africanah.org

Arena for Contemporary African, African-American and Caribbean Art

Archive: articles

Carabbean Travelogues: Aruba

07/04/18 at 09:58 am by Sasha Dees

Aruba1996_Tony Capellán_Mar Caribe_S (2)

In November last year Sasha Dees started travelling in the Caribbean region, researching the sustainability of contemporary art practices and the influence of international (exchange) projects, funding, markets and politics. During her research she will be keeping a travelogue for Africanah. Her first stop in the region was Ayiti (Haiti), one of the islands in the region she has not spent any time before (see February edition). In March she reported about her stay on Korsou (Curacao). This month the focus is on Aruba.

Tony Capellán, Mar Caribe, 1996.

Spoken word artist Malcolm London

05/04/18 at 18:15 pm by Christabel Johanson

Art gives us the ability to acknowledge each other’s humanity. In the words of MLK (Martin Luther King Jr), Justice is what love looks like in public. I believe that but there is clearly a discrepancy as to who gets justice & who doesn’t. We need more love and art, to me this allows us to access parts of ourselves and reimagine a better tomorrow. I don’t think there can be justice without art. There cannot be art without an interrogation of justice.

Spoken word artist Malcolm London from Chicago in conversation with Christabel Johanson

Waswad on the Future of Man

05/04/18 at 17:36 pm by Matt Kayem

Spontaneity is a word that rings in Waswad’s head as he sets out to work on a piece of artwork. He says he doesn’t sketch or plan for the work and therefore works with his initial idea which he continues developing as the work progresses. He says he prefers to work with the raw idea, unhampered by rigorous planning and sketching which ends up destroying its originality.

Matt Kayem about the work of the Ugandan artist Waswad

Waswad’s Amasendela, albizia and ebony wood, 87 x 30 x 40cm. Photo by the artist.

Anthea Hamilton

05/04/18 at 08:43 am by Raquel Villar-Pérez

The Squash is playful, humorous, inquiring, and subtly irreverent. Anthea Hamilton’s latest project is a witty response to what Tate Britain represents: the maxim referent of establishment art.

Raquel Villar-Pérez on the Tate project of Anthea Hamilton.

The Squash, by Anthea Hamilton. Image sourced from The Telegraph Newspaper

Composing with the eye: The work of Peter Clarke and Lionel Davis

01/04/18 at 11:16 am by Themba Tsotsi

LionelDavisMaskfrom-the-Masquerade-series_2009_Mixed-Media-and-Collage-on-Paper_57-x-40.2-cm_LR

Composition of the Eye is at a certain level a retrospective exhibition, it is also about the two artist careers that has spanned over fifty years combined. It is also about the merging of their discourses, this way both their aesthetic influences and impact can be deemed for their respective achievements. (…) Both their repertoire is or was informed by the techniques that informed Black artists during the apartheid era.