2014 had no shortage of exceptional images and stories from the African art world. Longtime favorites of ours like Wangechi Mutu, Hassan Hajjaj, and Chris Saunders continued to perfect their trade with exhibition openings across the globe. Morocco opened its first contemporary art museum. Street art took over Accra's streets for the fourth year running. The Brooklyn Museum made a commitment to African art with an ambitious new long-term installation. 1:54 in London, Europe’s leading contemporary African art fair, drew in work by over 100 of the Continent's top artists. LagosPhoto returned for an outstanding fifth year of photographed bliss in Nigeria. First Thursdays became "a thing" in Cape Town. Everday Africa brought their instagrammed images across the Continent all the way to the Brooklyn Bridge. London paid its respects to Nigeria's late provocative photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode. Mother Of George filmmaker Andrew Dosunmu made his solo photo exhibition debut in NYC. We even got to know a new face in textile, Kenyan-American illustrator/designer Jamilla Okubo, and Adire icon Chief Nike Davies-Okundaye. With a new year just upon us, we looked back at some of the best African visual art 2015 had to offer.
NOT x Chris Saunders, Jenny Lai & Chris Saunders (USA / South Africa)
Macdonald Mfolo. Dennis Chuene. NOT X Chris Saunders, 2014.
In January of 2014, New York-based designer Jenny Lai traveled to Johannesburg to team up with South African photographer and filmmaker Chris Saunders, the same director behind Nozinja's "Tsekeleke," which we recently crowned one of our Top Videos of 2014. Lai is the founder of NOT, an experimental womenswear brand that defines itself by its own definition of the word "not." According to the label, "not" is "the space around the solid and tangible, the hidden spaces within the folds of the clothing, and the open spaces where you reveal yourself surprisingly. It negates the solid and tangible in favor of space, imagination, and movement."
Together Lai and Saunders set out to showcase "cultural reinvention" through a fashion-meets-photography experiment entitled NOT x Chris Saunders. Moving across Joburg, Orange Farm, Soweto and Cape Town, the collaborators linked with four South African hyper-creatives to creatively interpret Lai's NOT garments. The group included accessories designer Dennis Chuene (who founded Vernac Bags), vintage clothier Dr. Pachanga, menswear designer Floyd Avenue (from the Smarteez in Soweto), and Pantsula dance costumer/puppeteer Macdonald Mfolo. Their work, displayed as a selection of re-interpreted NOT garments along with Saunders' images and final cuts documenting the collaboration, debuted back in September at NYC's "global art campaign space" Wallplay. Visit Another Africa for their exceptional coverage of the project, including interviews with Lai and Saunders, Floyd Avenue, Macdonald Mafolo, Manthe Ribane, Dennis Chuene, and Dr. Pachanga.
>>>More Photos: Wallplay Presents NOT x Chris Saunders In NYC
Nguva na Nyoka, Wangechi Mutu (Kenya)
Mountain of Prayer, Nguva na Nyoka. Image via Victoria Miro London.
The work of Kenyan visual artist Wangechi Mutu has always reveled in the crossroads between the fantastic and the grotesque. Her latest collection of mind-bending collages at Victoria Miro Gallery in London, titled Nguva na Nyoka, draws from East African coastal mythology and re-imagines her trademark female figures as underwater sea goddesses. Watch Mutu give Okayafrica TV an exclusive tour of her first solo US exhibition, A Fantastic Journey, below.
>>More Photos: Wangechi Mutu’s Mystical Sirens & Serpents In London
Project Diaspora, Omar Victor Diop (Senegal)
Albert Badin, 2014. Image provided by Diop.
Omar Victor Diop's latest photo series, Project Diaspora, serves as the artist's exploration of African identity in Europe from the 15th through the 19th century. The project was conceived when the Senegalese fashion and fine arts photographer was confronted with his distinctive otherness while completing a four-month residency in Spain. The twelve self-portraits that make up the series depict Diop in the role of notable African noblemen, artists and revolutionaries who, according to his artist statement, "lived a life of glory and recognition while facing the challenges of being other." For more from Diop, see images from his striking Parisian exhibition.
>>>More Photos: Omar Victor Diop’s ‘Project Diaspora,’ A Visual Pilgrimage Through Art History
‘Ruka (to braid/to knit/to weave)’, Nontsikelelo Mutiti (Zimbabwe)
Ruka (to braid/to knit/to weave). Photo provided by Nontsikelelo Mutiti
Ruka (to braid/to knit/to weave) existed as a space for Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti to take on the role of designer, student and researcher in an African hair salon environment. Her recent exhibit at Recess in SoHo (which ran June 3rd-August 2nd) highlighted hair braiding as an art and the transmission of the practice. "In many states to practice legally a hair stylist must attend cosmetology school and obtain a license," she told us. "There is not much emphasis on black hair in cosmetology courses." Braiding has thus long been a community-oriented practice passed down generationally. Ruka (to braid/to knit/to weave) featured an intimate community braiding workshop where participants were invited to explore different techniques for arranging natural hair and encouraged to bring their favorite hair products and regimen to share with the group.
Lagos State of Mind II, Emeka Ogboh (Nigeria)
Lagos State of Mind II (detail), 2014 Sound, speakers, earphones, 1984 Volkswagen Vanagon “Danfo” bus, images on plasma screen Courtesy the artist Photo: Steven John Irby
Emeka Ogboh is a contemporary audio-visual artist whose recent Lagos State of Mind II installation brought a slice of Naija to NYC. Ogboh channeled the intensity and diversity of sounds from Lagos by placing one of the city's vibrant danfo buses alongside NYC's own ubiquitous yellow cabs. The sonic exhibit at the brand new Africa Center in Harlem was accompanied by a photographic tour of the bus driving through NYC’s historic African-American neighborhoods and iconic landmarks such as the Apollo and the Empire State Building. For more from Ogboh, listen to his recent Nigerian audio collage, The Ambivalence of 1960.
>>>More Photos: Nigerian Sound Artist Emeka Ogboh Brings His Lagos Danfo Bus To NYC
Aso Oke: The Woven Beauty, Tunde Owolabi (Nigeria)
Aso Oke – The Woven Beauty, Photo by Tunde Owolabi
Originating from the Yoruba culture, Aso Oke [ah-SHAW-okay] is a handwoven textile that holds both cultural value and beauty. Traditionally worn for special occasions such as weddings or naming ceremonies, the fabric is a marker of Yoruba heritage that transcends its home country. For one week in November at the Red Door Gallery in Lagos, Nigerian visual artist Tunde Owolabi showcased the fabric at his second solo exhibition, Aso Oke - The Woven Beauty. Using Aso Oke as a tapestry of history and cultural heritage, Owolabi created narratives through paintings, photography, sound and film installations, photo-painting, and mixed media to preserve one of the few surviving forms of textile designs left in Nigeria.
>>>More Photos: ‘Aso Oke: The Woven Beauty,’ Tunde Owolabi’s New Exhibition In Lagos
Hââbré, Joana Choumali, (Cote d'Ivoire)
Hââbré, photographed by Joana Choumali
Ivorian photographer Joana Choumali's striking portraits of Abidjan's elderly citizens represent a digital record of traditional practices that are falling into obscurity due to modernization. Titled Hââbré, which translates to writing or scarification in the Kô language from Burkina Faso, this photo project serves as a link between the past and present and an exploration of the complexity of African identity today.
>>>More Photos: Joana Choumali ‘Hââbré’ – Scarification Portraits in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire
Ghosts, Ralph Ziman (South Africa)
Ralph Ziman , 'Ghosts,' C.A.V.E Gallery, LA
Best known for his Venice murals and music video work with the likes of Toni Braxton and Michael Jackson, South African-born/Venice-based artist Ralph Ziman spent six months collaborating with Zimbabwean vendors in Johannesburg to create 200+ Shona-beaded replica AK-47s. The result was a series of photos capturing street vendors posing with the stunningly decorated weaponry. Although some have interpreted Ziman's photo series as a critique of "Africa's dominant gun culture," it's important to keep the international nature of the arms trade in mind. In bringing his exhibit to the US, "the world's biggest arms exporter," Ziman went some way to redirecting the one directional flow of the arms trade. The series invited viewers to consider the original source of the guns on display. Ghosts, which featured sculptures, installation and photos of the handmade guns, ran at L.A.'s C.A.V.E. Gallery February 8th through March 2nd.
>>>More Photos: Ralph Ziman’s Beaded AK-47s In ‘Ghosts’
Kesh Angels, Hassan Hajjaj (Morocco)
Kesh Angels, 2010
The work of Moroccan-born, London-based pop artist Hassan Hajjaj continually delights with its vibrant blend of the traditional and the modern. In Kesh Angels, his NYC exhibition debut that ran at the Taymour Grahne Gallery in 2014, the self-taught photographer captures the vibrant street culture of Morocco and pays tribute to the biker culture of the young women of Marrakesh. For more from Hajjah, see his series of Moroccan biker Barbie dolls.
>>>More Photos: Hassan Hajjaj Photographs Moroccan Biker Women In ‘Kesh Angels’
Foreign Nationals, Aldo Brincat (South Africa / Botswana)
Jerk Off,' Botswana's Ma Rock heavy metal cowboys photographed by Aldo Brincat
Drawing from the visual aesthetics of heavy metal, WWE and American cowboys, the Ma Rock, a brother/sisterhood of leather-clad men and women, are widely known throughout Botswana for the enigmatic style and spectacle that marks their appearance. This year rising South African-born/Botswana-based photographer Aldo Brincat and around fifteen members of the Botswana Ma Rock group collaborated on a photo series entitled Foreign Nationals, which ran at Sophie Lalonde Art gallery in Gaborone.
>>>More Photos: Botswana’s Heavy Metal Cowboys Photographed In Gaborone
A Slice Of Lagos, Sesu Tilley-Gyado (Nigeria)
A Slice Of Lagos' by Sesu Tilley-Gyado. ‘Rev Samuel Johnson (1846-1901) and wife, Lagos’, Repurposed daguerreotype still.
British-Nigerian multi-medium artist Sesu Tilley-Gyado's A Slice Of Lagos, which ran at London's Rook and Raven Gallery in September, explored Lagos in the 1800s through reconstructed archival photography and film. According to Tilley-Gyado, 19th century Lagos was a rich melting pot for four cultures: the Yoruba, the Brazilians-Cubans, the Creoles, and the British. "I wanted to tell the story of Lagos’ multicultural origins," she says. "Its melting pot 19th Century where Yoruba kings fought for the throne, British colonials came to stay and tens of thousands of Brazilians, Cubans, and Creoles (descendants of slaves) ‘returned’ to Lagos." The slice of 19th century Lagos that Tilley-Gyado chose to tell was a particularly colorful and modernized one. In a series of fifteen portraits of 19th century Lagosians, the team warped the original black and white archival photos into digitally restored and colorized images given a modern facelift on fictionalized TIME magazine covers.
>>>More Photos: 19th Century Lagos Through A Digitally Restored Lens
Infro, Mehdi Sefrioui (Morocco)
Gauderic Vilmaure and Josué Comoe wearing shirts by Issey Miyake
Inspired by the fashion industry's lack of diversity (its "pink elephant") and encouraged by Moncler’s black cast of models at their Gamme Rouge SS 2014 show, Paris-based Moroccan photographer Mehdi Sefrioui photographed black male models Maël Caloc, Josué Comoe, Joseph Gio Degbadjo, Julio Goba, and Gauderic Vilmare, set against a striking pink-tinted landscape outside of Paris. Sefrioui's photos showcase eye-catching pattern-work from designers including Issey Miyake and Ben Sherman. Head to Another Africa, where the series debuted, for more on Sefrioui's Infro photos.
Interwoven Histories, Romuald Hazoumé (Benin)
Miss France, 2013. Found objects, 64 x 22 x 18cm. Photo: October Gallery Website
Mixed-media artist Romuald Hazoumé's anthropomorphic masks are made from discarded petrol jerrycans and serve as metaphors for the continuing political, economic and environmental degradation of Africa. Work from the Beninois creative was recently on display at London's October Gallery as part of their Interwoven Histories exhibit which highlighted handcrafted work from contemporary African artists.
Faces And Phases (2006-14), Zanele Muholi (South Africa)
Collen Mfazwe, August House, Johannesburg, 2012. Photo Credit: Zanele Muholi
South African photographer, visual activist and community organizer Zanele Muholi spent the last eight years documenting members of South Africa’s LGBTI community for her portrait series Faces and Phases. Sexual orientation and gender identity form a major part of Muholi’s work and she focuses her lens mainly on black lesbians and other queer-identified persons living in South African townships to create a positive and rarely-seen record of their lives. The participants in the award-winning artist’s series are framed within the medium of portrait photography, and each black and white image exists to counter the dominant heteronormative narratives surrounding race, gender and sexuality in post-apartheid South Africa.
>>>More Photos: Zanele Muholi Documents Queer South African Lives In ‘Faces And Phases (2006-14)’
Africa Is The Future 10th Anniversary Magazine Covers, Africa Is the Future (Togo/Congo)
Africa Is The Future Magazine Cover
Africa Is The Future commemorated their 10th year anniversary with the launch of the AITF magazine covers. Created in 2004 by Nicolas Premier and Patrick Ayamam, AITF describes itself as “an art intervention.” The project has developed over the last decade from the ‘AFRICA IS THE FUTURE’ tee-shirts, through several multimedia projects and now the AITF magazine. For the latest project, AITF “imagined Africa as the first world power through covers of a fictitious magazine.” The covers project highlights a near future in which a united Africa has become a superpower.
>>>More Photos: Africa Is The Future Magazine Covers
Everyday People, Kay Hassan (South Africa)
Kay Hassan, Untitled, 2013-2014. Image courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery
Everyday People is an exhibition of recent works by South African artist Kay Hassan that ran in November at New York City's Jack Shainman Gallery. The sprawling solo show, which featured Hassan's trademark large scale paper constructions in addition to found objects and audio-visual installations, was Hassan's second at Jack Shainman (the first being 2008's Recent Photographs). Born in 1956 in the Johannesburg township of Diepkloof, Hassan spent his childhood hanging around his mother's shebeen as she catered to the miners and other working class individuals who gathered to drink after a hard day's work. A young Hassan soaked up personal stories and political views from the men and women who were living during this era of political apartheid, and his experiences from that period are bound in his work. Focusing primarily on the heads and upper torsos of his subjects, his paper constructed pieces form imposing portraits modeled after passers-by he comes across in Johannesburg, where he's currently based.