‘Legacy’ is the theme of this year’s Afrovibes Festival in the Netherlands. In an era marked by war, famine, forced displacement, and climate change, what can still anchor our faith, stability, and trust? Have we truly learned from the turbulences of the past, and what legacy are we leaving for the generations to come? At the upcoming 232nd edition of the annual Afrovibes Festival, performances capture the intensity of the current zeitgeist as experienced from Africa. Once again, the festival...
‘Legacy’ is the theme of this year’s Afrovibes Festival in the Netherlands. In an era marked by war, famine, forced displacement, and climate change,...
Just days after being named the 2025 FNB Art Prize winner, Thato Toeba was already back in Amsterdam, where they are currently based, while I am based in Johannesburg, making our conversation a warm and playful call across continents. Born in 1990 in Maseru, Lesotho, Toeba is an artist, researcher, and lawyer whose work spans collage, photomontage, and mixed-media assemblage. Even online, Toeba’s humour and generosity shone through. when reflecting on the quiet evolution of their visual language,...
Just days after being named the 2025 FNB Art Prize winner, Thato Toeba was already back in Amsterdam, where they are currently based, while I am based in...
Camissa Create, a performance art company specialising in heritage and historical narratives, will present the story of South Africa’s First Peoples during Heritage Weekend at Artscape in Cape Town. The Camissa Heritage Tour retraces South Africa’s colonial history and its enduring ties with the Netherlands. It tells the story of the country’s First Peoples—the Indigenous San and Khoi communities—who lived on this land for millennia. These communities resisted the settlers’ incursions and refused...
Camissa Create, a performance art company specialising in heritage and historical narratives, will present the story of South Africa’s First Peoples...
The New York mayoral candidate was once a singer in a Ugandan band. Imagine this: A Muslim. Thirty-three years old. Born in Uganda, raised in South Africa and the United States. The son of a renowned scientist and an Oscar-winning mother. A graduate in African Studies. An advocate for social justice. An ally of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. A supporter of equal rights for LGBTIQ+ communities. A champion of solidarity with migrants. His name: Zohran Kwame Mamdani. And he stands a...
The New York mayoral candidate was once a singer in a Ugandan band. Imagine this: A Muslim. Thirty-three years old. Born in Uganda, raised in South...
The sonic migration moves of Mo Laudi Between the African continent and Europe stretches more than distance—there’s a charged field of echoes, migrations, and imagination. Globalisto: A Philosophy in Flux – Acts of an Imbizo was a landmark exhibition curated by Mo Laudi (Ntshepe Tsekere Bopape), held from 25 June to 16 October 2022 at the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Saint-Étienne Métropole (MAMC+), France. It convened 17 artists from Africa and its diaspora, alongside researchers and...
The sonic migration moves of Mo Laudi Between the African continent and Europe stretches more than distance—there’s a charged field of echoes,...
The Amsterdam-based No Man’s Art Gallery presents the third solo exhibition of the South African artist and cultural worker. Nxedlana’s practice examines the material and symbolic embodiment of the Black figure within fashion photography. Grounded in Afrosurrealism, his imagery engages themes of race, identity, popular culture, and mass production. He has exhibited internationally across galleries, institutions, and independent spaces. Recent exhibitions include SPECTRUM (2023), his second solo...
The Amsterdam-based No Man’s Art Gallery presents the third solo exhibition of the South African artist and cultural worker. Nxedlana’s practice examines...
In 1964, African-American civil rights leader Malcolm X visited Gaza. This hidden story is brought to life in a new colouring book with stunning illustrations by Soweto-based artist Nathi Ngubane. The book traces Malcolm’s travels across Africa and the Middle East, as well as his historic two-day visit in Gaza, during which he visited the Khan Younis refugee camp, toured the mosques and markets, and listened to poetry and the stories of Palestinians who had been displaced by the Nakba, the...
In 1964, African-American civil rights leader Malcolm X visited Gaza. This hidden story is brought to life in a new colouring book with stunning...
Three captivating exhibitions featuring the works of Tengbeh Kamara, Buhlebezwe Siwani, and Michelle Sank have recently opened in Amsterdam. Why You Left, Who You Left by Tengbeh Kamara Tengbeh Kamara This photo exhibition is a personal quest to explore what it truly means to feel at home. In this two-part series, Tengbeh Kamara investigates their father’s decision to return to his native Liberia, leaving his wife and three young children behind in the Netherlands. Kamara’s father came to the...
Three captivating exhibitions featuring the works of Tengbeh Kamara, Buhlebezwe Siwani, and Michelle Sank have recently opened in Amsterdam. Why You...
The South African artist was announced as the winner of the prestigious Börsche Prize at the Photographers’ Gallery in London on May 15. The influential prize, held in partnership with the Deutsche Börsche Photography Foundation, recognises artists and their projects that have made the most significant contribution to international contemporary photography over the past 12 months. Lindokuhle Sobekwa (b. 1995, South Africa) was awarded the Prize for his book I Carry Her Photo with Me , published by...
The South African artist was announced as the winner of the prestigious Börsche Prize at the Photographers’ Gallery in London on May 15. The influential...
Charles Badoue (Ivory Coast, 1987) and Harrison Omoyater (Nigeria, 1994) both fled their home countries. “Art is a remedy for loss and pain.” “Memories of where I grew up slipped out of my mind,” Charles Badoue says in a video accompanying the exhibition he takes part in. While bright colours help mask a dark past, bringing light into the darkness, his paintings also bring repressed memories back to life. A violent conflict in which 800 people died forced him to flee. It was “a massacre by our own...
Charles Badoue (Ivory Coast, 1987) and Harrison Omoyater (Nigeria, 1994) both fled their home countries. “Art is a remedy for loss and pain.” “Memories...
By documenting life in Akwa Ibom, Nigeria, the photographer explores grief through art. In Unyọñ Ufọk , Emily Nkanga explores grief, identity, and home. Through analog photographs, Nkanga captures fleeting moments of everyday life in her hometown of Akwa Ibom, Nigeria. The images act as a time capsule, preserving the beauty of life’s transient moments. The project began in January 2021, when Nkanga returned home for her father’s burial. After living in the UK for more than seven years, she was...
By documenting life in Akwa Ibom, Nigeria, the photographer explores grief through art. In Unyọñ Ufọk , Emily Nkanga explores grief, identity, and home....
A new exhibition in Paris celebrates the presence and influence of 150 Black artists in France between the 1950s and 2000. To those familiar with the Présence Africaine Review and Revue Noire , Gerard Sekoto, Wilson Tibério, Ben Enwonwu, or Ernest Mancoba are household names. However, their artistic creations have hardly been on display in France before. And this goes for most of the works by the 150 artists now represented at the Centre Pompidou. Sekoto’s 1946 self-portrait has become the face of...
A new exhibition in Paris celebrates the presence and influence of 150 Black artists in France between the 1950s and 2000. To those familiar with the...
What happened to the Bangwa Queen, the Benin Kingdom’s Okukor, the Namibian Ekori, and the Cullinan Diamond? In its first edition of 2025, the weekly online magazine The Continent profiled eight historical artefacts from every corner of Africa. This remarkable archive of colonial theft has now been brought together in a special edition of the magazine, curated by journalist and filmmaker Shola Lawal. Each story is accompanied by an original illustration, commissioned by art director Wynonba Mutisi....
What happened to the Bangwa Queen, the Benin Kingdom’s Okukor, the Namibian Ekori, and the Cullinan Diamond? In its first edition of 2025, the weekly...
Artist Eileen Perrier argues that a person is a person beyond social and cultural divides. In her exhibition a thousand small stories , she beautifully pieces them together. In her work, she has always used photographic portraiture to forge connections between people, acknowledging the profound value of being seen. Often creating makeshift studios, she brings her sitters together around shared experiences of kinship, interests, or place. Her work has evolved into a form of social engagement that...
Artist Eileen Perrier argues that a person is a person beyond social and cultural divides. In her exhibition a thousand small stories , she beautifully...
A Century of Black Figuration in Painting brings together artworks from the past 100 years in a dialogue between artists and thinkers around the world. With a focus on painting, the exhibition celebrates the myriad ways in which artists from Africa and its diaspora have imagined, positioned, memorialised and asserted African and African-descent experiences. It contributes to the critical discourse on African and Black liberation, intellectual and philosophical movements. The title of the exhibition...
A Century of Black Figuration in Painting brings together artworks from the past 100 years in a dialogue between artists and thinkers around the world....
A wind of change is sweeping through Senegal’s capital, Dakar, where the recently announced renaming of French colonial-era streets marks part of a broader movement. The new government, led by former opposition activists President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, signals a political rupture and systemic transformation—both in relation to the former colonial power, France, and in domestic affairs. Amid these shifts, Dakar pulses as a hub of new ideas, driven by the ambition to...
A wind of change is sweeping through Senegal’s capital, Dakar, where the recently announced renaming of French colonial-era streets marks part of a...
There’s something happening in Algeria. A spark of curiosity has been ignited and a community of photographers are emerging with different perspectives and questions on nationalism, tradition and the lived experiences of the people who exist within the country bordered by the Mediterranean Sea. Award-winning photographer, Abdo Shanan - who was born in the Algerian city of Oran to a Sudanese father and an Algerian mother, partially raised in Libya before later returning to Algeria in his twenties -...
There’s something happening in Algeria. A spark of curiosity has been ignited and a community of photographers are emerging with different perspectives...
Humans adapt, move and connect. Environments change, landscapes can be challenging, and infrastructure is expected to support it all. An exhibition, on view only for one day at the 5th edition of the ZAM Nelson Mandela Lecture on February 16 in Amsterdam, gets into testing the relationship between humans, environment and infrastructure as climate change worsens, affecting those who are on the periphery -the vulnerable- the most. The beautiful Western Cape in South Africa is a home to incredible...
Humans adapt, move and connect. Environments change, landscapes can be challenging, and infrastructure is expected to support it all. An exhibition, on...
The Amsterdam Open Space Contemporary Art Museum (OSCAM), dedicated to art, fashion, design, craftsmanship, and development, will unveil its inaugural exhibition, What's the 411: STRANDS & STRUCTURES , curated by Esmeralda Tan, on Saturday, 22 February, from 19:00 to 22:00 hrs. The What's the 411 series celebrates the vibrant diaspora community in Accra, Ghana. STRANDS & STRUCTURES , the third edition in the series, is a photo-documentary exhibition created by multidisciplinary hair artist Asia...
The Amsterdam Open Space Contemporary Art Museum (OSCAM), dedicated to art, fashion, design, craftsmanship, and development, will unveil its inaugural...
In a new documentary, now showing in Dutch cinemas, Raoul Peck creates a space for the South African photographer to tell his own story. Raoul Peck is one of the world’s most celebrated documentary filmmakers. Since the 1970s, he has created socially engaged films on subjects that are as critical as they are diverse—ranging from the death of Congo leader Patrice Lumumba (Lumumba, Death of a Prophet) , to the Rwanda genocide (Sometimes in April) , the friendship between Marx and Engels (The Young...
In a new documentary, now showing in Dutch cinemas, Raoul Peck creates a space for the South African photographer to tell his own story. Raoul Peck is...
Thembeka Heidi Sincuba’s forthcoming exhibition Umngqwambo at the Association for Visual Arts (AVA) in Cape Town (16 January - 27 February 2025) presents a reimagining of African initiation rites and the interstitial spaces between memory, transformation, and the body. Through an evocative interplay of oil painting, installation, and video, Sincuba constructs a sensory landscape that interrogates the deep tensions between tradition and modernity, the individual and the collective, the sacred and...
Thembeka Heidi Sincuba’s forthcoming exhibition Umngqwambo at the Association for Visual Arts (AVA) in Cape Town (16 January - 27 February 2025) presents...
