Paul Sika

Paul Sika was born in 1985 in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. Growing with a passion for video games and programming, he studied in Software Engineering at the University of Westminster in London between 2003 and 2007. Upon graduation, he moved back to his native country where he started a career in photography a year later. Sika developed an approach that he called photomaking – a portmanteau for photography and filmmaking. This technique consists of digitally making an image rather than capturing it. Thus, Sika creates his photographs in a cinematographic way, producing astonished scenes that highlight the people and objects. His bright and coloured images are dense and force the viewer into an unfamiliar space, opening the way for new conversations. His work is a combination of artistic inspiration, self-imagination, and visual expression. His creativity is influenced by the Ivorian popular culture, contemporary paintings, and video games that illustrate his story telling. In Lilian’s Appeal (2012), the colorful images show people striking exaggerated poses in the street or common places. When viewed in a sequence, the photographs seem to follow a script or tell a story.

Saïdou Dicko

Saïdou Dicko was born in 1979 in Déou, Burkina Faso. As a young shepherd, he developed his artistic sense by drawing animal shadows on the sands. Growing up, he started to capture the silhouettes of people on houses’ walls or on the colourful embroideries of his mother. These shadows remain the core element of his visual storytelling, which he often enhances with paint, digital collage, and textile pattern. In 2005, Dicko started to work with photography and expanded his practice with painting, video, and installations. He explores themes of equality, union, and childhood through the representation of opposing concepts such as light and shadow. The artist uses portraiture with his subjects painted in black, essentially to draw the viewer’s attention to the social contexts of each scene. In his recent series The Shadowed People, we see anonymous characters playing on the streets, arguing next to a wall, or standing in sideways. In 2012, Dicko co-founded the collective Rendez-vous d’artistes, a platform for artists, curators, gallerists, and journalists to exchange ideas and projects.

Evans Mbugua

Evans Mbugua was born in 1979 in Nairobi, Kenya. After graduating from high school in 1997, he moved to France where he studied visual arts at the University of Toulouse and obtained a graphic design degree in 2005. Inspired by Pop art, Mbugua’s work is constructed in the narrative that overlaps playful subjects with bright and colorful backgrounds. Using prints to enhance his portraits, he creates a layered effect made up of the print as a backdrop and the portrait on the foreground. The artwork is uniquely created by linking the digital printing on paper with the painting on plexiglass, and enhanced with pictograms and urban signs spotted by the artist in large cities. In his Body Talk (2017) series, Mbugua collaborated with a pair of choreographers to create a dialogue between contemporary dance and visual arts. Together they oscillate between works of photography, paintings, and performances as they excavate ideas of the body as a form of language.

Ade Okelarin

Ade Okelarin aka Asiko was born in 1978 in London, United Kingdom. A self-taught visual artist, he spent his formative years in Nigeria before moving to London in 1995. In England, he attended the Brighton University graduating with a degree in Chemistry. Influenced by the work of European esteemed fashion photographers, Asiko incorporates fantasy and reality narratives in his work as a response to his experiences of identity, culture, and memory. For him, photography is about inspiring conversation, on how he sees himself in the world and how he interprets his African heritage. Interested in portraying the beauty and strength of black women, Asiko explores the female body and the role of women in society, drawing from a childhood memory at his grandmother’s funeral. In his series Adorned (2016), the woman body stands out, on a monochrome background, enhanced with traditional attributes. From one series to another, he alternatively focuses on a different aspect of Yoruba culture, mainly symbolized through female appearances and womanhood.

Collin Sekajugo

Collin Sekajugo was born in 1980 in Masaka, Uganda. Although he did not study art at school, he went on a study tour in 2006, travelling throughout the continent to learn new art-making techniques. Influenced by this experience, Sekajugo started exploring issues of social responsibility and highlighting the link between art and community in Africa. His works focus on the human figure, using silhouettes and collaged elements to question ethnocentrism and visualize people’s shared humanity. His mixed-media collages include embroidery, photography, acrylic paint, and locally sourced materials such as polypropylene bags and bark cloth. Using these recycled materials allows him to raise awareness on durability and sustainability, as a metaphor to the cliché that Africa does not produce art. Sekajugo also creates drawings, paintings, and performances, which often evoke his homeland’s beauty, chaos, and energy and contemplate his own place within Uganda’s diverse social fabric.