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 All posts originally made by me are credited.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)
Edosa Ogiugo
This is Lagos (1994)
KUNLE ADEGBORIOYE
A Busy Day At Balogun (2008)
Oil and charcoal on canvas
134.6 x 134.6 cm. (53 x 53 in.))
Ghanaian artist Amon Kotei (b.1915)
Nii Amon Kotei was a Ghanaian artist (sculpture, painter and musician) and surveyor.
Kotei was born on May 24, 1915, at La, near Accra, and belonged to the Ga ethnic group and trained as a surveyor. He was a distinguished artist and designed the National Coat of Arms on March 4, 1957. He was commissioned to do the design by Ghana’s first President Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and the then British Colonial administration as independence drew near in 1957. The Ghana Coat of Arms, found on all government official letter heads, is composed of a shield, divided into four quarters by a green St. George’s Cross, rimmed with gold.
He died on October 17, 2011 after which the parliament of Ghana paid tribute to him. (Wikipedia)
Works:
Top - ”Untitled”, oil, (1999)
Right- “Adei with Red Scarf,” oil (1960)
Left- “Landscape”, oil, (1996)
Bottom - “Untitled”, oil, (2000)
These were done by my great grandpa! :) Although he’s gone now, it’s nice to see that his work will be around for a long time.
(via nocturnalphantasmagoria)
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)
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’.
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.
Uzo Egonu, 1973
Born in 1931, Uzo Egonu was one of the outstanding artists of the second half of the 20th century in England, where he lived since 1945.
Influenced to the same degree by European modernism and traditional West African art, he painted pictures, to be seen in many public collections, in which abstract patterns and figurative forms in the style of pop-art combine in often poetic metaphors.
He died in 1996 in London.
The Lagosian attire for Yoruba men (the southern tribe), where I’m from, usually consists of the Buba which is a box shaped shirt made out of cotton that will either hit shy of his hips or hang long to his knees; Sokoto, which are trousers that are usually quiet loose; and Agbada (this is the master piece): It’s an oversized, flowing robe with wide arms and beautiful embroidery around the neck and chest area. This goes on top of the Buba shirt. All my collections are always inspired by the these simple silhouettes, textures and colors.
Zambia:
Works by Zambian artist Chilyapa Lwando
Aimé Mpane : 2007 Portraits installation gravure peinte
The carved and often burnt pieces of wood show us how a scar has been left on the community of Kinshasa
By carving out these faces on the wood, instead of leaving the image as a flat painting, Mpane seems to be inviting us into the psyche of the people that have been through this turmoil
Rehema Chachage (Dar es Salaam, 1987) is a Mixed Media artist-working mostly in video and sculptural instillations as well as performance-based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
She graduated in 2009 from Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town where she received a Bachelors of Arts in Fine Art degree.
The themes explored in her work are very much determined by her situatedness, but the most prominent ones are ‘rootedness’ and ‘identity’—being a stranger, the outsider, the other, alien and often voiceless—most of which have been inspired by the social alienation that she experienced in the four years she spent as a cultural ‘foreigner’ and a non South African, black female student in a predominantly white middle class oriented institution.
Her exhibited artworks includes ‘Haba na Haba’ (Michaelis school of Fine Art, Cape Town) and, ‘Chipuza’ and ‘Mwangwi’ (Goethe Institute, Tanzania). She is one of the selected 42 African artists to participate in this year’s Dak’art Biennale of contemporary African art.
FASHION 2112: LE FUTUR DU BEAU
Using various scrap and waste raw materials, Senegalese photographer Omar Victor Diop creates a recyclable and futuristic fashion spread that keenly looks into what style may look like in this dystopian 22nd century setting that provides the backdrop for his creations.
#AFRO-FUTURISM
