Exhibitions

Close to Home: New Photography from Africa is still on view at the Walther Collection Project Space in New York, United States until April 23, 2016

The Walther Collection is presenting the second installment of its multi-year exhibition series on contemporary photography and video art from Africa. Presented thematically from 2015 to 2017, and expanding the collection's longstanding focus on African photography, this program features a diverse range of emerging artists who are exploring new visions of social identity in Africa and the African Diaspora. Close to Home brings together five young photographers who represent a powerful new vision of portrait photography in Africa. Andrew Esiebo, Sabelo Mlangeni, Mimi Cherono Ng'ok, Musa Nxumalo, and Thabiso Sekgala explore intense social relationships, vividly documenting the flawed beauty of everyday life. Together, working between familiarity and distance, self-discovery and generational portrait, these artists are at the vanguard of visual storytelling.

Aïda Muluneh: The World is 9 is still on view at David Krut Projects in New York, US until April 16, 2016

The World is 9 is the first solo exhibition of Ethiopian artist Aïda Muluneh with the gallery David Krut Projects. The exhibition consists of a selection of images from a brand new series of photographic works in which Muluneh questions life, love, history, and the possibility of living in this world with full contentment. “I am not seeking answers but asking provocative questions about the life that we live – as people, as nations, as beings.” The title comes from an expression that Muluneh’s grandmother had repeated, in which she stated, “The world is 9; it is never complete and never perfect.” Unlike her last body of work, this new series is more conceptual and abstract. Black and white photography has been replaced by vibrant and mostly primary saturated colors boldly juxtaposed which adds an abstract quality to the image.

Nástio Mosquito: MetanoEo is still on view at Espai d'art contemporani de Castelló, Spain until May 15, 2016

MetanoEo is the first exhibition of the Angolan multimedia artist Nástio Mosquito in Spain. The artist uses popular language, music, and news imagery to explore the tensions present in politics, society, philosophy, and the global art market. In this exhibition, Mosquito present a body of work encompassing cinema, music, theatrical performance, video and installation which is bound to leave no one indifferent. In many ways Mosquito points us towards a future in which there are no longer any clear distinctions between art forms, or between popular culture and fine art, and indeed the very categorization of cultural identities will have become irrelevant. His self-awareness as an art-world agent sits alongside his concerns with African politics, especially those pertaining to Angola—as it deals with the legacy of a long and bloody civil war—sexual politics, rampant consumerism and other symptoms of globalization.

Biennials

EVA International, Ireland’s biennial of contemporary art will open in Limerick, Ireland from April 16 to July 17, 2016

EVA International 2016 is curated by Koyo Kouoh, the founding artistic director of RAW Material Company, under the theme Still (the) Barbarians. Artists’ projects have been selected through an open and invited call for proposals, and exhibitions will take place in various locations across Limerick. The biennial will open alongside the national celebrations for the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising, a highly significant event in Ireland’s struggle for independence from British rule. From this perspective, EVA International will investigate the post-colonial condition of Ireland as a point of departure from where artistic reflections, critical redefinitions and political transformations are articulated. The biennial will offer a unique opportunity for reflection, correspondence and questioning through a programme of artistic, architectural, literary and critical positions that interpret colonial effects on the psyche, landscape and imagination, and that continue to shape our present condition.

Art Fairs

Art Brussels will open at Tour & Taxis in Brussels, Belgium from April 22 to 24, 2016

Art Brussels is a leading platform to discover international contemporary art, and for the 34th edition, the fair will feature 140 galleries at the historic Tour & Taxis venue. Under the central theme “From Discovery to Rediscovery”, Art Brussels aims to expand its idea of discovering young galleries to include more established galleries. The fair will thus feature four curated sections: Discovery, focusing on young, emerging, and lesser-known artists with recent works, Prime, highlighting established modern and contemporary masters, Rediscovery, a new section dedicated to art from 1917 to 1987 which presents living or deceased artists that are under-recognized, under-estimated or forgotten, and Solo, an individual ambitious project dedicated to the work of one artist. The fair will also continue to give spaces for non-profit galleries which will present experimental artistic projects.