In an interview with Louisiana Channel, artist Arthur Jafa notes; “pictures allow you to own things. Walking down the street you see a dead body you can’t take it home with you, but you can take a picture with you.” He elaborates: “It’s a way to access the experience or the confrontation with the thing”….
Intervals of dreaming help us to stand up under days of work… What the memoir writer remembers is not the same thing the poet remembers. He may have lived less, but he photographed much more, and he re-creates for us with special attention to detail. The poet gives us a gallery full of ghosts shaken…
Figurative elements emerge in smokey hues, lips poised and blue. An elsewhere-gaze and portrait glazed with azure shades. A portrait veiled, a leaning tower lists towards the heavens. While another is inscribed with crimson text of unanswered questions. Illuminated, light cascades beyond windowpanes onto crisp white walls primed for exhibition. ‘Blue is the Warmest Colour’…
THE PROJECT SPACE is a cultural platform founded by the late artist Benon Lutaaya. It was founded on the principles of the promotion of culture through entrepreneurship and the advancement of contemporary African art. Since inception, the space has had a special focus on womxn artists. Blue by Antonia Wetzel This year it is set…
This is one reason why the erotic is so feared, and so often regulated to the bedroom alone, when it is recognised at all. For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy…
Death of the body and the death of the spirit: disparities between religion, culture and ethnic perceptions of marriage. Love and marriage go together like horse and carriage, but who is the horse and who is the carriage? – Kieron Jina The bridal party proceeds down an aisle fashioned from city streets. Swept up in…
Founded in 2015, GUAP is an innovative platform documenting and nurturing creative talent within music, fashion, art and business both locally (UK) and globally. Although it is set up as a video magazine, it also produces an online and print quarterly magazine and organises live activations including workshops and exhibitions. The first in its documentary…
The Natural Nancy Doll was supposed to help soothe some of the tension that lay lingering after the riots had quieted down. After the Watts Rebellion of 1965, the city of Los Angeles was in critical need of a social rebrand. Decades of racialised inequality and a matchstick incident of police brutality against Marquette Fry…
The Biennial is intended to place art in dialogue with the city. The first edition in 2017 took place at a railway compound in Yaba, beginning the Biennial’s intention to become a platform that binds urbanism and contemporary art together. By moving to different historically and architecturally significant buildings in Lagos, the Biennial becomes a…
Some surprise was expressed recently when Travis Scott featured 90s gothic metal icon Marilyn Manson on the bill of his Atlanta-based Astroworld Festival. Manson, with his cartoon Satan image, seemed out of place among the trap bangers of Migos and Young Thug. However, his inclusion is not that surprising when you consider how many of…
Africa has been losing boys for generations. From the time of the transatlantic slave trade, successive generations of young men have moved off the continent into the New World: first by force and later searching for opportunities Africa has not been allowed to cultivate for them. These young men have become the black face of…
A Portion is a self-reflective series by Tony Gum. “Pain, fear, rage, loss, darkness and the unknown eventually, reconnecting with, love, hope, light and joy” emerging as a response to her recent experiences. Dualities, themes with a monochromatic tone, scenography and anthropomorphism are modes used to visualize a complex process of inner turmoil, rebellion and…
