Exhibitions

Africa State of Mind is still in view at the Impressions Gallery in Bradford, United Kingdom until June 15, 2019

Africa State of Mind curated by Ekow Eshun presents the work of a new generation of photographers from Africa, who collectively interrogates ideas of ‘Africanness’. The exhibition features artists working in numerous fields from fashion to film, and architecture to literature. Their work is inspired by wide range of subjects: urban nightlife in Johannesburg, Afrofuturism, construction projects in Ethiopia, voodoo religion in Benin, and Ghana’s LGBT+ community, among others. What unites these diverse approaches is an emphasis on subjectivity to explore life and identity on the continent, by its inhabitants and diaspora. Together, the artists reveal Africa to be a psychological space as much as a physical territory; a state of mind as much as a tangible location. The exhibition is curated around three main themes: “Hybrid Cities” documents the modern African city in all its dynamism and contradictions, “Zones of Freedom” addresses the fluidity of gender, sexual identity, and the legacy of history, “Inner Landscapes” draws on the artists’ memories to conjure individual interpretations of the African past and present.

Hassan Hajjaj: The Path is still in view at the New Art Exchange in Nottingham, United Kingdom until June 23, 2019

The Path features new works from the celebrated My Rock Stars series, a new collection of previously unseen travel photographs from In Between, new works from the Dakka Marrakchia series, and a site-specific installation called Le Salon. The Path confronts Hajjaj’s dual-identity through the bold use of colour, shape and pattern. The exhibition title references Hajjaj’s personal journey from his birthplace in Larache, Morocco, to London, United Kingdom and beyond, into his experience working around the world. The showcase draws inspiration from the album The Path by the jazz-fusion musician Ralph MacDonald, which pays artistic testament to the diasporic scattering of people of African descent around the globe, a common theme in Hajjaj’s practice. Much of Hajjaj’s work focuses on figures whose family origins mostly lie abroad. He conjures a vision of a society united, not divided, by difference. In his images, cultural identity is seen as fluid and multiple rather than fixed and singular.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby: The Beautyful Ones is still on view at Victoria Miro in Venice, Italy until July 13, 2019

Begun in 2014, Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s ongoing series “The Beautyful Ones” is comprised of portraits of Nigerian children, including members of the artist’s family, derived from personal photographs and, more recently, from images taken during her frequent visits to Nigeria, where Akunyili Crosby lived until the age of 16. Its title is taken from the 1968 novel by the Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, a book whose influence endured during the artist’s adolescence in the 1990s and is still felt today. In it, the author laments the lost idealism of a generation in the 1960s for a better Africa, post-independence. In “The Beautyful Ones”, Akunyili Crosby reinstates this optimism in her own and subsequent generations while offering a powerful perspective on the complexities of a contemporary diasporic experience.

Biennials

Sharjah Biennial 14 is still open at various places in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates until June 10, 2019

Entitled Leaving the Echo Chamber, this edition explores the possibilities and purpose of producing art when news is fed by a monopoly of sources, history is increasingly fictionalised, when ideas of ‘society’ are invariably displaced, and when borders and beliefs are dictated by cultural, social and political systems. The echo chamber is the space wherein sound hits and reverberates, where memory and imagination echo across surface, across space, and across time. The curators does not propose a “how” to “leave” this context, but rather seeks to put into conversation a series of provocations on how one might re-negotiate the shape, form and function of this chamber. The echo chamber here could be construed as a modern day Faraday cage – an enclosure that covers conductive material, which prevents transmitting signals. Except here, artists are given the agency to tell stories that echo in a different way, thus creating new surfaces for a multiplicity of chambers revealing different means of connecting, surviving and sustaining a collective humanity.

Art Fairs

Art Basel 2019 will open in Basel, Switzerland from June 13-16, 2019

In this edition, Art Basel will host 290 leading international galleries presenting works of over 4,000 artists ranging from the Modern period of the early 20th century to the most contemporary artists. While galleries from Europe continue to be strongly represented, the show also features returning and new exhibitors from across the globe. The fair’s unique platform for large-scale projects named Unlimited will provide galleries with the opportunity to showcase towering installations, monumental sculptures, vast wall paintings, extensive photographic series, video projections, and performance art that transcend the traditional art fair stand. Unlimited will also bring in younger voices from diverse regions including Canadian artist Kapwani Kiwanga, whose family has Tanzanian origins, and Angolan Kiluanji Kia Henda who both explore Africa’s colonial history in their presentations.