Solo Exhibitions

Muzae Sesay: Born on the Earth is still on view at Tiwani Contemporary in London, United Kingdom until January 18, 2025

Born on the Earth is an ongoing, psycho-geographic assessment of the Earth we are placed onto and thus acts as a reflection of the artist’s neighbourhood in Oakland, California as well as a metaphorical device inferring more universal sociological ideas. Each painting has its own mundane romantic soliloquy built from an instinctive response that reflects on Sesay’s daily interactions and thoughts about his community and the larger environment. Within this body of work, the juxtaposition of nature and built infrastructure helps illustrate a more complete idea of landscape in relation to the artist. A dark rhythmic pattern indifferent of morale or judgement emerges as a central device within Sesay’s work.

Igshaan Adams: Holy Terrain is still on view at blank in Cape Town, South Africa until January 25, 2025

In this exhibition, Adams inaugurates a line of questioning that concedes our precariousness to the multiple ways in which we inhabit the world – the ways in which the self can be sanctified anew amidst all sorts of existential harms. Composed of no less than fifteen artworks, there is in this oeuvre, much like in the previous exhibitions, the ever-present and ever-morphing feature of materiality that operates parallel to a thematic breadth that encircles this work. In a palpable sense, Adams’ work exalts and recalibrates an age-old modernist tenet that insists on a truth to materials – a sensibility that emboldens the essence of materials as opposed to its concealment. Materiality for Adams simultaneously bears a distinct aesthetic, ideological, and political function. It is the nodal point where the use of linoleum, wire, beads, thread, wire, cotton twine and fabric coalesce with their deep excavations into themes of spirituality, cultural identity, queerness, and ecological crisis.

Adji Dieye: Dègg naa tuuti Wolof is still on view at Galerie Cécile Fakhoury in Dakar, Senegal until February 1, 2025

For her first monographic presentation, Adji Dieye continues her exploration of the foundations of the notion of archives, particularly in relation to the history of Senegal. For several years now, the artist has been questioning us – often not without a certain irony – about our sometimes simplistic relationship to the archive and its incarnations; a relationship that often seems to imply an essential link between archives and truth. And yet, through her architectural installations, the artist reminds us that the linearity of a memory is only a reflection of the ideology behind it. With Dègg naa tuuti Wolof [I understand Wolof a little], Adji Dieye focuses on the way in which the economic actions of certain communities and social classes influence the way in which public space is constructed and modified. In a new set of silkscreen prints, the artist immerses us in a repertoire of everyday gestures that inhabit space and help define it.

Group Exhibitions

The Anarchist Citizenship: People Made of Stories is still on view at Framer Framed in Amsterdam, Netherlands until January 25, 2025

For this iteration of The Anarchist Citizenship, Somali (diasporic) artists are invited navigating the waters of cultural production, histories, war traumas, (diasporic) lifeworlds and possible futures. This exhibition is a holding space for visual, sonic, and poetic stories taking the form of installations, film screenings, poetry programmes, photography, archives, workshops, textiles and dialogic spaces. Within this context, the spatial design takes on a crucial role – the exhibition design serves as an intermediary between the different artistic positions. It mirrors the provocative visual language, vibrant cosmos, aesthetic sensibilities and storytelling that define contemporary Somaliland – zooming into specifically its capital city, Hargeisa. The presented works reflect the collective efforts of those who participate in its creation, weaving together stories, histories, and language to create visual narratives that celebrate the complexities of citizenship in this region.

Ancestral Metamorphosis: Soly Cissé & Seyni Awa Camara is still on view at Black Liquid Art Gallery in Rome, Italy until January 30, 2025

The exhibition explores the human condition through a lens that fuses myth and contemporaneity, placing the works of Soly Cissé and Seyni Awa Camara in dialogue. These two Senegalese artists, with distinct languages and materials, share a profound reflection on the transformations of the human being and the link between the human and the wild. Soly Cissé’s hybrid and dreamlike creatures, made with a painting dense with symbolic meanings and chromatic tensions, find a counterpoint in Seyni Awa Camara’s clay sculptures, which celebrate resilience, fertility and dialogue with the spiritual world. Their works, laden with symbolism, dissolve the boundaries between reality and imagination, natural and supernatural, transporting the viewer on a journey through past, present and future.