It's an evocative image — and it was intended to be: Diana, Princess of Wales, wearing a protective visor and flak jacket, walking through a live minefield in Huambo, Angola. The image of the princess, at the time one of most famous women in the world, surrounded by danger, made headlines across the world.
A Côte d'Ivoire-based artist, known as Kadarick, draws on the fantastical powers of The Hulk, Spiderman and Wonder Woman to articulate today's fears.
In a new pop-art series of 23 paintings titled Joker, the self-taught painter explores pop culture, politics, mass media and capitalism. The series was recently on display at the LouiSimone Guirandou Gallery in Abidjan.
At the age of just 30, Palesa Ngwenya is helping transform these areas through her position as development coordinator of Maboneng Township Arts Experience. “We turn homes in the townships into art galleries,” says the young South African woman, who grew up during apartheid. “It’s about showing people that you can use what you have to do things that can change your life."
In her curatorial project Making Way, Ruth Simbao brought together works that complicated the idea of globalization’s effect on African nations, especially the idea that the new phase would usher in an almost frictionless movement of labor and capital across borders. Works by artists like Athi-Patra Ruga reflected on questions of how bodies moved through settler colonialist spaces.
In Women Are Heroes, JR introduces women who sometimes look death in the face, who go from laughter to tears, who are generous, have nothing and yet share, who have had a painful past and long to build a happy future.
By 2010, the Nigerian film industry, also referred to as “Nollywood,” had become the second-largest film industry in the world. Today, the accessibility of digital video technology continues to enable prolific amateur filmmakers to produce wildly popular low-budget and direct-to-DVD films, which deal with timely issues of religion, poverty, and corruption.
The term “Afrofuturism” was coined in the 1990s by the cultural critic Mark Dery, who recognized a preoccupation with the future in the work of a number of black artists. Ever since, it has remained a term that is retrospectively applied to seemingly disparate artists, from Missy Elliot to Toni Morrison. What unites the movement is a shared fascination with the black experience, particularly in America.
“I want to show the people how bad the troubles were," says artist Muhiyidin Sharif Ibrahim of Mogadishu, Somalia. "That’s the message we’re going to send to people.”
(Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times)
In an endeavor to raise awareness at the local and international level, Razia organized the Mifohaza Masoala (Wake Up Masoala) music and environmental festival, which took place at the edge of the Masoala Rainforest in October 2011. The concert featured some of Madagascar’s most thrilling performers, and the festival was a tremendous success, with over 10,000 people in attendance.
In a bid to fight the spread of COVID-19, the EU Delegation to Ghana on Wednesday 27 May joined the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) and artists from the Ghana Graffiti Collective, to launch an initiative to use street art and graffiti to create awareness about coronavirus and migration.
The artwork created by the Ghana Graffiti collective speak about hope, tolerance, love and solidarity.
Rights activists in Mozambique have marched through the capital Maputo to protest a colonial era law still included in new legislation that allows rapists to go unpunished if they marry their victims.
The "marriage effect" clause sees convicted rapists given a five-year suspended sentence if they marry their victims and stipulates that the perpetrator should stay married to the victim for at least five years.
SUNO is one of the few luxury fashion brands that has been born out of a social cause. Max Osterweis and designer Erin Beatty launched their first collection in the spring of 2009, " after post-election violence threatened to damage the economy and industry in Kenya."
While the clothes is mostly produced by local artisans in Kenya, Suno has since expanded its business to include production in Peru, India, and NY.
As massacres, civil wars, and violence permeated communities, people have searched for asylum in other countries. Due to its location and relative safety, Spain has become a common destination for immigrants seeking a better life. Female immigrants in particular tend to experience much more arduous journeys in that they frequently are subjugated to sexual abuse.
Godfrey Mwampembwa, popularly known as Gado, has been holding politicians accountable for nearly 30 years. Now, his concern has shifted to the coronavirus.
In a quiet office on the third floor of a building in Nairobi’s central business district, the cartoonist known by his pen name, Gado, was sketching a satire about the coronavirus.
Not far from the Burkina Faso capital of Ouagadougou, approximately 30 kilometers, lies Operndorf Afrika, a village that’s governed by art and a global exchange of culture.
Fespaco is a meeting place put to good use to promote the development of black cinematography. From 1973, topics of discussion are introduced at each edition.
The “Perceiving Freedom” glasses sculpture on Cape Town’s Sea Point promenade looking towards Robben Island, commemorates late President Nelson Mandela and the values of freedom and equality.
The Uganda National Contemporary Ballet (UNCB) presented a new powerful and moving production advocating for the child soldiers all over the world at the National Theatre in Kampala.
To change Bostwana’s regional misconceptions about HIV, Kesego Basha-Muebli, founded the Miss HIV stigma free pageant. A pageant designed for women who are currently receiving health and wellness counseling and HIV antiretroviral treatment to come out to their friends and family as being HIV positive.
I am a visual activist. Most of what I have done over the years focuses on black LGBTQIA+ and gender-non-conforming individuals from South Africa and other neighbouring countries. It’s about making sure we exist in the visual archive. I call myself a visual activist — or, rather, a cultural activist, because this work is not only about the arts; I’m focusing on education, I’m dealing with culture in a way that confronts a number of issues.
As local rapper Naty says, a group of young people are intent on making their mark in Madagascar's cultural history. From gifted slam poet Caylah to inventive visual artist Temandrota and a crew of entrepreneurial skateboarders, a generation of young Madagascans are making space for creative projects.They are inspiring in their enthusiasm and hopeful for the future despite the poverty in their country and its colonial past.
WACENA, was established in the year 2008 by a number of concerned mothers together with women students from Makerere University Kampala with a purpose of addressing and alleviating the acute and long-term consequences of violence against the women and children of Uganda.
JAMES GUBB was finishing off the knuckles when the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) shut him down. Trading single shares between two accounts, Mr Gubb had managed to “draw” the image of a fist with an upright middle finger onto the share-price chart for Oakbay Resources and Energy Limited, a company controlled by the Gupta brothers, cronies of President Jacob Zuma, that is at the centre of allegations of “state capture” in South Africa.
Activist Boniface Mwangi on confronting corruption in his homeland, and director Sam Soko on recording his campaign
Kenyan director Sam Soko’s debut documentary feature, Softie, opens with the film’s protagonist, Boniface Mwangi, sourcing 1,000 litres of pigs’ blood. “I’ve found a van for you. When do you want it? When are you getting the blood?” Mwangi asks.