancient lost-wax casting method for her bronzes, combining them with knotted and braided fiber, wool, or silk. 

For further information at The Museum of Modern Art website.

Since its emergence in the Bronx in the 1970s, hip hop has grown into a global phenomenon, driving innovations in music, fashion, technology, and visual and performing arts.

Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the birth of hip hop, The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century captures the extraordinary influence hip hop has had on contemporary society through more than 90 works of art and fashion by some of today’s most important and celebrated artists and iconic brands.

For further information at The Baltimore Museum of Art website.

an overview of the work of South African photographer Ernest Cole. The photographer is celebrated for his tireless documentation of Black lives in South Africa under apartheid: a regime of institutionalised racial segregation that was in effect from 1948 to the early 1990s. The exhibition includes parts of his archive, which had long been considered lost.

For further information at FOAM website.

Before Nollywood . . . The Ideal Photo Studio is a living exhibition and an on- going research and photography project that explores the lives of patrons from the Ideal Photo Studio and a history of Benin City and its community through the photographs of Solomon Osagie Alonge.

For further information atSmithsonian National Museum of African Art website.

The exhibition brings to the fore how multiple generations of Black artists have revelled and critically engaged in projecting various notions of Blackness and Africanicity that are self-reflective and that challenge the gaze imposed on Black cultures. 

When We See Us highlights the artistic lineages, art schools and movements from the Nsukka School in Nigeria, Ecole de Dakar in Senegal, the Kumasi School in Ghana and the British Black Arts Movement to the Department of Fine Arts at Makerere University in Uganda and the Federated Union of Black Artists (FUBA) in South Africa, to name a few.

For further information at Zeitz MOCAA website.

Southern Guild presents uBuhle boKhokho (Beauty of Our Ancestors), a solo exhibition by Zizipho Poswa, from 17 November 2022 to 2 February, 2023. This new series of ceramic and bronze sculptures draws inspiration from the elaborate art of hairstyling practised by Black women across the African continent and diaspora.

Almost a year in the making, uBuhle boKhokho marks the beginning of another ambitious chapter for the artist. Poswa continues the exploration of her own cultural story as a Xhosa woman through the making of her sculptural works. Hair, with its profound symbolic relationship to Blackness, remains a relevant source of inspiration and dialogue within contemporary cultural discourse.

For further information at Southern Guild website.

L’art Vodoun, un voyage sur le chemin de l’art brut dans les traces de Duchamp et de Lacan.

For further information at Galerie Art-Z website.

Our Story: Africa’s Climate, a group exhibition of emerging African artists from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania.

This exhibition seeks to highlight the impact of the climate emergency in Africa through photography, illustration, and collage. Using storytelling as a vehicle, artists Antoinette Oni, Chioma Ince, Mihayo Kallaye, and Ngadi Smart give honest and thought-provoking insight into environmental colonialism, waste management, and historical activism.

For further information at The Africa Centre website.

“Do not visit the colonial exhibition”: reacting to the opening of the Paris Colonial Exhibition in Vincennes in 1931, the members of the Surrealist group denounced France's imperialist policy. The “Unframing Colonialism” exhibition proposes to review this unique episode and the visual images generated at the time through photography.

For further information at Centre Pompidou website.

The New Black Vanguard features 15 international Black photographers contributing to a new vision of the Black figure and reframing representation in art and fashion. This exhibition is a celebration of Black creativity both in-front of and behind the camera. Featured works include Black stylists, models, make-up artists and creative directors who are bringing a radically new set of references and experiences to image making.

For further information at Saatchi Gallery website.

The exhibition will showcase an Egyptian Rodin, inspired by an Egypt he dreamed up, fantasised and then collected.

The exhibition features over 400 items, all restored for the occasion, which include Auguste Rodin's personal collection of Egyptian art, his own sculptures and drawings, as well as archives and photographs to put into context his "friends of the last hour", as the artist liked to call the antiques he cherished. 

It also evokes the echo of Egyptian art in Rodin's work, through his research on the representation of the human body, the simplification of forms, fragmentation and monumentality. For instance, the Monument to Balzac (1898) of which he said "Balzac is the Sphinx of France".

For further information at Musée Rodin website.

African Cosmologies: Redux is a large-scale group exhibition that examines the complex relationships between contemporary life in Africa, the African diaspora, and global histories of colonialism, photography, and rights and representation. The exhibition considers the history of photography as one closely tied to a colonial project and Western image production, highlighting artists who confront and challenge this shortsighted, albeit canonized lineage.

Rotimi Fani-Kayode (Nigeria)
leo with Shobun Baile (Brazil/United States)
Mónica de Miranda (Angola/Portugal)
Santu Mofokeng (South Africa)
Sethembile Msezane (South Africa)
Eustáquio Neves (Brazil)
Nyaba L. Ouedraogo (Burkino Faso/France)
Rosana Paulino (Brazil)
Dawit L. Petros (Eritrea/United States/Canada)
Zina Saro-Wiwa (Nigeria/United States)
Aida Silvestri (Eritrea/UK)
Lindokuhle Sobekwa (South Africa/United States)
Wilfred Ukpong (Nigeria/France)
Lyle Ashton Harris (United States)
Samson Kambalu (Malawi/UK)
Faisal Abdu’Allah (UK)

Akinbode Akinbiyi (Nigeria/UK)
Hélène A. Amouzou (Togo/Belgium)
Sammy Baloji (Congo/Belgium)
James Barnor (Ghana/UK)
Bruno Boudjelal (France/Algeria)
Edson Chagas (Angola)
Ernest Cole (South Africa)
Jamal Cyrus (United States)
Jean Depara (Angola/Congo)
Laura El-Tantawy (Egypt/UK)
Samuel Fosso (Cameroon/France)
Rahima Gambo (Nigeria)
Eric Gyamfi (Ghana)
Lyle Ashton Harris (United States)
Samson Kambalu (Malawi/UK)

For further information at FotoFest International Biennal website.

Thornton Dial, James “Son Ford” Thomas, Lonnie Holley, Mary T. Smith, Purvis Young, and many other Black artists in the South drew upon recycled materials as their art supplies and used yards, porches, or boarded-up storefronts as their galleries. The women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, made dazzling quilts from well-worn clothing or leftover scraps of fabric. Despite racism and other forms of discrimination, all of these artists drew on deep cultural and spiritual traditions to create some of the finest art of our time.

For further information at The National Gallery of Art website.

C’est à travers le prisme de l’espace urbain que l’exposition Urban Text – littéralement tissu urbain en français – donne à voir la complexité des Balkans, territoire multiculturel aux définitions mouvantes.

For further information at Institut des Cultures d'Islam website.

Spanning iconic mid-20th century to contemporary creatives through photographs, textiles, music and the visual arts, Africa Fashion will explore the vitality and global impact of a fashion scene as dynamic and varied as the continent itself.

For further information at the Victoria and Albert Museum website.

Taking the stories and histories of the Indian Ocean as its departure point, the group exhibition Indigo Waves and Other Stories: Re-Navigating the Afrasian Sea and Notions of Diaspora brings together 13 contemporary artists, historians, filmmakers, musicians, writers and thinkers to investigate, unpack and shed light on some of the smaller and bigger historical, cultural and linguistic links between the continents of Africa and Asia. The exhibition approaches the Indian Ocean as a communal horizon from which to read Afrasian (that is, belonging to both Africa and Asia) histories of forced and unforced movement through currents of mercantile and colonial empire.

Participating artists:

Akinbode Akinbiyi
Ayesha Hameed
Cetus Chin-Yun Kuo
Cinga Samson
Hasawa
Luvuyo Equiano Nyawose
Malala Andrialavidrazana
Myriam Omar Awadi
Oscar Murillo
Sancintya Mohini Simpson with Isha Ram Das
Shiraz Bayjoo in dialogue with Traci Kwaai
Sohrab Hura
Thania Petersen

For further information at Zeitz MOCAA website.

The Globalisto philosophy is a call to radical hospitality, openness to unlearn, and the idea of a borderless world. How does a remix of Negritude, Tigritude, “be attitude” and Black speculative theory sound? How can we look at the world from a pan-African perspective in order to deconstruct stereotypes and invent an alternative vision? How can we change the narrative by proposing transformation, inclusion and gratitude. Rather than cancel culture, how can we create a counsel culture?

For further information at Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne Métropole website.

For the past four years, along with artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen and the majority of the Vietnamese-Senegalese community, RAW Material Company has been committed to bringing out of the shadows and shedding light on the stories of this community’s strong female figures - mothers and pillars of families that are an integral part of the Senegalese social fabric.

For further information at RAW Material Company website

The exhibition brings together two artists of different generations who did not meet, with experiences and imaginaries belonging to distant places and times and who, nevertheless, can dialogue from their common creative attitude. With very particular artistic expressions, and with a body of work that apparently has little to do - beyond the use of textiles -, Andrianomearisoa and Grau-Garriga share a fascinating combination of passion and intimacy.

For further information at Grau-Garriga Contemporary Textile Art Center website.

For centuries, artists have told and retold the complex histories of the African Diaspora. Explore this enduring legacy in the exhibition Afro-Atlantic Histories, which takes an in-depth look at the historical experiences and cultural formations of Black and African people since the 17th century. More than 130 powerful works of art, including paintings, sculpture, photographs, and time-based media by artists from Africa, Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean, bring these narratives to life.

For further information at The National Gallery of Art website.

The Threads that Bind is an allusion to a body of artwork rendered in textiles to evoke memory, presence, labor, trade, industry, slavery, luxury, baptisms, weddings, funerals, gender and history in the African diaspora. The concept and material of thread creates meaning as an ancestral carrier traveling through time across borders through voluntary and involuntary migration from one body to another. The bind refers to shared experiences of trauma, oppression and perseverance that cohere in black identity.

For further information at the Museum of African Diaspora website.

This is the first exhibition to focus on the work of the earliest local photographers working in West and Central Africa. Towards the end of the 19th century, together with their clients, they began to produce captivating images in outdoor studios. Future viewers of their images were always kept in mind; the sitters posed as they wanted to be seen by posterity. These images are remarkably different from the work of colonial photographers whose work served to confirm the Other as backward and exotic.

For further information at Museum Rietberg website.

MASI Lugano presents the largest retrospective ever devoted to the photographer James Barnor (Accra, Ghana, 1929, lives and works in London). Throughout his lengthy career, spanning six decades and two continents, Barnor has been an extraordinary visual witness to the social and political changes of his time – from the independence of Ghana to the African diaspora and the lives of London’s African community. With his candid, spontaneous gaze, the Ghanaian-British photographer has navigated different places, cultures and genres, from photojournalism and social documentary to studio portraiture and fashion and lifestyle work. Although he has influenced generations of photographers in Africa and around the world, his work has only recently been rediscovered and valued.

For further information at the Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana (MASI Lugano) website.

El Anatsui (born c. 1944, Volta Region, Gold Coast [Now Ghana]) is an internationally revered and multi-award winning Ghanaian artist. He is known for his large-scale sculptures which are composed of thousands of folded and crumpled pieces of metal such as, cassava graters and liquor bottle tops, transforming simple materials into complex assemblages that create a distinctive visual impact; this visual impact often confronts the legacy of colonialism within Africa and the environmental response to consumption and waste.

For further information at Efiɛ Gallery website.