How Alioune Diagne, Diébédo Francis Kéré, Bunmi Augusto and Lindokuhle Sobekwa are making strides in the art scene in 2023.
Artists have mastered the visual and conceptual use of florals to evoke themes of beauty, life, growth, and cultural symbolism in their works. In our latest editorial, we introduce five artists of African descent - Mofoluso Eludire, Cherry Aribisala, Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou, Morgan Otagburuagu, and Wonder Buhle Mbambo - who are exploring different moments of the human life.
Read on about how these artists are painting, photographing, and incorporating florals into their artworks here.
Alioune Diagne to represent Senegal at the 2024 Venice Biennale
For the 60th International Art Exhibition – Biennale di Venezia which will be held from 20 April to 24 November 2024, Senegalese artist Alioune Diagne has been selected to represent his country. Diagne is a socially engaged artist whose work is rooted in an exploration of the continent's major challenges: ecology, the place of women in society, discrimination, and the notions of transmission and heritage. The Senegalese pavilion which will be held at the Arsenale is a collaboration between Alioune Diagne, the Senegalese Ministry of Culture and Historical Heritage, and Massamba Mbaye, an art critic, curator, and historian specialising in communication theories.
Senegal joins the list of African countries - Nigeria, Congo, and Benin Republic - that have been announced for the 2024 Venice Biennale. Here is a growing list of participating countries, artists, and curators.
Recent wins in the African art scene:
Diébédo Francis Kéré is the recipient for the 2023 Praemium Imperiale award. The Burkinabé-German architect is known for his innovative works that are often sustainable and collaborative in nature. The Praemium Imperiale is a global arts prize awarded annually by the Japan Art Association. As a result of this award, he is the 2023 architecture laureate for the Praemium Imperiale. Kéré was praised for his buildings that "utilise the skills and energies of the local community" and for "employing traditional building materials and marrying them with modern design".
Nigerian artist Bunmi Augusto wins The Mansfield-Ruddock Art Prize for 2023. The Mansfield-Ruddock Art Prize, now in its fourth year, is supported by the Ruddock Foundation for the Arts and generously facilitated by Mansfield alumnus Sir Paul Ruddock. Its goal is to start fresh conversations about contemporary art, to encourage students and visitors, and to support some of the many outstanding talents emerging from the Ruskin School of Art by acquiring one graduate and one undergraduate piece from the Ruskin each year for Mansfield College.
Bunmi Augusto’s mixed-media artworks combine painting, drawing, and printmaking to depict otherworldly landscapes merged with geometric compositions that draw from West African aesthetics embedded in Agusto’s cultural consciousness. Augusto is creating fantastical retellings of her lived experiences as well as the unseen mechanics of the metaphysical forces around us using a paracosm known as “within.”
Artist Spotlight: Lindokuhle Sobekwa
In August 2023, South African documentary photographer Lindokuhle Sobekwa was named the winner of the 2023 FNB Art Prize. Sobekwa’s practice uses the camera to historically contemplate the present. Soaked in materialism and subtly resolving geographical and temporal distances, his lens welcomes absent presences, that were there when his images were made, into the present.
Sobekwa, who was born in Katlehong, Johannesburg, learned photography in 2012 while participating in the first 'Of Soul and Joy' Project, an educational programme for young people held in the Thokoza township. His photo essay, Nyaope, about people who use the drug Nyaope in the slum where he grew up and elsewhere, was published in 2014 by the South African newspaper Mail & Guardian, then in 2015 by Vice and De Standaard. In 2018, he became a Nominee member of Magnum Photos.
Sobekwa is the first documentary filmmaker to win the FNB Art Prize, joining previous winners Dada Khanyisa, Lady Skollie, Bronwyn Katz, Peju Alatise, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Turiya Magadlela, and Kudzanai Chiurai, amongst others.
On view:
Visions of Home: A Journey Through Nigeria - A joint exhibition of Bola Obatuyi and Olasunkanmi Akomolehin at Omenai Gallery’s inaugural exhibition in the United States. (October 6, 2023 - October 31, 2023)
Of Land, Body, and Water - Kenyan artist Jess Atieno’s first solo exhibition at Montague Contemporary. (September 7 - October 21, 2023)
Ritual Ecstasy of the Modern - Yinka Shonibare’s new collaged prints and never-before-seen editioned sculptures of African ritual masks are on sale at Cristea Roberts Gallery. (September 22 - November 4, 2023)
