Away from Africa

Nice, in southern France, is not a hotbed of African culture. So it was a surprise to see a poster for the exhibition Africa Pop , showcasing African textiles in an original way, at a museum I had never heard of, the Musée International d'Art Naïf Anatole Jakovsky.  The museum in itself was a nice surprise. Anatole Jakovsky was an art critic, collector, and writer, of Moldovan origin, who was very interested in 20th Century "naive" art, art from self-taught artists. He donated his extensive collection to the city of Nice. The museum was opened in 1982, in the historical Château Sainte-Hélène, which used to belong to the perfumer François Coty. The ground floor houses the permanent collection, that includes well-known artists such as the postman Rousseau and Grandma Moses. Africa Pop (running through October 18, 2026) is on the upper floor.  There were many wall hangings made of superimposed African cotton fabrics ("pagne" in French), each wall hanging combining...

This year, I am spending time in Orlando, Florida, U.S.A., with Winsome Edwards, who created an art gallery, first in New York City, which she then moved to Orlando in 2003: the International Portfolio Gallery represents artists from all corners of the African diaspora: African-American, and Caribbean, as well as African artists from the continent. Through her, I met Trent Tomengo, who prefers to be identified as Black American rather than African-American, as he hails from the United States for many generations. He is a Florida native and moved to Orlando when he was five years old. Trent has always wanted to be an artist. As a child, he loved art; his mother owned a Bible illustrated with old Master paintings, which fascinated him. Drawing came easily to him. His first painting was of a pig, much beloved by his first grade teacher! Above: Prelude to Joe, oil on canvas, 2015, 28" x 36" In college, he majored in fine arts, earning degrees from Stetson University in Painting, ...

  Paris Noir showcases many of the Black artists who came to live in Paris, study in Paris, work in Paris, from all over the world. Paris was especially a refuge for Black American artists who in the 1950s fled Jim Crow and the lack of freedom in the United States to live a free(-er) life in France. The show includes visual art: paintings, collages, and sculptures, as well as film clips, and texts describing the various periods in time, between the 1950s and 2000. As per the Centre Pompidou website : From the creation of the  Présence Africaine  review to that of  Revue noire , “Black Paris” retraces the presence and influence of Black artists in France from the 1950s to 2000. The exhibition celebrates 150 artists coming from Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean, whose works have often never been displayed in France before. Gerard Sekoto, South Africa: Self-Portrait, 1947 Artists shown hail from Martinique, Guadeloupe, the former French African colonies: Senegal, C...

  Since the end of World War II, Germany has been grappling with the consequences of the Holocaust. Since about ten years, the country has also started facing its colonial history, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Germany started controlling territories in Africa in the 1800s, mostly after the "Scramble for Africa" initiated by Bismarck during the 1884 Berlin Conference, when the continent was divvied up among European countries. Germany annexed territories in present-day Cameroon, Togo, Ghana, and Namibia. After World War I, they lost most of their colonies, which were taken over by France and Great Britain. The Germans were brutal in their rule and committed genocide in Namibia in 1914. Until a few years ago, German city streets often carried the names of German colonizers, such as Petersallee in Berlin, dedicated to Dr. Carl Peters, who set off to start colonizing Eastern Africa in 1884. After the Berlin West Africa Conference, he was named Chairman of the German East-Afr...

A few years ago, I wrote about Mboko Lagriffe's " Barbebuexpo " in Douala: a novel way of organizing an art fair. In the meantime, he has not been idle. He continued painting, organizing bi-annual Barbecuexpo art fairs, designing household items, but the big "coup" has been to win the competition for a new design on Royal Air Maroc (RAM) airplanes. In 2016, Royal Air Maroc organized a competition, Wings of African Art, to decorate the exterior fuselage of its airplanes. The jury president was Mehdi Qotbi, head of the National Foundation of Museums of the Moroccan Kingdom, and included artists and critics of renown. There were three winners: Mboko Lagriffe from Cameroon, the Franco-Moroccan Sara Ouhaddou, and Saidou Dicko from Burkina Faso. Mboko Lagriffe also won the public vote.  The "Love" Royal Air Maroc plane (photo: Dayot JC) The Love plane in the air (photo: Guillaume Février) Painting: Frontières Irréelles (Unreal border...

Belatedly, a post about Vickie Fremont's exhibition at HIFA in Harare, Zimbabwe. This exhibition took place from May 1 to May 6, 2018, under the title “Birds of Freedom”, as part of the 18th edition of the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA), which will run under the theme “We Count”. Vickie Frémont , as we know from various articles and blog posts, "has been conducting workshops around the world, using a hands-on approach for the transformation of rejects or trash into useful everyday objects. Her workshops... take place in schools, community centers, universities, and even in commercial malls. They include lectures on the destructive effects that trash of every kind has on the environment and on climate change. She has conducted her workshops using recycled materials at The Fashion Institute of Technology, Vickie Fremont at HIFA The Bank Street School for Children, The Henry Street Settlement in New York City,...