Solo Exhibitions

Ibrahim Mahama: Purple Hibiscus is still on view at The Barbican Centre in London, United Kingdom until August 18, 2024

Purple Hibiscus, named after Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s eponymous 2003 novel, is an ambitious new commission created in collaboration with hundreds of craftspeople from Tamale in Ghana. The work has been woven and then sewn by hand to produce colossal panels of pink and purple fabric that will be fitted to the brutalist planes of the Barbican’s Lakeside façade. By collaborating with networks of women weavers and sewing collectives for the production of Purple Hibiscus, Mahama is actively engaging with local economies. He believes that the making of his artworks should be connected to their local contexts and the lives of those communities. The vibrant hues of this particular work are a departure from his usual palette and are an expression of allyship with marginalised communities while aiming to build new alliances.

King Houndekpinkou: Six Prayers is still on view at Southern Guild in Cape Town, South Africa until August 26, 2024

Known for his distinctive vocabulary of shape, texture and colour, Houndekpinkou’s work revels in unexpected hybridities, which are the product of a diasporic world-view that resists cultural borders. He has developed an explorative practice that blends tradition and ancient spirituality with modern techniques, drawing heavily from Japanese and West African culture. Produced over eight weeks while participating in the GUILD Residency in Cape Town, Six Prayers fuses a variety of traditions with future possibilities to offer new myths to new gods, complete with their own ritualistic objects. Houndekpinkou offers these six vessels as super realities in the same multiverse. Having learned the meditative art of wheel-thrown ceramics under master potter Toshiaki Shibuta in Bizen – one of the six ancient kilns of Japan known as the Roku Koyō – he infuses a deep spiritual intent into his process, creating vessel forms that he then stacks and clusters into sculptural totems in which function dissolves into dysfunction.

Joël Andrianomearisoa: Measures Lullabies and Whispers is still on view at ifa-Galerie in Berlin, Germany until September 1, 2024

For his first solo exhibition in Germany, Joël Andrianomearisoa writes on the trails of his memory. He draws inspiration from a lullaby his grandmother sang to him before bedtime. Iny Hono Izy Ravorombazaha [the white bird]. With time, words may be forgotten, but the body remembers the lullaby’s rhythms and vibrations. Andrianomearisoa uses these intervening spaces to imagine new lyrics for his story at ifa Gallery Berlin. Measures Lullabies and Whispers is an invitation to explore the rhythm of lullabies and the power of memory. The soothing melodies passed on from one generation to another act as a reminder of a deep-rooted sense of connection and belonging. The essence of lullabies, from the feelings of intimacy they evoke to the healing power they hold, is the starting point for Andrianomearisoa’s poetic exploration in this site-specific installation.

Group Exhibitions

After Life is still on view at Nubuke Foundation in Accra, Ghana until September 11, 2024

After Life features artists who have previously participated in Woori, an annual festival in the Upper West region of Ghana hosted by the Nubuke Foundation. The festival showcases indigenous cultures, knowledge and practices on textile weaving. From catastrophic cyclones to record breaking heat waves, the force of the climate crisis is hitting Africa hard. This is despite Africans being amongst those who contribute the least to the conditions causing the global climate crisis. After Life threads together each artists’ response to the unfolding climate crisis through the materials they use and the stories they are telling. After life is about what got us into this crisis – extraction, unbridled consumption and exploitation – and it is also about how we can transform, about where we can go from here.

Festivals

KLA ART 2024 will take place at 32° East in Kampala, Uganda from August 8-24, 2024

For the fifth edition of KLA ART taking place in Kampala, 32° East is inviting artists and the general public to view cultural heritage through the lens of care. For this year, the theme of the festival is Care Instructions. This highlights the way the curators think about cultural heritage in Uganda as a series of instructions that they have received on how people might live well. With oral tradition breaking down due to globalisation and rural-urban migration, they explore how the festival can be a space for artists and audiences to engage with indigenous/local knowledge as care instructions and apply them to the concerns of today. The theme has led the artists to explore topics ranging from genealogy rituals to plant medicine, coffee culture to bath rituals and traditional food cultures to local rhythms.