Dynamic Africa
Formerly, "This is Africa/fyeahAfrica".
(Profile Photo by Mama Casset)
DISCLAIMER:
I do not endorse any of the products or opinions shared on this site, nor do I claim any of the work posted here to be my own - except where stated. All posts originally made by me are credited. If no credit is given then the work is either my own/written by me or reblogged from another source.
A LITTLE ABOUT ME:
Student, 24
Based in Cape Town, South Africa
From Lagos, Nigeria
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(As an unemployed media student, all donations go into ensuring my survival in this cruel world and future projects I hope to embark on).
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(since Oct. 21th 2012)
Felix Idubor (1928-1991) was a Nigerian sculptor from Benin, part of a group of young artists in Nigeria in the 1950s and 1960s who raised awareness of the African artistic tradition at the time of decolonisation and independence.
He is considered one of the pioneers of Nigerian contemporary art.
The exhibition displays this photograph of his 1965 bas-relief for Independence House in Lagos.
Join www.blackartinamerica.com and be inspire
(via naijaboi)
EVENT: GO-SLOW: Diaries of Personal and Collective Stagnation in Lagos
New Directions in Contemporary Photography
May 30th - July 31st, 2013
SKOTO GALLERY 529 West 20th Street, 5FL.
New York, NY 10011 212-352 8058
Photo: Uche Okpa-Iroha: Thinking Man, 2010
EVENT: Changing Faces: Profiling Portraits in South African in South African Art
2 3 . 0 5 . 1 3 – 1 8 . 0 7 . 1 3
An exhibition of portraits by emerging and established South African artists reflecting on the changing face of the genre within a South African context.
Showcasing examples by selected South African masters alongside more recent initiatives by artists exploring the subject from a contemporary viewpoint, the exhibition aims to map something of the altering attitude towards the notion of the portrait and to provide the viewer with a sense of this shift in perspective.
The exhibition will include, amongst others works by George Pemba, Irma Stern, Maggie Laubser, William Kentridge, Marlene Dumas, Asha Zero, Anton Kannemeyer, Tracy Payne, Claudette Schreuders, Mary Sibande, Pieter Hugo and Roelof van Wyk.
55 Main St. / Newlands / Cape Town
Saki Mafundikwa is a maverick visionary who left a successful design career in New York to return to his native Zimbabwe and open that country’s first school of graphic design and new media. Mafundikwa is the author of Afrikan Alphabets, a comprehensive review of African writing systems. He has participated in exhibitions and workshops around the world, contributed to a variety of publications and lectured about the globalization of design and the African aesthetic. In going home and opening his school, Mafundikwa’s ambition is nothing less than to jump-start an African renaissance. (aiga.org)
“I returned home last year after an absence that totalled twenty years, going to school and then working in the US. I decided to come back home to start ZIVA, a New Media Arts school. ZIVA, besides being an acronym for Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts, is also a Shona word meaning “knowledge.”…
At the heart of ZIVA’s mission is a desire to create a new visual language – a language inspired by history, a language that is informed by but not dictated to or confined by European design, a language that is inspired by all the arts (sculpture, textiles, painting and Afrikan religion), a language whose inspiration is Afrikan. We are at a crossroads in the history of design right now with the young designers of the Western world rejecting the straitjacket confines of what design is and is not.
“African alphabets debunk the myth of the dark continent, they lay to rest the lies born out of ignorance that have been leveled at our beautiful Mama Africa” - Saki Mafundikwa
This less than 6-minute video is packed with so much information and essential knowledge about the history and importance of certain African writing systems and their value. As Saki emphasizes, this sort of information holds an incredible amount of weight in relation to our identities, and retracing these histories is of paramount importance.
The only area that I disagree with him on is when he says that the lies propagated about Africa(ns) were born out of ignorance - I’d be a little more specific and say that they were conceived from a place of hatred. Those who enslaved and colonized us despised us too.
Also, I love his subtle rejection of the word ‘tribe’.
A Touch of Art - an exclusive evening celebrating African inspired art
A market in Kano, 1960s
Vintage Nigeria
From Citizens of Porto-Novo by Beninese photog Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou, on display at London’s Jack Bell Gallery till May 25.
(via nocturnalphantasmagoria)
A boy in a Fez.
Morocco.
A. Piattoli
An Ouled Nail woman.
Etienne Dinet.
Paintings of palace guards in Cairo, Egypt, by Austrian painter Ludwig Deutsch.
Circle of Edwin Long (BRITISH, 1829-1891)
Portrait of a Moor
oil on canvas
16 x 12 in. (40.7 x 30.5 cm.)
EVENT: TOYIN ODUTOLA, My Country Has No Name, May 16 – June 29, 2013.
Opening reception for the exhibition: Thursday, May 16th, from 6 – 8 PM at 513 West 20th Street.
Untitled abstract facial portraits by Sudanese artist Elltayeb Dawelbait
Eltayeb Dawelbait has always has been “fascinated with drawing people’s faces since college” and these “faces have been developing with my practice”, like birds varying their nest-building techniques from one nest to the next, including the direction they construct it.
