"Funeral - St. Helena, South Carolina," 1955.

Compelling and fascinating Robert Frank’s disturbed and mournful song-of-the-road portrait of a new homeland now at the Metropolitan Museum.

DomusWeb.it – Fati Hassan

DomusWeb.it – Stephen Burks

“We wanted to showcase the creativity of a few of the great artists and exponents of contemporary African culture,” explains Patrizia Moroso, who devised the event, “because looking at Africa through the eyes of contemporary art, photography, architecture and design is perhaps the most appropriate way of approaching this vast, powerful continent, so creatively rich and diverse that today it is still one of the greatest sources of inspiration for modern design”.

African-American designer Stephen Burks was asked to design the exhibition (held in Moroso’s Milan showroom) which presented works by Fathi Hassan, Soly Cissé, Mandémory and architect David Adjaye. There were also new products made in Africa but designed by Bibi Seck and Ayse Birsel, Patricia Urquiola, Stephen Burks and Philippe Bestenheider. Also featured: iconic Moroso products specially upholstered in African fabrics. Abdou Salam Gaye curated the project’s in-depth research over a period of two months in Africa, working with the artists and designers.

First catch at Africa Remix in Paris, exhibit produced by infamous african golden Boy and art collector Sindika Dokolo, immediately i was drawn away mad funny keeping in mind colorful dressed family parties my mum used to host in my early chilhood back in African and all the dramas that used to come with.Actually,I was going to write something about him when I realised that the profile made by the NYtimes.com was awesome even if a bit too long; here’s an excerpt …

“British-Nigerian conceptual artist Yinka Shonibare whos theatrically exuberant work with its signature use of headless mannequins and African fabrics continuously challenges assumptions and stereotypes.He makes art that is sumptuously aesthetic beautiful and draws you in and often wickedly funny. When he deals with pithy matters like race, class, disability, colonialism and war, he does so deftly and often indirectly.Arnold L. Lehman, director of the Brooklyn Museum, says that Mr. Shonibare’s is the sure gaze of a “visionary” artist: “He’s able to juggle so many different ideas so brilliantly and to express them in such an immensely appealing and extraordinarily visual way.

The seminal moment in Mr. Shonibare’s artistic formation, however, was kindled by an encounter at Byam Shaw during a period when he was “making art about Perestroika.” His white tutor asked him why he was not making “authentic African art”? ”I tried to figure out what he meant by authentic African art,” recalled Mr. Shonibare, taken aback. “I didn’t know how to be authentic.”

Click to see more pictures

Kehinde is so far one of my favorite artist, i just went agag when first meeting him.First of all , I ‘am more partial to artists whom through their work push us asking questions about the society we live in.For me its like a “creative” journalist spreading the truth so that people can understand what’s going on in their society thus stand for what they believe.Whe Nowadays Black males are perceived as “aggressive”, I found it compelling and fascinating that he engaged the signs and visual rhetoric of the heroic, powerful, majestic and the sublime in his representation of urban, black and brown men found throughout the world.By Applying the visual vocabulary and conventions of glorification, history, wealth and prestige to the subject matter drawn from the urban fabric, the subjects and stylistic references for his paintings are juxtaposed inversions of each other, forcing ambiguity and provocative perplexity to pervade his imagery.

There’s also amazing video for his Fall’s 2008 exhibit on Vimeo.

]]> http://africancontemporaryart.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/when-gs-meet-the-queen/feed/ 0 Eyquem http://africancontemporaryart.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/me-and-those-dreaming-eyes-of-mine/ http://africancontemporaryart.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/me-and-those-dreaming-eyes-of-mine/#comments Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:07:35 +0000 Eyquem http://africancontemporaryart.wordpress.com/?p=7 ]]>

Today, let’s start with Seydou Keita, I first acknowleged  his photography work while i was doing a review for an african art exhibition in Brussels.One of his pictures really caught my attention, the picture seemed less to belong to the 60s than a cover for Details magazine in NYC.Young Seydou became fascinated when once his uncles brought him back a camera from a trip Senegal, he started photographing his relatives and fell truly in love for this art.He spent more and more time with Pierre Garnier- a french photographer- who has his own studio.Up until then, whites had had a lot of trouble convincing local population to have their pictures taken, because they were so afraid to lose their identity.This drives him to open his own studio in 1948. With Keita, it’s different: he is one ofthem and permits them to choose their own picture that will be left for the close family.Slowly he develops his own style, in which one finds accents of Mountaga Kouyaté\’s work, an intellectual that fought a bitter personal battle for the independence of Soedan.If we look beyond the aesthetics of the black-and-white pictures, Seydou shows us a portrait of Malinese society in full transition.

Click to see more pictures

]]> http://africancontemporaryart.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/me-and-those-dreaming-eyes-of-mine/feed/ 2 Eyquem Seydou Keita http://africancontemporaryart.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/hello-world/ http://africancontemporaryart.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/hello-world/#comments Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:06:18 +0000 Eyquem ]]> Another blog again ! I know  guys that everyone is starting off the road blogging about everything,even if we dont care about those things.In Between, I must admit that i have a pop culture myself, but this one is specifically dedicated to provide informations about Contemporary Art from the African continent cause you can barely find some wich is actually not boring to read.So I’ll try my best.