For the much-awaited reopening of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium—rebaptised AfricaMuseum (which reopened its doors on 8 December 2018) — TLmag journeyed to the vast African continent to explore the artistic inventiveness of creative Africans on a local and international scale. This fascinating edition was challenging, maybe even impossible to create, considering the density of material in the many ‘Africas’: 54 sovereign countries, nine territories and two de facto independent states, each constantly changing, attempting in its own way to exorcise the colonial and post-colonial past and to achieve hyper-modernity. In the extended pages of our 29th print edition, we continue our journey and highlight African artists, designers, architects and photographers who are producing universal, powerful and lively works.
Belgian photographer Sebastien Van de Walle captured the powerful performance art movement in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo during a 2018 visit. There he met Percy Numbi and Flory Sinanduku who create wildly creative costumes out of the waste and trash that sits in a dried up river bed in a poor neighborhood in the city.
Mixing the traditional skills and expertise of artists from Burkina Faso with contemporary design ideas, Maison Intègre is producing a stunning collection of furniture and objects in cast bronze.
On May 20, Sammy Baloji was awarded a special mention in the Venice Architecture Biennale for his three-chapter project in collaboration with Twenty Nine Studio, which addresses the dematerialisation of the landscape and the delocalisation of precolonial social systems through colonial action. TLmag reposts an interview made with Baloji in 2018 for TLmag29.
A collaboration by two very different artists challenges the stereotypes and stigmas embedded in an historic institution, underscoring the vital importance of revisiting the atrocities of the past to change the narrative and pave the way for a better future.
Francis Kéré was named the 2022 Pritzker Prize winner, a much deserved recognition for this talented architect. For our S/S 2018 issue: TLmag29: Africas, design journalist Norman Kietzmann wrote a piece about Kéré Architecture.
A contemporary bench by Beauty Ngxongo, with a backrest woven in the traditional Zulu style, brings an age-old South African craft into the 21st century.
Malian artist Abdoulaye Konaté invents a poetic, geopolitical and cosmogonic language through compositions made of fragments of coloured textiles.
AFIKARIS Gallery presents Human@Condition, Cameroonian artist Jean David Nkot’s first extensive solo exhibition in France. The exhibition highlights an all-new series of Nkot’s signature hyper-realistic portraits over mapped backgrounds.
Gallerist Cécile Fakhoury speaks with TLmag about her current exhibitions in the Ivory Coast, Senegal, and France, how artists work across multiple worlds, and the imperative of physical shows rather than their digital alternatives.
An extensive collection of studio ceramics created by Andile Dyalvane during a recent residency at Leach Pottery in St. Ives, Cornwall (UK) will be exhibited at Southern Guild from 18 January to 29 February 2020.
The show at Wiels Centre for Contemporary Art invited us to look at the transversal heritages and the global resonances of ideas, images, sounds and energies that characterize contemporary African art.
TLmag talks to co-founder Scott Billy, whose admiration for the newest generation of South African artists, designers and craftsmen energised him to opening his first gallery: Bonne Esperance.
