A continent. A diaspora.
A conversation.
OPENING THE JOURNAL
Loading content…Art leaves a record. Return to the exhibitions, artists and ideas that continue to shape the conversation.
Browse by the original source publication date. Historical selections are reviewed and added over time; coverage is not exhaustive.
Browse daily editionsART AFRICA published the curatorial announcement of thirty artists selected for La Panafricaine, the central group exhibition of the fourteenth Bamako photography biennial. Under the theme Kuma, or the Word, the edition proposed a dialogue between images, speech and memory. Its selection ranged across the continent and diaspora, including Héla Ammar, Nuno Silas, Zara Julius, Maheder Haileselassie Tadese and Jeannette Ehlers.
Zeitz MOCAA announced its first children’s book series, The Stories that Ran Away, in July 2024. Written by Meridian Berndt and illustrated by Jax Lamb, Berndt, Jill Joubert and Mandy Wamono, the four books grew from the museum’s earlier child-centred exhibition. The museum described the project as a way to connect African creation stories, visual art and learning, extending its educational work beyond the galleries.
Published by ArtThrob from the catalogue for Igshaan Adams’s Weerhoud exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield, Nkgopoleng Moloi’s essay examined movement as a source for material and spiritual exploration. It connected Adams’s work with dancers to his textile practice, questions of trauma and the body’s cultural inscriptions. The account located these experiments within community collaboration and Sufi thought, extending discussion of the artist beyond decorative readings of weaving.
Maya Pontone reported for Hyperallergic on a family-held portrait newly displayed at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Attributed to James Alexander Simpson and thought to depict Mary Ann Tritt Cassell, the 1839 painting may have been commissioned by her mother, Henrietta Steptoe, who had been enslaved. The reporting traced family provenance and curatorial research while preserving uncertainty around the sitter and commission.
In May 2024, Zeitz MOCAA reported that its fellowship with the University of the Western Cape had welcomed Yasmina Ali Yahia, Angela Muritu, Edna Bettencourt, Kakule Chadrack and Abbey IT-A. The third cohort combined museum work with study toward an honours qualification. The announcement records a pan-African investment in curatorial practice, collections, education and heritage, with fellows contributing to the museum’s Atelier programme.
Nancy Dantas’s ArtThrob feature traced the Casablanca Art School’s challenge to colonial hierarchies through an exhibition in Sharjah. Historical publications, ceramics, murals and archival research connected classroom experimentation with public interventions in Morocco. Dantas emphasised how African, Amazigh, Islamic and Mediterranean inheritances informed a collective modernism, placing the school’s educational ambitions within wider African and Arab cultural networks rather than a narrowly national art history.
Reviewing the Metropolitan Museum’s Harlem Renaissance exhibition for Hyperallergic, Zoë Hopkins highlighted both its international reach and its unresolved debates about Black representation. The 160-work presentation, curated by Denise Murrell, placed well-known figures alongside artists whose contributions had received less attention. Hopkins read its juxtapositions as evidence of artistic freedom, political disagreement and transatlantic exchange, rather than one unified style or obligation.
In April 2024, Zeitz MOCAA announced a new Selections from the Collection presentation in Cape Town. Drawing on contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora, the exhibition addresses migration, memory, visibility, desire and power through multiple media. Featured artists include Nandipha Mntambo, Zanele Muholi, Kudzanai Chiurai and Joël Andrianomearisoa. The museum’s announcement scheduled the display from 4 April 2024 until 4 April 2027.
ART AFRICA reported on Passengers in Transit, a Venice Biennale collateral exhibition organised by the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos. April Bey, Christa David, Euridice Zaituna Kala, Joana Choumali and Thandiwe Muriu explored belonging through interdisciplinary practices and archives. The curatorial framework connected Black women’s representation with cross-cultural identity, drawing on the right to opacity rather than asking difference to become easily legible.
Writing in ArtThrob after the 2024 Lagos Biennial, Sinazo Chiya examined how its temporary installations reworked the historically charged Tafawa Balewa Square. Works by Bruce Onobrakpeya, Ibrahim Mahama, Victor Ehikhamenor and Tabita Rezaire tested refuge through material, belief and communal space. The review situated those experiments within the square’s colonial, independence and FESTAC histories, finding possibilities for communities to reshape inherited settings.