LAST MONTH, when Benin’s Palais de la Marina in Cotonou opened its doors, a belated history class swung into session. Organized by the president’s office and titled “Benin Art from Yesterday to Today, from Restitution to Revelation,” the exhibition paired work by thirty-four contemporary Beninese artists with a trove of twenty-six royal objects pillaged by the… Continue reading Artforum: Kingdom Comeback – the spectacular return of Benin’s looted art
Last Monday in Paris, auction house Christie’s proceeded with the sale of two Nigerian artefacts in the face of public outcry over their suspicious provenance. As art historian Chika Okeke-Agulu noted in a 21 June article for The Guardian, the pair of sacred Igbo sculptures, known as Alusi, were likely stolen from Nigeria during its civil war… Continue reading Frieze: To Stop Auction of Looted Art, International Law Must Change
For ‘Symphonie au Kente’ (Symphony of Kente), Abdoulaye Konaté has merged two rich, long-standing textile traditions from Ghana and his native Mali. This is an unlikely pairing: although located in the same region, the two nations do not share a language or a political system, and travel between both countries often requires patience with knotty… Continue reading Frieze: How Abdoulaye Konaté Knits Together West African Cultural Heritage
Michael Soi was hard at work in his Nairobi studio, speckled in acrylic paints, when four unidentified Chinese men and women walked in, demanding to see some paintings. It was July 2015, and Chinese President Xi Jinping was visiting Kenya. Soi’s visitors didn’t wait for him to respond. They moved around the studio, shifting cans… Continue reading OZY: Africa’s New Satirists Draw Political Fire
Florine Demosthene imagines a new kind of black heroine in “The Stories I Tell Myself,” on view through May 6th at Gallery 1957 in Accra, Ghana. The exhibition, which includes work created during a four-month residency with the gallery, incidentally arrives at the same time as the record-smashing Marvel Studios film, Black Panther. That movie presents a… Continue reading Artsy: Florine Demosthene Is Conjuring the History of Black Heroines—and Creating New Ones
On March 6, Ghana’s Independence Day, artist Yaw Owusu was crouched on his living room floor, putting the finishing touches on a new piece. Stretching over most of the floor, the work sparked silver and copper as the sun bounced off the carpet of pesewa coins — the country’s least valuable currency and Owusu’s preferred… Continue reading OZY – The Artist as Alchemist: Turning Coins into Precious Art
The opening of the debut Nigerian Pavilion at the 57th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale was preceded by a series of unfortunate and unexpected events. The biennale is widely regarded as “the Olympics of visual art”, ergo the biggest art exhibition in the world, where 88 of the globe’s 196 nations are represented.… Continue reading Mail & Guardian: ‘Bring back what was once mine’
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