A new report by PEN America details how artistic freedom in Africa is being suppressed amidst flawed elections, military coups, and political crises.
Africa
Posted inOpinion
How Africa’s Cultural Institutions are Leading the Way in Audience Development and Research
Rather than engaging with Africa’s cultural sector through a singular lens, what if the world looked to it as a source of innovation and instruction?
Posted inFilm
Western Films About Africa Are Neocolonial Even When They Try Not to Be
Attempting to interrogate its own lens, the documentary Stop Filming Us mixes sharp insights with disappointing shortcomings.
Posted inNews
The Artistic Illusion Protecting Cattle in Botswana From Lion Attacks
According to a new study, painting eyes on the backsides of cows can reduce attacks by animal predators.
Posted inArt
A Letter to President Macron: Reparations Before Restitution
In the wake of initiatives to repatriate Africa’s stolen property, the author of this letter asks the French President to repair what his ancestors have broken, before attempting to restore the war trophies of colonial conquest.
Posted inArt
In Centering West Africa, an Exhibition Tells Another Story of the Medieval Period
The medieval epoch shouldn’t only be envisioned through a European lens.
Posted inNews
Somewhere in the Namibian Desert, Toto’s “Africa” Is Playing … Forever
Thanks to artist Max Siedentopf, the 1982 soft-rock staple turned über-meme has reached its logical conclusion.
Posted inArt
A Journalist and an Architect Investigate China’s Sway Over Africa
Forty years on, a new arrogance continues to complicate the narrative of Africa as China encroaches — physically, socially, and economically — on its soil.
Posted inArt
Africa’s Overlooked Modernist Architecture from an Era of Independence
Futuristic pyramids and boxy concrete forms rose up with the modernist architecture of Africa in the 1960s and ’70s, although beyond the continent the radical forms aren’t widely recognized.
Posted inArt
Meet the Afronauts
In the 1960s, while the United States and the Soviet Union were playing out their battle of who would make it to the moon first and so dominate the galactic skies, a former high school teacher in Zambia decided his country needed a space program.
Posted inNews
To Stop the Illegal Ivory Trade, You Have to Stop the Art
China’s destruction of some 6.1 tons of seized ivory earlier this month may have seemed like a small dent in a country where around 70% of the illegal trade is concentrated, but it was an encouraging sway in the right direction.
Posted inArt
Uganda’s 2nd Annual Contemporary Art Festival Fills Pop-Up Storage Containers
KAMPALA, Uganda — All over Kampala, and in many parts of Uganda, you’ll find them: shipping containers. From and to all over the world, shipping containers arrive and go out. Some stay, serving as a storage container on the side of a road, repurposed for whatever the contents. Others go. But, for this foreigner at least, they make up part of the city’s character.