“Seyni Awa Camara doesn’t belong to any artistic school,” wrote art critic Massamba Mbaye in 2016. She resists any classification and has always considered herself a singular artist, whether in the context of her own country or in that of the international art…
In this essay, Guillermo S. Arsuaga presents a critical examination of architectural modernism through the lens of one of the most renowned examples of modern architecture in Africa: La Pyramide designed by Italian architect Rinaldo Olivieri in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). His meticulous study of Olivieri’s unique photographic record of the project, the focus…
The work of Nigerian woman artist Clara Etso Ugbodaga-Ngu (1928–2003) offers a window into cultural representations of African men and women in postcolonial Nigeria. In what was a male-dominated art scene in the 1960s, Ugbodaga-Ngu stood out not only because of her visual production, but also because of her intellectual involvement as a faculty member…
Artist and author Nene Aissatou Diallo revisits Safi Faye’s 1982 portrayal of Selbé, a thirty-nine-year-old mother of eight from Fad’jal as she and her compatriots go about their daily routines, carried by song. This feature reflects on the visual portrayal of Selbé, and Faye’s use of the camera in a documentary produced as part of the series As Women See It.
Grace Salome Kwami (1923-2006), undoubtedly a forerunner of modern art in Ghana, was one of the first women to undertake academic training in fine art. Elsbeth Court takes a closer look at her artistic formation, key work and restitution.
In this essay, Giulia Paoletti deftly explores the photographic portraits of Senegalese photographer, Mama Casset, where female sitters are not mere objects of a male gaze, but rather present themselves as viewing subjects who dare to look.
In 1970, Johnson Donatus Aihumekeokhai Ojeikere, otherwise known as J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere (Nigerian, 1930–2014), made Fro Fro, the point of departure of this short text. Storyteller and lens-based artist Jumoke Sanwo reads this image, produced during Nigeria’s nationalist drive and considers Ojeikere’s subjects and their unapologetic defiance.
C-MAP Africa fellow, Nancy Dantas, reads Mozambican modernist Bertina Lopes’s anticolonial trajectory and long-distance nationalism in ‘Tribute to Amílcar Cabral’ (1973).
In 2007, at age twenty-seven, having already spent several years directing and editing audiovisual programs for broadcast, Rosine Mbakam left her native Cameroon to attend film school in Belgium. Here, Mbakam reflects on her experience in a conversation with Sophie Cavoulacos, Assistant Curator in the Department of Film at The Museum of Modern Art.
This essay considers the photographic work of Sanlé Sory and Ambroise Ngaimoko as part of the flourishing music, cinema, and art scenes in Burkina Faso and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where studio photography was a part of the creative expression and self-styling of these nascent republics.
In this short virtual interview, C-MAP Fellow Nancy Dantas discusses Generator—a conceptual and infrastructural proposal, hinged on restitution—envisioned by curators Azu Nwagbogu and Clémentine Déliss as part of their long-term program for the AAF, Lagos.
James Barnor (b.1929) is a pioneering figure in Ghanaian photography. He documented the decolonizing processes and realities of the postcolonial context in Ghana, as well as the diasporic, metropolitan life in London.
