It’s rather redundant now to say that the art world is embracing the digital world like never before. When the world was forced into lockdown, albeit in varying degrees, auction houses, galleries, artists, curators, museums and institutions had no choice but to follow what everyone else was doing: Connecting online

“How are local galleries surviving this global crisis? I am afraid the majority—and not only the youngest ones—are already struggling,” said Merriem Berrada, artistic director of the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL) in Marrakech. “Galleries and institutions must have a strong digital program.” The key, at least for the time being, is to forge a dynamic online presence.

Museums in Europe and North America, which have hosted an unprecedented number of shows on contemporary African art in recent years, are all closed now due to Covid-19. The many art fairs dedicated to the subject that have sprung up all over the world in London, Marrakech, New York, Lagos, Paris, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Doula, have been postponed. Like the rest of the art world, the African art scene is grappling with a loss of physicality and an increasingly, however temporary, digital world.

An Online Surge

The New York edition of 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, which hosts editions also in London and Marrakech, was supposed to take place in May, but has been postponed until 2021. What’s next up on the horizon is the fair’s London edition, due to take place on 8-11 October 2020. Still reeling from having to postpone the New York edition so suddenly, the fair scheduled for May has quickly been transferred to online. Showcasing 25 galleries from around the world, it will now be held exclusively on Artsy from 6-30 May, with VIP Previews on 4-5 May. “We will see how much the galleries are selling online and then understand what works and doesn’t work.” said Fair founder and director Touria El Glaoui from quarantine in the South of France. “All of my positive thoughts are for our fair in London in October.”

“The lesson to learn from this experience is that we might need to have a digital platform as an extension to the fair,” added El Glaoui. “We still have a lot of applications for our fair in October. For the galleries post-Coronavirus, the first thing they will want to do is get out there and sell in September and October—if they are able to do so physically.”

The scene has also catered to the development of comprehensive online platforms for African contemporary art. One, Artskop3437, which launched its Database and Collecting space in December 2019 and functions as space dedicated to fostering a better understanding of Art from Africa, is presently having discussions with new galleries wishing to join the collective project since the appearance of Covid-19.

“We are also working with museums to put their permanent collections online on Artskop3437, with institutions like MACAAL in Marrakech, for example, which has been a partner in the project since last December,” said co-founders Prince Malik and Jordan. The site works with leading galleries on the continent, including Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, SMAC gallery, Espace d’art contemporain 14°N 64°W and Sakhile and me, to name a few, partnering with such names to forge an extension of their physical space. “There is an urgent need to write, structure and archive African artistic creation though Art History and digital is an amazing tool,” continued the site’s co-founders. “While the fairs help galleries to sell art over 5,000 euros, Artskop helps them sell works for less than that figure with the direct online buying tool. We consider ourselves to be a tool for art education and the African art market.”

On an institutional level, major museums on the continent are moving their collections and exhibitions online just like their counterparts around the world. In Dakar, the Museum of Black Civilizations, which opened in December 2018, is now temporarily closed, but will film its exhibitions to show on national TV and online. “Everyone in Senegal will now be able to view the museum and its exhibitions, and hear experts,” said Oumy Diaw, a communications specialist based in Dakar. In this way, one could argue that African art history is now able to be viewed by a larger public than ever before—a positive outcome of the pandemic.

Meanwhile in Cape Town, the Zeitz MOCAA is offering 3D tours of the museum in partnership with Google Arts and Culture as well as upping their YouTube channel. In Marrakech, the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL), which opened in February 2018, is creating a special online program, which will include content surrounding their current exhibition “Have You Seen A Horizon Lately?” alongside live interviews with artists, curators, comedians and other art-world figures. In terms of community development, MACAAL’s bootcamp, conducted over two weeks, offers slots to attendees needing help with pitching ideas, project application, or specific needs, like building a business model.

Collaborative Efforts

South African blue-chip galleries like Goodman Gallery, which also has a new space in London on Cork Street, has opened its virtual doors across their locations in South Africa and the UK, offering an enhanced digital program filled with gallery exhibitions, weekly bespoke online viewing rooms, Instagram LIVE takeovers, and an online film festival. “Having served as a vital non-discriminatory space for artists during the apartheid years, Goodman Gallery will seek to draw inspiration from this profound legacy in this time of crisis,” said Goodman Gallery Director Liza Essers. “We will be re-thinking what role we can play to support and collaborate with our artists to affect social change and make a difference in this time.” The gallery has also launched a fundraising campaign selling limited-edition woven artist textiles in support of Witkoppen Health and Welfare Clinic in South Africa, a non-profit organization which services 1.3 million people across the most deprived communities in Johannesburg. The textiles are designed by gallery artists Ghada Amer & Reza Farkhondeh, Broomberg & Chanarin, Nolan Oswald Dennis, and Samson Kambalu.

Stevenson, which has spaces in Cape Town and Johannesburg, has similarly embraced the digital sphere. The gallery opened its show of work by South African painter Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi online and via Instagram for their Johannesburg space and in Cape Town they are currently exhibiting Udludlilali by Mawande Ka Zenzile. “For both these shows we’re pivoting our efforts online, working with filmmakers to give our audience the experience from home,” said the gallery’s press officer Sinazo Chiya. “Generally, we’re using the time to find other ways of making direct contact with the people in our ecosystem—we’re all in it together.”

Seeds of Hope

Against the odds of the present economic predicament and global pandemic, Sotheby’s sixth sale of Modern & Contemporary African Art (March 27-31), which had to convert quickly into its first online-only format after lockdown, was announced in the UK on March 23, realized $2,881,741 (estimate $3,587,000), featuring over 100 works from 58 artists across 21 countries.

The auction was led by Irma Stern’s Grape Packer from 1959, achieving $531,309 – well within-the pre-sale estimate $436,822-686,435. A painting by Nigerian master Ben Enwonwu, Sefi (1953) made $305,350 in its auction debut. Young star from DRC Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga’s Ko Bungisa Mbala Mibale 2 sold for $76,338 and his Ko Bungisa Mbala Mibale 3 made $53,436, proving is continued might on the market.

“The online platform has certainly allowed us to convert a live sale to online seamlessly,” said Hannah O’Leary, Head of Modern & Contemporary African Art at Sotheby’s.

“Interestingly, since the sale drew to a close, our collectors who usually prefer to bid in person or on the telephone have all agreed that bidding online was far easier than they ever imagined,” she added. “The most notable takeaway for me was the number of new buyers the online format brought: 35% of bidders in our sale were new to Sotheby’s, and almost 30% of bidders were under 40 years old. In fact, the auction saw almost 50% more bidders in comparison to the equivalent sale last year, and I am sure that accounts in part for the corresponding increase in turnover.”

While the debate is still on over whether online viewing rooms for art galleries result in good sales, the success of Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary African Art Sale means that auctions, even when forced to work remotely, can still be highly profitable.

On the more charitable side, Arthouse Contemporary in Lagos, Nigeria, hosted The Online Charity Auction in support of Covid-19 aid, which closed at midnight on April 15. “The money raised will provide food for under-served communities in Lagos State as well as support emerging local artists during these challenging times,” said founder Kavita Chellaram.

New online ventures such as the recently launched Art and About Africa shine more light through the windows of confinement. Launched on February 20, the site aims to connect all players on the continent working in African art. Given the present crisis, it has also initiated ART: ESSENTIAL NEED, Emergency Grants for artists living in Africa.“We wanted to create a virtual connection against the physical walls of isolation and at the same time raise funds to support artists on the African continent,” said co-founder Lidjia Khachatourian who also runs AKKA Project, a gallery with branches in Dubai and Venice, with her husband.

“We asked artists to create artworks on their present state of isolation for the creation of an eBook to be sold and available on a Crowdfunding platform alongside limited-edition prints and original works from guest artists,” she explained. The money collected in exchange for the eBook, prints and works of art will serve to form the Emergency Grants, and all participating artists will benefit equally from the money raised.

The seeds of hope will grow as the art scene further adapts to the new structure that is emerging, however temporary or long lasting it will be. Art and creativity, it seems, are needed more than ever—even in the midst of the present chaos—even if just to provide hope. As Khachatourian states, quoting the famous Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. “Beauty will save the world.”

* Profile photo of this article is a work by the artist Nengi Omuku, Funke I, 2019. Oil on Sanyan. 91.4 x 61 cm. 36 x 24 in. Courtesy the artist and Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

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Often working on large formats, often on square canvases that are not unlike models of contemporary images, the artist mixes symbols, forms and materials to compose the strange scenes of a contemporary theatre in which hybrid animals and mysterious figures are the protagonists.

In a converted space, aiming at disturbing the visitor’s spatial landmarks, Serigne Ibrahima Dieye proposes a new series of paintings, works on paper and an immersive installation, as an extension of his reflections on the political and social landscape of our contemporary societies. In the manner of a visual fable, the artist depicts the story of a confrontation between characters wearing animal masks, whose thirst for power, selfishness and obscure motivations are reminiscent of a certain category of world rulers.

Serigne Ibrahima Dieye installs this contemporary jungle in the heart of the Galerie Cécile Fakhoury space, inhabits it with threatening anthropomorphic allegories and takes the visitor deep into this hostile universe. Thus forcing us to look at the aberrations of our societies from the front and without any blush.

Serigne Ibrahima Dieye urges us to reflect on our role in the construction of the world, on our share of individual responsibility, while making the creative gesture a privileged act of resilience in the face of the abyss. The artist takes an uncompromisingly poetic and ironic look at contemporary society and the evils that shake it.

Born in 1988 in Dakar, Senegal, Serigne Ibrahima Dieye lives and works in Grand Mbao, Senegal. Trained at the Ecole Nationale des Arts de Dakar from which he graduated in 2013, he develops a practice at the crossroads of drawing, painting and collage. The characters in Serigne Ibrahima Dieye’s paintings and installations are ideas to which the artist has given body and matter. They are visual allegories of the evils that are tearing 21st century societies apart, but not only: once on canvas, on paper, or embodied in wood, these ideas take on their autonomy and become the protagonists of a dramatic narrative whose interpretation is the responsibility of the spectators.

Paraboles d’un règne sauvage

Serigne Ibrahima Dieye

First solo exhibition

Galerie Cécile Fakhoury

From March 14 to May 30, 2020

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Kapwani Kiwanga’s (b. 1978, CA / FR) artistic process is research-oriented, initiated by marginalised or forgotten histories and political events, which she articulates in her sculptures, installations, photographs and videos. The artist contrasts her research with the expressive materiality of her work, with which she refers to socio-political phenomena, syncretism or the global effects of power structures. The solo show examines Kiwanga’s career via a selection of significant, representative and new works. The exhibition layout can be understood as a narrative that places emphasis on two key aspects: the examination of the impact of disciplinary architecture and spatial elements on the human body and the research into post-colonial stories and narratives that have been handed down, in which truth and fiction are combined.

In our everyday lives we are confronted by spaces that affect and regulate our behaviour. In her work, Kapwani Kiwanga reacts to the power dynamics of architecture and examines the effect of public buildings on the human body. She focuses on design elements such as the colour schemes of rooms in schools, prisons, hospitals or psychiatric clinics. In the exhibition we are immersed at the start in the spatial atmosphere of pink-blue (2017), in which the glowing Baker-Miller pink contrasts with blue neon lamps, referring to the ambivalence between the intention of providing protection and security and disciplinary measures, the control of movement and the limitation of freedom.

Kiwanga invites us to reflect on the social effects of the use of colour: do underpasses and public toilets lit with blue lighting really curtail drug use? Are prisoners really calmed by cells painted pink? The colour scheme of institutional interiors is also reflected in the sculptural assemblage Patchwork (2018), the panels of which are based on the two-colour surfaces of sections of walls. Jalousie, (2018) reproduces the structure of a folding screen with blinds.

Kiwanga combines the material of two-way mirrors, used in interrogation rooms and certain company rooms, with the familiar form of angled slats. She juxtaposes here the concept of systematic surveillance by authorities with an element of the domestic environment that implies protection, the private sphere and intimacy. The striped shadow might recall a lazy day in the holidays and also refers to the colonial architecture to be found from New England in North America to the tropical climate zones. Kiwanga alludes here in particular to the control of black people, that for a long time was the norm socially and politically and still resonates today. Kiwanga also follows this principle in the two sculptures Glow #6 (2019) and Glow #7 (2019), that take their starting point from the “lantern law” of the colonial period. A law passed in the 18th century in Boston and the whole of New England required all slaves to carry a lit candle after sunset if they weren’t accompanying a white person. It is the architecture of control which informs part of the exhibition, creating the decidedly physical and psychological quality of the relevant built environment. Here the body is subjected to a process of seeing and being seen and has to follow pre-determined lines of movement and spatial structures.

The starting point for Kapwani Kiwanga’s artistic output is in most cases the analysis and research of archival material conveying historical narratives and political events. Her practice is focused particularly on concepts of anti-colonial struggles and their legacy, as well as popular and folk cultures. Arising from this research are works with a strong material quality through which she refers to agriculture or the global effects of colonialisation. Red Sky at Night (2018) refers on the one hand to the expression that comes from the Gospel according to Matthew, “Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight, red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning”. On the other hand, the artist employs materials used in mass farming as ground cover and the optimisation of climate conditions, in order to increase the profitability of resources. With this shadow cloth Kiwanga implies a relationship between agriculture, power structures through colonialisation and economic viability, in which profit goes hand in hand with dispossession and resettlement. In other cases, she questions the ways in which the writing of history, power systems and the generation of knowledge function, undermining the official understanding of truth by expanding history with popular belief and spirituality.

With Nations (2018, 2019) she examines the relationship between spiritual belief and political revolt. Kiwanga creates works from fabric and metal that are based on the formal language of flags or banners. Flags have a double meaning, as a symbol of nation states and as Loa flag, a sacred site in voodoo culture. She refers here to the revolution in Haiti and the role that voodoo played in it. The alternative reading of past and present includes a variety of perspectives, in which ongoing social and political moments are inherent. Kiwanga deliberately mixes truth and fiction in order to unhinge hegemonic narratives and create spaces in which peripheral discourses can thrive. 

Kapwani Kiwanga

Kunsthaus Centre d’Art Pasquart

From February 2 to April 5, 2020

Seevorstadt 71 Faubourg du Lac

CH-2502 Biel/Bienne

T +41 32 322 55 86 / info@pasquart.ch / www.pasquart.ch

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Gallery 1957 presents long-awaited works by Thameur Mejri

Based in Accra and working internationally, Gallery 1957 is dedicated to contemporary art. With a curatorial focus on West Africa, the gallery presents a programme of exhibitions, installations and performances by the region’s most significant artists. Gallery 1957 works with artists currently bridging the gap between local and international practices, including Serge Attukwei Clottey, Jeremiah Quarshie, Yaw Owusu, Gerald Chukwuma, and Godfried Donkor. For 1-54 New York, Gallery 1957 presents works by the Tunisian artist Thameur Mejri, in addition to his solo exhibition at the gallery in Accra from March 28 to May 7 included. 

Thameur Mejri cites, like Paul Klee before him, the same influence of Tunisia and its rich landscape as the colour catalyst for his latest series, Eroded Grounds. The human body occupies a special place in the artist’s work, which sometimes evokes the slow appropriation of the artist and his image in Europe because of the spiritual transcendencies and the relationship between the image of man and the divine, highlighted by religious culture. This conquest of his own body, the acceptance of its limits and its purely carnal dimension has not always been shown in the different European societies and Mejri explores the way in which the Arab-Muslim world maintains a complex and conflictual relationship on the subject, a pretext for so many other refoulements.

Galerie Cécile Fakhoury presents photgraphs of François Xavier Gbré

Opened in September 2012 and active in Dakar since 2018, the gallery offers a new perspective on creativity and exceptional artistic diversity in West Africa. The gallery presents new works by François xavier Gbré, Dalila Dalleas Bouzar, and Jems Robert Koko Bi.

François-Xavier Gbré was born in Lille, France, in 1978. He lives and works in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. He graduated with a degree in Photography from École Supérieure des Métiers Artistiques de Montpellier in France. While engaging with time and geography, his work summons the language of architecture as a witness of memory and social changes. From remnants of colonial times to landscapes that are redefined by current events, François-Xavier Gbré explores territories and revisits history.

Richard Tattinger Gallery presents works by Jorge Mayet and Frances Goodman

Jorge Mayet’s sculptures and installations draw from his experiences living as a Cuban exile in Spain. Suspended in midair, his photorealistic floating landscapes and uprooted trees offer ethereal, dream-like visions of his homeland. The exposed roots of the trees serve as a metaphor for diaspora, questioning the function of homeland. Mayet’s technique expands upon the region’s local craft traditions and honors the mysticism of the Yoruba religion, which was proliferated in Latin America by the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Born in 1975 and based in Johannesburg, South Africa, Frances Goodman is today considered one of the country’s leading artists. Her working practice, which includes installation, photography, sculpture and sound installations, focuses primarily on women and contemporary notions of beauty and desire. Her interests lie in female identity and the anxieties that manifest and are cultivated from the bombardment of the media as well as societal expectations and pressures (both self -imposed and external).  Her work is featured in collections of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA), South Africa; the National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institute, USA; the Sindika Dokolo African Collection of Contemporary Art; and the Chase Manhattan Collection, USA.

Perve Galeria presents a core of Ernesto Shikhani’s work before and after the independence of Mozambique

Perve galeria presents a core of artworks which emphasize, politically speaking, the interventional character of Ernesto Shikhani’s work before and after the independence of Mozambique. Perve Galeria present also works of Shikhani at Frieze New York in 2 section.

In an initial section, there will be art works in which became evident that the artist clearly tries to transmit a message against the Portuguese colonial regime and dictatorship, representing them, most of the time, through monstrous beings. In this context, the human figure is practically non-existent or appears distorted and brutally oppressed.

A second section will reflect the post-independence period, when the author often represents the human figure with disproportionate hands, fingers and heads. His work again has a strophe of political and social intervention that is strongly related to the civil war. Here the works frequently reveal two human figures linked by the same body representing a same people but in conflict with himself. This type of composition is mainly made on paper, as it reflects a time when there was a profound social and economic transformation in the country and materials such as canvas became a very rare and expensive thing.

Born in 1934, in the Marracuene District, Ernesto Shikhani was part of a prominent group of artists in Mozambique who played a key role in broadening aesthetic reciprocity across Africa, Europe, and the USA. He began to devote himself to sculpture with the Portuguese master Lobo Fernandes at Núcleo de Arte, in Maputo, Mozambique. His latest drawings and paintings show traces and colors sometimes aggressive but also vibrant and radiant. In 2004, Perve Galeria held a retrospective exhibition of his 40 years of painting and sculpture. Ernesto Shikhani died on 31 December 2010, in Maputo, Mozambique.

Anne De Villepoix Gallery presents Omar Ba

Born in 1977 in Senegal, Omar Ba lives and works in Dakar and Geneva. His paintings, produced using a variety of techniques and materials, represent political and social motifs open to multiple interpretations. His artistic vocabulary raises historical and timeless questions while formulating a wholly contemporary artistic message.  Omar Ba’s iconography features personal metaphors, ancestral references and hybrid figures. This combination of heterogeneous elements illustrates his desire to abolish boundaries and categories. Omar Ba is represented by Templon gallery in France and Switzerland.

Galerie Magnin-A proposes works by Fabrice Monteiro, Vincent Michéa, among others

MAGNIN-A is a contemporary art gallery created in 2009 in Paris by André Magnin and directed by Philippe Boutté, renowned experts in modern and contemporary African art. As a talent discoverer, the MAGNIN-A gallery represents established and emerging artists. The gallery works with passion and conviction to promote and disseminate artists at the most important international fairs and exhibitions.

Born in 1972 in Namur, Fabrice Monteiro grew up in Benin. After studying industrial engineering, he began a career as a model, an opportunity for him to make his first contact with the photographic medium. After passing behind the lens, his first experiences will naturally be in the world of fashion, but very quickly, he decides to tell another story.

He lives and works in Dakar. Fabrice Monteiro’s photography and works occupy a rich space that spans all genres: photo-reportage, fashion images and portraits blend and collide to better reveal a “mixed” universe in the artist’s image. With his new series of works, Monteiro makes fun of the clichés that people of colour still suffer from and the way they are represented in people’s imaginations or in advertising.

Vincent Michéa was born in 1963 in Figeac, France, he lives and works between Paris and Dakar. After graduating from ESAG in Paris, he left for Dakar in 1986 to work as a graphic designer. It was in 1987 that he first exhibited his work of paintings and photos at the National Gallery of Senegal. Following this exhibition, he worked as an assistant to Roman Cieslewicz until 1991. Encouraged by this renowned graphic designer, he invested himself in an intense activity of painting creations. Vincent Michéa is also co-founder of the 100% DAKAR label and collaborates within the DKR studio in the 90s. In 2007 and 2008, he led photomontage workshops at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa. Since 2008, with the painter Moulay Youssef Elkahfai, Vincent Michéa has been in charge of the silkscreen printing workshop at the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Visuels in Marrakech.

Espace D’art Contemporain 14N 61W presents works by Jean Ulrich Désert and photographs by Robert Charlotte

Jean-Ulrick Désert is a conceptual and visual artist born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Désert’s art works vary in form: public billboards, actions, paintings, site-specific sculpture, video and art objects. They emerge from a tradition of conceptual work engaged with social and cultural practices. Well known for his “Negerhosen2000” his provocative “Burqa Project” and his poetic “Goddess Projects” Désert has said his practice may be characterized as visualizing “conspicuous invisibility.” He has exhibited widely at venues such as The Brooklyn Museum, The Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston, Grey Art Gallery NYU/Studio Museum of Harlem, Walker Art Center in the USA, la Cité Internationale des Arts in France, The Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst in Germany and in galleries and public venues as well in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Ghent, Brussels.

He is the recipient of awards, public commissions, private philanthropy, including Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Villa Waldberta-Munich, Kulturstiftung der Länder (Germany) and Cité des Arts (France). He received his degrees at Cooper Union and Columbia University (New York) and has been an invited lecturer and critic at universities in the United States (Princeton, Yale, Columbia), Germany (Humboldt University in Berlin) and in France (at the École supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris). He also advises and teaches for Trans Art Institute (based in New York).

It is from a social point of view that Robert CHARLOTTE‘s photography is oriented in the form of photographic portraits. He systematically examines the behaviours, attitudes and expressions of social groups. Born in 1966 in Martinique, where he grew up and lives, Robert CHARLOTTE was very interested in the family album at an early age, which gave him both pleasure and a trigger. From 1986 to 1989, he was in Paris at a photography school.

He lived there for 10 years, works in an industrial photography studio. He will learn the issues of reporting, illustration, commissioning, artistic proposal, team collaboration and the loneliness of the moment of release. Back in Martinique, he became interested in painting, meeting, interacting with and photographing painters in their workshops. He is a contributor to several publications.

14N61W is a contemporary gallery located in Martinique. The gallery presents a range of artistic positions in all media, focusing and focused on contemporary art in the Caribbean and around the world, the authenticity, the presence, projection and reflection of its artists in the art they produce, leaving the audience enthusiastic, sometimes puzzled, but never indifferent. The program of espace d’art contemporain 14N61W, is fuelled with exhibitions and projects revolving around concerns about artistic creation in relation to today’s social, economical, political and global issues.

Afronova gallery presents photographs of John Liebenberg

John Liebenberg lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he is born in 1958. He was introduced to Namibia in 1976 when, together with his fellow conscripts he was sent to Ondangwa Air-force base near the border with Angola. He later returned to Namibia and in 1985 was appointed photographer for a new weekly, “The Namibian”. Following independence he and his family moved to Johannesburg, from where he covered the Angolan civil war as freelancer for Reuters. He is a senior and established news photographer whose work has been exhibited in Africa and Europe. His Namibian photographic collection documenting Swapo’s war of Liberation and the South African occupation is widely used by historians, researchers and film makers.

L’agence à paris presents works by Dominique Zinkpè

Dominique Zinkpè‘s works refer to his environment and the context in which he finds himself. Identity is the roots, the consciousness of coming from somewhere, the tree that does not hide the forest. It is the audacity to testify, to affirm one’s voice clearly and clearly, says the artist. His approach is complex and diverse. Far from confining himself to a plastic writing, he appropriates all kinds of media as long as they allow him to express himself: installation, drawing, painting, sculpture, video. Zinkpè’s painting explores tortuous paths where the characters, halfway between a human being and an animal, evoke power games, masquerades or sex, no doubt alluding to our human comedy. Its unique feature is recognizable on the canvas; intimate, powerful, provocative.

L’Agence à Paris represents artists, mainly in the field of visual arts, of all nationalities, accompanying them in all stages of creation. The Agency is developing a unique and flexible model as a possible response to the rapid changes in the creative economies. It develops reflection and action with the desire to create healthy relationships with the art market.

Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien’s installations

Born in 1990, Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien has lived in Paris since leaving Côte d’Ivoire in 2004 during the civil war. In her work, she seeks to juxtapose diverse cultural elements, bringing them together to form new, syncretic pieces with additional layers of meaning. Interested in the complex relationships between notions of a universal popular culture, everyday life, and traditional handmade construction processes, Manlanbien creates physical encounters between industrial and artisanal materials. She is inspired greatly by the traditional practices of the matriarchal Akan society in Côte d’Ivoire, who historically crafted weights in order to value gold. The artist speaks of her intention to create ephemeral, poetic narrations which are in perpetual renewal, resulting in tangible pieces which both ‘witness’ and ‘trace’ past diverse cultural histories. She is represented by 50 Golborne gallery.

50 Golborne’s gallery mission is to support and promote some of the best projects and productions developed by international visual artists, designers and makers. It especially supports those relevant to portraying and interrogating a world which is changing fast and in which the African continent and its international Diaspora plays a dynamic and significant role.

Addis Fine Art with new works of Nirit Takele

Nirit Takele, born in Ethiopia in 1985, immigrated to Israel in 1991 in “Operation Solomon” an Israeli military operation that transported more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 36 hours. Nirit presently works from her studio in Tel Aviv. Although she grew up with very few memories of her childhood in Ethiopia, Nirit has been painting from a very young age practising her skills by studying the works of artists like Peter Paul Rubens, Diego Riviera and David Hockney.

She explores her cultural heritage in her works, illustrating the everyday life of the Israeli Ethiopian community and finding inspiration in old Ethiopian sagas and folk tales remembered from her youth. Nirit is a bold colourist, building up faceted figurative bodies through the application of near abstract flat forms. She is represented by Addis Fine Art.

Addis Fine Art is a pioneering gallery based in Addis Ababa and London. The very first local space and international platform based in Ethiopia, the gallery focuses on highlighting modern and contemporary fine art from the Horn of Africa region and its diasporas.

Barnard Gallery presents works by Richard Mudariki

Often drawing on classic compositions from the Old Masters of European art history, Richard Mudariki reinterprets these iconic scenes with his own cast of human and animal characters, constructing a mise-en-scene which resituates the drama within a contemporary, Southern African social context. Mudariki tackles a widerange of political and social debates with an arresting and unique visual language characterized by bright colours, irrational spaces and perspectives, theatrical compositions and allegorical use of symbolism.

Often appealing to the viewer’s sense of humour, Mudariki’s theatricality nevertheless maintains a restless, foreboding energy in its engagement with the duplicity and deception, which characterizes so much of contemporary politics. In Mudariki’s quotations of iconic moments in European art, the artist also questions notions of canonicity and accepted narratives of art history, considering his position – and the position of African artists more generally – within it.

BARNARD was founded in 2010 by owner and director Christiaan Barnard and is home to a select group of contemporary artists. The gallery has hosted a number of significant solo exhibitions by its represented artists whose works have also been included in group shows at significant museums and institutions including amongst others IZIKO South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Zeitz MOCCA, Cape Town; Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon; Pratt Institute, New York; Foto Museum, Antwerp; BOZAR, Brussels, Museo Carlo Bilotti, Rome; Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice and The Center for Book Arts, New York.

Yossi Milo Gallery presents photographs of Kyle Meyer and Pieter Hugo

Meyer’s large scale works combine equal parts photographic portraiture and craft weaving. His photographs document men from the LGBTQ community in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), a nation where the local laws force queerness into hiding. Each man (or couple, in one instance) wears a headdress made from the brightly patterned wax fabric traditionally worn by women (selected by the sitter), upending our usual assumptions about clothing, gender, and beauty. Meyer then prints the images and then slices them up, meticulously interweaving the pictures with strips of the actual fabric from the headdress, creating hybrid works that merge image and object.

The success of Meyer’s works comes in the careful integration of separate conceptual frameworks, where the resulting fusion produces something more thoughtful and layered than the individual parts might have suggested on their own. Aside from the gender inversion of the headdress, the portraits are relatively straightforward, their massive scale forcing us into more intimate dialogue with the unidentified sitters. With the final portrait, Meyer presents each man’s individuality and beauty while using the fabric as a screen to protect his identity.

Established in 2000, Yossi Milo Gallery is dedicated to providing a platform for an influential community of artists working in all media, including photography, painting, sculpture, video and drawing.

1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair
Industria, 775 Washington St, New York, NY 10014, USA
May 3rd -5th 2019

http://1-54.com/

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