Posts from the “Africa” Category

Adama Delphine Fawundu: The Sacred Star of Isis

Posted on April 7, 2019

Blue Like Black, Argentina, 2018 © Adama Delphine Fawundu

Born in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Adama Delphine Fawundu is the only first first-generation American of her siblings. Her brother and sister were born in Freetown, Sierra Leone and lived there until 1975, when Fawundu and her mother returned to bring them to the United States.

Fawundu would not return again until 1992, at the age of 21, during the Christmas holidays, during the first year of a decade-long civil war. Though she was unable to return to her homeland, Fawundu traveled the continent, visiting South Africa in 1995, early in Nelson Mandela’s presidency, as well as Ghana and Nigeria. And when she finally could come home, she brought two of her sons, then ages ten and seven, to create the foundation for a lifelong connection to the motherland.

Embracing the power of connection, Fawundu takes an expansive, inclusive approach, personifying the water spirit that connects Africa and its Diaspora using photography and film. In The Sacred Star of Isis, now on view at Crush Curatorial in New York through April 6, Fawundu travels the globe to create images from the New York State forests and the waters of the coast of Freetown, Sierra Leone, to cities within Argentina, a place known to systematically attempt to erase its Black presence.

The exhibition includes “the cleanse,” Fawundu’s first film — a glorious celebration of rhythm and ritual contained in the moments when Fawundu places her perfectly pressed tresses under the shower and begins to wash her hair, an incantation filled with magic, power, and wisdom. Here, Fawundu shares her journey creating The Sacred Star of Isis.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Still from video short “the cleanse” 2017 © Adama Delphine Fawundu

Aligned with Sodpet © Adama Delphine Fawundu

Categories: Africa, Art, Feature Shoot, Photography

Gloria Oyarzabal: Woman go no’gree

Posted on March 14, 2019

The search for knowledge, wisdom, and understanding lies in the process of distilling fact from fiction, truth from lie, meaning from myth. It is the sifting through appearances where deception flourishes, in search of the source of authenticity and integrity upon which existence takes root.

“One consequence of Eurocentrism is the racialization of knowledge: Europe is represented as the source of knowledge and Europeans, therefore, as thinkers,” photographer Gloria Oyarzabal observes, recognizing the systems of power profiting off this misinformed belief.

These systems of power feed off a form of colonization that extends beyond the centuries-long rape, pillage, and enslavement of the people and the land — it is the colonization of the mind, a far more insidious programming that is more difficult to detect and eradicate, for its forms are multifarious, moving like a virus from one person to the next.

The programming runs so deep that many will fight to defend its dastardly deeds before do something so honorable as change their mind. Often times, the programming only ends when one finds it is too foolish and disgraceful to hold irrational thoughts. Then it becomes a process of decolonizing the mind of the bankrupt ideologies and logical fallacies one has been fed throughout their lives, and do the work of self-education, recognizing that blind spots will be revealed.

In her series, Woman go no’gree, Oyarzabal has done just this in a photographic exploration of gender, history, knowledge-making, stereotypes, and clichés of Africa. Using a mixture of archive colonial images mostly found in magazines, street photos taken with a digital camera, and studio photography found or made during her artist residence in Lagos in 2017, Oyarzabal employs a visual language that subverts and spellbinds in equal part, leading us into a silent realm of symbol and iconography. Here, Oyarzabal shares her journey with us.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: Africa, Art, Feature Shoot, Photography

Koto Bolofo: The Prison

Posted on February 11, 2019

At the age of four, Koto Bolofo left South Africa as a political refugee, and did not return until 1992, two years after Nelson Mandela was released from prison. The first thing Bolofo did was visit Robben Island, where Mandela had been held for the majority of his 27 years in confinement in a cell barely six square meters in size. The photographs he took with his wife have just been published in a new monograph titled The Prison (Steidl). Bolofo graciously agreed to speak with L’Oeil de la Photographie about this project.

“My parents decided to go back to South Africa after Mandela was released. My father said that the country had changed, to come back and see for myself, as there could be good opportunities. My first intention was to visit Robben Island. I had heard so much about it, but I had only seen five photos. One was taken in the early 1960s when Mandela was held there, and I wanted to see this place for myself before I discovered what South Africa was.

“I took the boat, a fisherman’s boat, that took the prisoners to the island. It wasn’t yet a Museum at that time. This was in the very early days. I had to go because I knew that when a new regime comes into power, the first thing that they do is try to eradicate all the traces of the past. They don’t want to be reminded of a bad symbol of the past.

“Fortunately humanity was on the mainland celebrating getting their country back and no one was paying attention to Robben Island. It was my wife and I. When we landed we saw an old board with paint peeling off and in Afrikaaans it said, “Welcome to Robben Island.” Then we saw the main gate with the same words and it was painted really well. The slogan really shook me. Here you are, as a black person, and they are celebrating, welcoming you. And there was a sickness in that.

“When you go there, you completely break down. You cannot believe a human being could do this to one and other because they are fighting for freedom and equal rights. How can they do this? ‘Why? was the word going through my head over and over again. You are breaking down, the tears come, you are weak at the legs.

“South Africa is a vast country with a 13% white minority. And they had the black prisoners wearing shorts and going barefoot, while the Indian prisoners got to wear long trousers, pullovers, and shoes. There were other forms of discrimination, like black prisoners received no bread. Nelson Mandela was campaigning to have equal rights on that island and it took years. There is a photo of Mandela in shorts in the courtyard breaking stones. That was designed to break the human spirit. Everything they did was to break the spirit. The post was vetted, and words were blanked out in a black pen so that the prisoners couldn’t see what their loved ones were writing. They tried to break the prisoners but little did they know that the prisoners had a nobility and a strength of intellect that was part of their survival instrument. They would never break an African person down.

“I couldn’t take photos. I couldn’t even pick up the camera. It’s a burning pain that you can’t describe; it’s so close to you. My wife was saying, ‘You have to take pictures. It can be taken away and destroyed. No one is paying attention now.’”

“We came to a harrowing thing: Mandela’s cell. You can put it on paper, but you have to experience what that space is, put yourself in that room, and say, ‘How on earth can you put a man in a space like that for so many years?’ Once you are in his cell, you are completely gone. It’s really cold in there and they were wearing shorts, and the blanket was horsehair, designed to degrade you to the lowest common denominator.

“These photos are very poetic. They are not photos that wanted to provoke. This is a peace document. You sit down and look at it in your quiet moment to have a moment of your humanity and ask yourself, ‘Why?’ and ‘How can we move forward from this?’

“The most important thing in this book is the list of all the prisoners that had been sentenced to Robben Island. No one knows about this list. Thank God we have the Internet. I asked myself, ‘Who are these people? Where are these people? Where are he rest of them?” We only knew about the main people, eight or ten of them. The impression we had was these were the only prisoners they were keeping, because that’s all the South African media focused on.

“I asked about the others. I didn’t get the information so I snooped around the Internet for two and a half months before I came to a website and a massive list popped up and it had the names of all the prisoners, the date of sentence, admittance, release, and their address. There were thousands of names on the list.

“I printed it off that night, kept it, and stored it away. I later went back to the website and the list had been taken down, like it did not exist at all. I published the list in the book. The youngest prisoner who was sentenced to Robben Island was only 15 years old. He was sentenced for 10 years! His is amongst the list of prisoners in the book. His name is Dikagang Moseneke. His current occupation is the Justice Minister of South Africa.

“This is the most important book my wife and I will do in our lifetime. This is a book of education. All schools should pay a compulsory visit to Robben Island. When you show them the instrument of evil forced upon a people, the youth can see the truth stands counter to corruption. The truth can make democracy more transparent. That’s when a nation moves forward. Go back to your past and you will find your future.”

Today, Robben Island is a museum, included on the World Heritage List by UNESCO in 1999. Bolofo’s book is a monument to the past, a story of lives that will never be forgotten, lives that were given to justice, truth, and freedom.

First Published in L’Oeil de la Phootgraphie, May 2014

Categories: Africa, Art, Books

Adreinne Waheed: Black Joy and Resistance

Posted on January 17, 2019

Hailing from Oakland, California, Adreinne Waheed took up photography at the age of 13 and never put the camera down. Inspired by the work of Roy DeCarava and Gordon Parks, Waheed has dedicated her life to celebrating the beauty and resilience of the African diaspora.

In her new book Black Joy and Resistance, Waheed does just this, bringing us inside the 2015 Million Man March, #FeesMustFall, and Carnival in Bahia, as well as Brooklyn’s own West Indian Day Parade, Afropunk, Dance Africa, and Soul Summit.

“Every image in this book was photographed at a large public event,” Waheed says. “What ties them together is the celebration of black and brown cultures and the resistance of conformity, oppression patriarchy, etcetera. Music, dance, art and other forms of passionate expression are elements that are interwoven throughout.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: Africa, Art, Books, Brooklyn, Japan, Latin America, Photography

Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred

Posted on October 15, 2018

Seventh (2018) © Lina Iris Viktor, Courtesy the Artist and Mariane Ibrahim Gallery

When British-Liberian artist Lina Iris Viktor enrolled in college in the United States, she was confronted with the subject of race and identity in a manner she had never considered prior to coming to America. “I realised what it meant to be Black in the US, and experienced the cultural realities that came with it,” Viktor tells AnOther.

Charged with the desire to examine her roots and explore her heritage, Viktor discovered an inextricable link in Pan-African history that has become the very heart of the new exhibition, Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred, now on view at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Here, Viktor looks back to the founding of Liberia, Africa’s first and oldest modern republic. Established in 1822 by the American Colonization Society, Liberia was originally imagined as a conduit for the resettlement of free-born and formerly enslaved Black Americans in the early days of the abolitionist movement.

Artists and writers of the era seized the figure of the “Libyan Sibyl,” a prophetess from classical antiquity who foretold of tragedy, and recast her in the image of activist and freed slave Sojourner Truth – a symbol Viktor embraces throughout this series of glorious large-scale self-portraits exquisitely gilded with 24-carat gold. Here, Viktor shares her journey across time and space, reclaiming the lost narratives that demand to be told.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Online

Eleventh (2018) © Lina Iris Viktor, Courtesy the Artist and Mariane Ibrahim Gallery

Categories: Africa, AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Painting, Women

Deana Lawson

Posted on October 10, 2018

Deana Lawson, Oath , 2013; from Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph. © Deana Lawson / courtesy Rhona Hoffman Gallery and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

Deana Lawson’s photographs embody the realm of myth, a space where the divine and mortal realms merge. They centre around the subjects of family, spirituality, sexuality, and intimacy within the black experience, in the US, the Caribbean, and Africa. She credits Carrie Mae Weems and Renee Cox for piquing her interest in documenting issues of race and identity, as well as cultivating a nuanced conversation around black aesthetic in both art and daily life.

Now living in Brooklyn, Lawson draws inspiration from everything – from vintage nudes, juke joints and acrylic nails, to fried fish, lace curtains, the Notorious B.I.G. and thrift shops. Her large-scale photographs are extremely formalist and meticulously staged, but they’re also profoundly intimate studies of black life around the globe today.

Her first monograph, Deana Lawson (Aperture), presents 40 key works made over the past decade in the US, the Caribbean, and Africa. A selection of 13 photographs and a new film will be on view in Deana Lawson, the new exhibition opening at the Underground Museum in Los Angeles on October 12, 2018.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Deana Lawson, Nikki’s Kitchen , 2015; from Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph. © Deana Lawson / courtesy Rhona Hoffman Gallery and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

Categories: Africa, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography

Pieter Henket: Congo Tales

Posted on August 31, 2018

The Impossible Task, from “The Mole and the Sun” © Pieter Henket.

The Twins, from “The Two Nkééngé Sisters” © Pieter Henket.

Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ once observed, “When an old person dies, it is as if a library of knowledge burns.” In this one statement, he perfectly captured the inherent vulnerability of oral history and literature.

Recognizing this, Eva Vonk – an executive producer at Tales of Us – approached Dutch photographer Pieter Henket to collaborate in the creation of a photography book that would share the childhood stories collected and told by the people living in Mbomo, a small town situated in the Republic of Congo.

With Congo Tales: Told by the People of Mbomo, Henket has created a library of iconic tales, with the photos starring the storytellers themselves. “Gathering them was a challenge, to say the least,” he explains. “Eva visited the forest seven times over the course of three years and met with many people that were able to help.”

“She arranged with a local couple to start a radio station where people could come and tell their families stories. She arranged for people to sit around fires and share their stories there. And she asked a man to go around the villages on his motorcycle to collect stories. It became a huge passion project to collect this piece of undocumented oral history.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Tough Love, from “The Woman Who Traded Her Baby for Honey” © Pieter Henket.

Categories: Africa, Art, Books, Huck, Photography

Malick Sidibé: LOVE POWER PEACE

Posted on July 30, 2018

Untitled, 1979/2004 © Malick Sidibé

Malian photographer Malick Sidibé (1936-2016) bought his first camera, a Brownie Flash, in 1956 while working as an apprentice for Gérard Guillat in the nation’s capital of Bamako. Self-taught, Sidibé hit the scene, taking photographs at African events filled with teenagers coming of age at the same time that the country reached independence in 1960.

Whether photographing at parties or in his studio, Sidibé effortlessly captured the dignity, style, and pride of the first generation of post-colonial Malian men and women. Now, his portraits have become symbols of LOVE POWER PEACE – which just happens to be the title of Malick Sidibé’s seventh solo exhibition at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, on view now through August 10, 2018.

LOVE POWER PEACE presents a selection of previously unseen work from Sidibé’s archive that chronicles the creation of a nation liberated from nearly a century of French rule, filled with the hope, optimism, and boundless energy of youth. Photography gave Sidibé a means to mirror and amplify, creating exquisite images that speak to self-representation, to how one sees themselves and wants to be seen.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Africa, Art, Exhibitions, Photography

Letso Leipego: Tell My Story

Posted on June 7, 2018

Shortly after independence in 1966, Botswana was ranked one of the poorest nations in Africa. Yet, over the past 50 years, the southern African nation has risen to become one of the world’s fastest growing economies with flourishing mining, cattle, and tourist industries.

One of the most sparsely populated nations on earth, Botswana is home to just two million people, most of whom live in the challenging environmental conditions of the semi-arid countryside. It’s here, in these remote corners of the nation, that photographer Letso Leipego journeys to create a series of portraits for a project he began in 2014 titled Tell My Story.

Hailing from the national capital of Gaborone, Leipego recognised a strong interest in the native Tswana culture from both tourists and social media. He then focused his energies on developing a series of portraits that reveal the majesty of the people, the dramatic beauty of the land, and the powerful synergy that occurs when they are in harmony together.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Categories: Africa, Huck, Photography

Dazed Selects the Best Photo Stories of April 2018

Posted on May 3, 2018

Keyezua, “Fortia” (2017). Giclée print on Hanhemühle paper 52 1/2h x 78 3/4w. Courtesy of Keyezua

THE ANGOLAN ARTIST WHO USES THE POWER OF PHOTOGRAPHY TO OVERCOME TRAUMA

Angolan artist Keyezua’s dad passed away when she was young after being diagnosed with diabetes. As a result of the illness, both of his legs were amputated. Frustrated by the amount of imagery of disabilities that only show people suffering and weak, Keyezua worked with six disabled Angolan men to create a series of masks in which she channelled her trauma – captured in a striking series of images.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Categories: Africa, Dazed, Exhibitions, Photography, Women

Malick Sidibé: Mali Twist

Posted on April 25, 2018

Photo: Malick Sidibé. Un jeune gentleman, 1978. © Malick Sidibé. Courtesy of Fondation Cartier pour l’art contempourain and Éditions Xavier Barral.

Malick Sidibé (1935–2016) was a master of the form, a singular visionary whose photographs tell the story of the liberation, self-determination, beauty, dignity, and pride of his native Mali in the heart of West Africa.

Born in the village of Soloba when Mali was still a colony of France, Sidibé hailed from a family of herders who worked the land. His natural propensity for art made him the first member of his family to attend school: the Institut National des Arts de Bamako, in the nation’s capital in 1952.

In 1955, be began an apprenticeship with photographer Gérard Guillat-Guignard; he opened Studio Malick in 1958. His timing could not have been more fortuitous for Sidibé and Mali were coming into their very own at the same time. As a member of the Mali Federation, which included Sengal and the French Sudan, the nations achieved independence from France on June 20, 1060, after a period of negotiations. On September 22, Mali left the Federation and was on its own.

The spirit of freedom is evident throughout Sidibé’s work. Honing in on the youth culture of the times, he captured the joyous energy of the first generation of liberated Malians on the beach, in the clubs, at sporting events, and in his studio. In every photograph he created he found the heart and the soul of his people and the result was nothing short of beautiful.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Malick Sidibé. Regardez-moi!, 1962. © Malick Sidibé. Courtesy of Fondation Cartier pour l’art contempourain and Éditions Xavier Barral.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Africa, Art, Bronx, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot