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 previewed Delicate/Tendency/Response, a 2020 solo exhibition by DuduBloom More following her Cassirer Welz Award. Presented by the Bag Factory at Kalashnikovv Gallery in Johannesburg, the new work used thread, wool, paper, inks and other materials to consider traumatic memory and the ways it can be triggered. The artist framed the exhibition around questions of awareness, response and healing.
ART AFRICA previewed the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts exhibition Working Together, devoted to Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop. Drawing on photographs, archives and oral histories, it explored how the New York collective built opportunities for Black photographers through shared criticism, exhibitions and publishing. The 2020 presentation brought together more than 180 photographs by fifteen early members, alongside work to make Draper’s archive available digitally.
ArtThrob’s January 2020 review of Otobong Nkanga’s Acts at the Crossroads at Zeitz MOCAA considers how her drawings, textiles, photographs and installations connect bodies, land and resource extraction. The critic reads the survey through networks of mutual influence rather than a hierarchy separating humanity from nature. Works including Social Consequences II and Taste of a Stone become starting points for questions about ecological damage, labour and cultural memory.
ART AFRICA’s preview of the sixteenth Ségou’ Art–Festival sur le Niger described a Malian programme focused on migration, identity and social cohesion. Contemporary exhibitions and artist-led masterclasses sat alongside music, traditional cultural events and a symposium. Artists including Abdoulaye Konaté, Amahiguéré Dolo and Cheick Diallo were named in a programme intended to connect emerging visual artists, established practitioners and wider audiences.
Writing about the California African American Museum’s Making Mammy exhibition, historian Brenda E. Stevenson examined how films, domestic objects and popular imagery distorted Black womanhood. The article traced the stereotype’s role in romanticizing slavery and obscuring violence, while emphasizing enslaved women’s agency and resistance. The exhibition situated these representations within the wider history of racism in American visual culture, rather than treating them as neutral historical illustrations.
ART AFRICA announced a monumental Abdoulaye Konaté textile installation for Zeitz MOCAA’s atrium in February 2020. The work honours Malian historian Youssouf Tata Cissé and French anthropologist Germaine Dieterlen, drawing on knowledge systems associated with Mali. Made with woven and dyed cloth, its large composition connects commemoration and material practice. The museum planned to unveil it on 12 February 2020 for a year-long presentation.
ArtThrob’s January 2020 programme announcement outlined talks curated by Tumelo Mosaka for Investec Cape Town Art Fair. Sessions addressed philanthropy, collecting, museums and the sustainability of independent art platforms, alongside conversations with artists. The published roster included Malebona Maphutse, Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, Kemang wa Lehulere and François-Xavier Gbré. This is a historical account of the announced programme, not a current schedule.
Zeitz MOCAA announced a monumental textile commission by Malian artist Abdoulaye Konaté for its atrium. Composed of coloured fabric strips and conceived for the museum’s architecture, the work honours Youssouf Tata Cissé and Germaine Dieterlen while drawing on histories of knowledge, writing and symbolism.
ArtThrob’s January 2020 review examined Ruby Swinney’s Hold Still at WHATIFTHEWORLD in Cape Town. The critic read the artist’s monochromatic oil paintings on silk as unsettling encounters between human leisure and environmental damage. Conservatories, pools and faceless figures become settings for questions about consumption, spectatorship and alienation from nature. The review argued that the apparent serenity of the works gives way to discomfort about their depicted world.
ArtThrob’s January 2020 review of Moshekwa Langa’s Tropic of Capricorn at Stevenson in Cape Town considered works built from unstable forms, layered surfaces and unconventional materials. The critic interpreted their fragmentation as a resistance to settled meaning, relating Langa’s practice to experiences of displacement and uncertainty. Rather than treating the exhibition as a single narrative, the review followed its shifting relationships between matter, memory and perception.
Chad Rossouw’s January 2020 review of Soft Architectures at Goodman Gallery Cape Town examined how built forms organize behaviour and preserve unequal histories. Discussing works by Kapwani Kiwanga, Jeremy Wafer, Naama Tsabar and Mateo López, he explored the relationship between materials and the stories viewers bring to them. His assessment praised the exhibition’s coherence, particularly the dialogue between archival references and sculptures that initially appeared abstract or ordinary.
ArtThrob’s review of Cathy Abraham’s A Deeper Kind of Nothing describes how fragile materials became a means of mourning and collective reflection at Glen Carlou Gallery in Klapmuts. A central installation used thousands of painted eggshells, while another incorporated balloons holding the artist’s breath. The critic considers the shared painting sessions as spaces for remembering lives affected by gender-based violence and for confronting the difficulty of recovery.
In January 2020, ArtReview reported Yinka Shonibare’s plans for the Guest Artists Space Foundation, with residency sites in Lagos and Ijebu, Ogun State. Building on his London-based Guest Projects initiative, the proposal aimed to foster exchange between artists in Nigeria and international participants. Plans included studios, accommodation and a gallery in Lagos, alongside a rural site on a farm. The article described an intended programme, rather than confirming that either residency had opened.
Martin Herbert’s January 2020 ArtReview preview included substantial discussion of Kehinde Wiley’s engagement with European portrait traditions and Black representation. It also noted Ellen Gallagher’s Afrofuturist paintings within the announced Dhaka Art Summit programme. Read as an archival preview rather than current recommendations, the article records how these practices appeared within an international exhibition calendar at the beginning of 2020.