African-Art-:-@artnewsafrica

African Art : @artnewsafrica

By Joburg Post

We plug breathtaking Instagram pages that share our values; changing the Africa narrative, shed light on Africa’s beauty & potential, promote black beauty, highlight black excellence and tell the stories of ALL THINGS AFRICA.

This week we’re crushing on @artnewsafrica

@ted Artist Laolu Senbanjo uses skin as a canvas. He was inspired by his grandmother’s tattoos, which are beautiful lines and symbols from Yoruba mythology. He calls his project “The Sacred Art of the Ori” — a reference to the word “Ori,” meaning ‘your soul’ in Yoruba mythology. “Only when you tap into your Ori, then you can actually move mountains,” @laolunyc says. Watch his #TEDTalk at go.ted.com/sacredart. Photo courtesy of Laolu Senbanjo #laolusenbanjo

Simphiwe Ndzube @simphiwe_ndzube next to his artwork, Unchartered Lands and Trackless Seas II, 2018, which is currently on view in @rubellcollection New Acquisitions exhibition #simphiwendzube image courtesy @rubellcollection

Via @zswstudio“Delighted to be participating in the new Yinka Shonibare MBE curated exhibition “Talisman in the Age of Difference” at Stephen Friedman Gallery in London. I’m showing a piece from my brand new lightbox series “Karikpo: Holy Star Boyz” (2018) shot in Ogoniland. This exhibition is a journey of encounters that explores ideas of magic and subversive beauty in work by artists of African origin and across the diaspora, and artists who empathise with the spirit of African resistance and representation. The show opens tonight and features a stellar list of artists. More later... Image: Holy Star Boyz (2018) by Zina Saro-Wiwa; C-print on Duratrans mounted on lightbox, (20”x30”) #holystarboyz#karikpo #star #talismanintheageofdifference#zinasarowiwa #photography #lightbox#yinkashonibareMBE#stephenfriedma

Floriane De Lassée, Digital print on Fine Art Barita or laminated wood, 17×24 in. / 32×46 in. Edition of 5/ size. "The series « How Much Can You Carry ? » is based on Floriane‘s fascination for the long lines of walkers, carrying diverse and bulky objects all along African roads. Started in 2012 in Ethiopia, and still on-going, this series spread out to 4 continents, covering around 15 regions to this day, within 7 countries (Ethiopia, Rwanda, Nepal, India, Japan, Indonesia, Bolivia, Brazil), and more to come. Through these simple and authentic photographs, she proposes to stage each person with what counts most to her/him. And in these remote communities, what matters most are often first necessity products or consumption goods : sacks of grains for the farmer who must sell his crop in the nearest city to feed his family, bales of straw to be traded for a cooking pan, empty bottles to be recycled … Leaving misery on the side, the models show a unique sense of curiosity, fun, and pride, in staging themselves, proud to put forward what can be considered in lots of cases as their only survival means. And looking at these portraits, the complicity with the photographer, and the pleasure of performing, the pride of seeing oneself, heroic, modern caryatid, sustaining on one’s head a life of consumption like mountains on one’s head, have taken over the pure tribute to a crushing labor, and finally take us onto an odyssey of a rare humanity.

Toyin Ojih Odutola, ‘To Wander Determined’, curated by Rujeko Hockley is now on view at@whitneymuseum through Feb. 25, 2018. 📸: Matthew Carasella

THE NEW ORLEANS MUSEUM OF ART Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred. 10/05/2018 - 01/06/19 Lina Iris Viktor is widely recognized for her exploration of art’s connection to history, spirituality, and prophecy. Recasting factual and fantastical narratives surrounding America’s involvement in the founding of Liberia, Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred. explores a mythicized history of the West African nation. Established as an act of American “altruism” following the abolition of slavery, the Republic of Liberia appears as an uneasy utopia, both a paradise lost and a cautionary tale on the pathology of colonization. Central to Viktor’s gilded portraits is the mercurial figure of the Libyan Sibyll; from the Latin sibylla meaning prophetess, she is an ancient figure of fate and foresight, later invoked by eighteenth-century abolitionists as the predictor of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Across the series, Viktor’s soothsayer navigates an evocative landscape which references modern and traditional West African textile culture, contemporary African portrait photography, and the national iconography of both Liberia and the United States. In resurrecting a long-forgotten history collective to Liberia and the antebellum United States, A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred. embodies the artist’s enduring interest in transforming perceived absences into sources of light … and life. Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred., curated by Allison Young and, created for the Great Hall, is organized by the New Orleans Museum of Art and is sponsored by Reuben O. Charles II, Pulane Kingston, Alida and Christopher Latham, and Jim and Christina Lockwood. Additional support provided by Mariane Ibrahim Gallery. www.noma.org THE NEW ORLEANS MUSEUM OF ART One Collins Diboll Circle, City Park New Orleans, LA 70124

Regarding Africa: Contemporary Art and Afro-Futurism @telavivmuseum On view till May 27th 2017 Curator: Ruth Direktor The term Afro-futurism refers to music that grew during the 1960s among Afro-Americans as well as to the poetry, comics, cinema and art that developed later. Today it applies to a wide range of art that reflects, in various absurd ways, an African version of futurism. That is, the subversion of traditional divisions: fantasy and cosmology, usually ascribed to the mythology of a pre-modern past, transmute in an ancient-modern attire to representations of science fiction and futurology. Different narratives are reflected through utterances that shatter the conventional distinctions between truth and fiction, between myth and science, between technology and spiritualism. Often, the supernatural conception anchored in primeval myths appears in a futurist context, thus subverting hegemonic thought. In contrast, animism and science fiction coexist without conflict and in fact stem from the same sources. The works in the exhibition reflect the vitality and effervescence that motivate Africa today, as well as the chaotic, brutal and at times tragic African reality, and its never-ending changes. Thus the exhibition not only denotes the futurist African direction, but also moves along the axis between an optimist and a pessimist perception of the continent, decades after its gradual liberation from colonialism. The works were created during the post-colonial period: the earliest date to the 1960s and 1970s (Africa’s “Decade of Independence”) and should be viewed as individual cases , as well as expressions of colonialism and its ramifications, through a redefinition of the African body, landscape and culture. Works created in Israel reflect Little Africa—the growing community of immigrant workers and asylum seekers from Africa in south Tel Aviv. They express various aspects of the Africa–Israel connection, and of the way Africa has assimilated into the Israeli imagination, fantasy and reality. Image: Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou, Untitled (Musclemen series), 2012, c-print, Courtesy of the Artist and Jack Bell Gallery

-JP

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