africanah.org

Arena for Contemporary African, African-American and Caribbean Art

Archive: articles

Sokari Douglas Camp

08/12/19 at 09:20 am by Allison Young

Africanah.org at 5: We celebrate the 5th anniversary of this magazine with the re-publication of a number of remarkable essays or interviews. The last article in this series is on Sokari Douglas Camp, written by Allison Young, first published May 8, 2016.

While the Nigerian-born artist has become renowned for her sculptural adaptations of traditional Kalabari masks, and for her pointed critiques of Western museological displays of African visual culture objects, this exhibition shows the artist, instead, in dialogue with the history of Western art.

Allison Young on the Nigerian artist Sokari Douglas Camp

Blind Love and Grace, 2015.

René Tosari: graphic work

08/12/19 at 01:04 am by Rob Perrée

Tosari is different from his predecessors. He combines different printing techniques in his graphic works, he adds depth and layering. Tosari is conscious that he has to communicate a message, but this does not stop him from making room for detailing and originality. His predecessors were sometimes more limited in their technical options – the early Mexicans for instance –, but they were also often less professional and creative. The visual language of revolutionary printed matter was standardized to a large extent.

Rob Perrée on the graphic work of the Surinamese artist René Tosari

Frida Orupabo

07/12/19 at 18:23 pm by Raquel Villar-Pérez

One of the reasons why I felt enthralled by the artwork is because the artist has mastered capturing the viewer’s eyes by forming fragmented black individuals that unapologetically return the gaze to the spectator. The artist is aware that ‘when working with black bodies, it becomes immediately political’, and in that sense the artist endeavours to force the observer into a dialogue.

Raquel Villar-Pérez in conversation with Frida Orupabo, a Norwegian artist with Nigerian heritage.

Untitled, courtesy the artist

Poems for Heather Heyer by Arturo Desimone

07/12/19 at 13:19 pm by Arturo Desimone

Arturo Desimone (1984), artist, writer, poet from Aruba wrote two poems for Heather Heyer, who was killed in a clash between protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, August 2017.

Mixed Race in Art

07/12/19 at 11:52 am by Christabel Johanson

In London the Black Cultural Archives hosted a pop-up exhibition covering the stories of Britain’s mixed race babies from American GIs. The photographic exhibit is based on the children born to white women and black Americans. This dichotomy of a bi-racial identity has long existed in social, racial and political affairs. Historically however it has not been given the space to be explored neither by the white status quo nor the black community. Herein lies the difficult conversation of navigating between both worlds and whilst feeling no belonging to either.