Monday, 18 Mar 2024
Category: African Modernisms Series

Figure 1: Olu Byron, Hair Plaiting in Nigeria, pencil, 1965, dimensions unknown

Exhibition Making in Enugu and Nsukka, Nigeria: 1960s-1990s

Relying essentially on archival and library research, this article examines the (hi)story of exhibition making in Enugu and Nsukka (the political and educational capitals of Nigeria’s eastern region, respectively), beginning from the immediate postcolonial epoch of the 1960s, through the post-war period of the 1970s to the 1980s-1990s, historical periods when Nigerian artists constructed and consolidated their own perspectives on aesthetic modernism.

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View of the exhibition Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa, the Senegalese story, at Whitechapel Gallery London, 1995. Photo: Clémentine Deliss.

The Meaning of Contemporary African Art: Networks, Mobility, and Production

In this article Moses Serubiri presents a short history of africa95, the Royal Academy of Arts initiated platform.  Using this exhibition as a case study for the development of a contemporary African art discourse, the paper raises questions about the subjective frameworks informing contemporary African art exhibitions, such as collecting of artworks, historical methodology, accessible networks, mobility, and the expansion of artistic discourses.

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African Art History and the Formation of a Modern Aesthetic

The research project “African Art History and the Formation of a Modern Aesthetic” examines artworks of African Modernisms housed in museum collections. This first set of contributions for Start – Journal of Arts and Culture is the result of a public symposium at the Uganda National Museum in 2016 held as fringe event of the Kampala Art Biennale. In the coming months, the series will be continued with papers on a variety of topics related to African Modernisms and its contemporary relevance.

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