In my blog ‘A world in common, contemporary African photography, an introduction’, I describe the how and why of this exhibition I saw at the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam. The exhibition is divided into several themes and below I describe the first theme.
‘Identity and tradition’
This part focuses on the resilience of (ancient) African cultures and traditions. It has the following sub-themes:
- Queens, Kings and Gods
- Spiritual Worlds
- Worrying the mask
Queens, Kings and Gods
In this section, artists pay tribute to those who resisted the violence of colonial rule. From the 16th century, more than 10 million Africans were enslaved by Europeans and robbed of their cultural heritage. European powers conquered 90% of Africa, drawing borders without regard to indigenous peoples and denying local rulers their authority. In the works on display, themes of sovereignty and independence still play a role, just as African identity is still shaped by powerful ancestral traditions and heritage.
He was born in 1974 and lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria. He is an Associated Press photographer and employs the traditions of photojournalism to convey complex narratives. He was in 2015 a participant of the Venice Biennale. His photographs are at the intersection of photojournalism and artistic documentary. His subjects include contemporary Nigerian monarchs and the injustices surrounding natural resources in the Niger Delta. The exhibition featured works from the series ‘Nigerian Monarchs’.
For this series, Osodi travelled across Nigeria for many months to capture the regional princes of modern monarchies. As well as portraits, he also captures their surroundings, such as architecture and traditional dress. The monarchs have no constitutional power, but the portraits and explanatory texts highlight the cultural heritage of Nigeria’s kingdoms, showing the relationship of the monarchs to local history while revealing their entanglement with contemporary political issues. The series aims both to showcase Nigeria’s cultural richness and to highlight the role of these monarchs as custodians of heritage and peacemakers.
Her serie ‘Queens and Kings’ is a large-scale photographic composition between screen-printed onto a patchwork of recycled tablecloths and bed sheets. She is mentioned in the books African Artists from 1882 – now and African Art now.
According to Kudzana Chiurai ‘art is politics and our lives are political’. He was born in Harare in Zimbabwe in 1981. In 2004 he received arrest threats following the presentation of murals and artworks criticizing the Zimbabwean government and President and he left for South Africa where he enrolled in a BA in Fine Art at the University of Pretoria. He is a multi-disciplinary mixed-media contemporary artist working in photography, drawing, film, painting, and sculpture. Later, he also explored the mediums of activism, publishing, poetry, fashion, and music. Chiura’s work uses narrative, figuration, symbolism, and staging to explore themes of intergenerational inequality, political conflict, socio-economic disparities, and the enduring impact of colonialism in Zimbabwe and South Africa.
His work was shown at the exhibition ‘SuperNova’ in museum De Kade and at the exposition ‘When we see us’ in museum Bozar in Brussels. He is also mentioned in the books African Artists from 1882 – now and African Art now.
Spiritual worlds
The focus here is on the complex and diverse spirituality of Africa, where different religious practices are often combined. During the colonial period, however, attempts were made to define local religions and African spirituality as non-Christian. Despite these colonial influences, traditions have survived, preserving the link between the living and spiritual worlds.
Khadija Saye was a Gambian-British artist, educator and activist. She was born in London
Khadija Saye studied photography at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, Surrey. She had gained increasing recognition as a talented artist who had produced significant work and showed exceptional promise for the future. Khadija Saye was the youngest exhibitor in the Diaspora Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, where her work was shown alongside that of established artists.
A quote of hers was: ‘ Like my first generation(ers) I remain caught between two worlds amid owing my African heritage and recognizing my blackness.’ Another quote of her is: ‘Using myself as the subject, I felt it necessary to physically explore how trauma is embodied in the black experience.’
Her series ‘In this space we breathe’ is a series of wet plate collodion tintypes that explores the migration of traditional Gambian spiritual practices and the deep-seated urge to find solace in a higher power. The series was born out of a search for spiritual grounding. In the video of the British Library one can learn more about Khadija Saye.
Rotimi Fani-Kayode was born in 1955, in Lagos, Nigeria to a prominent Yoruba family before moving to England following the outbreak of civil war. He later studied at Georgetown University and the Pratt Institute in the USA, before settling permanently in London in 1983 where he lived and worked until his untimely death in 1989.
A quote from him was: ‘My reality is not the same as that which is often presented to us as
Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s work is thus not only visually impressive, but also rich in content, as it interweaves several important themes such as identity, politics, religion and health.
His work was also shown at the exhibition Cosmogenies at the Cobra Museum in Amstelveen.
Drawing on Cameroon’s colonial history, first under German rule and later divided between France and Britain, Eyongakpa explores the enduring effects of these separations on contemporary socio-political structures. Inspired by indigenous knowledge, the interplay between plants and humans, applied mycology, and technology, Eyongakpa creates immersive sound installations that evoke both personal and collective experiences.
His art raises critical questions about the environment, identity, and freedom. For the exhibition, he gathered oral testimonies from chiefs and local residents to construct a fragmented narrative that challenges the reliability of official historical records, paying tribute to a deeper legacy of struggle and sacrifice.
In 2021 he had an exhibition in the ‘Oude Kerk’ in Amsterdam. He is also mentioned in the books African Artists from 1882 to now and African Art now.
Worrying the mask
Masks are still very important in African culture. They form a bridge between the world of the living and the world of the dead. However, the masks brought to Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries were taken out of their ritual context. The artists in this exhibition reflect on what African masks still mean today.
Following in his father’s footsteps, he has developed his own distinctive style, often working with medium format film and natural light to create images that bridge Benin’s traditions and modernity.
His upbringing immersed him in Benin’s spiritual and artistic heritage. His childhood was shaped by his exposure to the Gèlèdé rituals and the master artisans in his family, experiences that continue to inform his artistic narrative. These influences are evident in his critically acclaimed series such as Egungun, The Muscle Men, and Les Demoiselles de Porto-Novo. Through his photography, he pays homage to the spiritual practices while capturing the essence of a nation balancing its rich heritage with contemporary life.
At the Cobra Museum in Amstelveen, his art was shown in the exhibition Cosmogenies. He is also mentioned in the book African Artists from 1882 to now.
He is born in 1977 in Luanda, Angola and is a prominent figure in contemporary African photography. Based in his hometown, he is recognized as one of the leading artists working from the African continent. He holds a degree in photojournalism from the London College of Communication and studied documentary photography at the University of Wales, Newport. In 2013, Chagas gained international recognition when he represented Angola in the country’s first-ever pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Its presentation won the prestigious Golden Lion award for the best national pavilion.
The work explores themes of circulation and displacement, reflecting the global journey of African masks and the creation of new identities shaped by contemporary migration. His work was also featured in the exhibition ‘SuperNova’ at Museum De Kade in Amersfoort. He is also mentioned in the books African Artists from 1882 to now and African Art now.
Wuru-Natash Ogunji was born in the United States of America, but her father was born in Nigeria. She lives and works in Nigeria and states that her aim is to ‘consider both the geographical and psychic distance between Africa and the Americas in order to talk about the possibilities that this immense Atlantic separation might allow’. She graduated in anthropology in 1992 and in photography in 1998.
She deploys multiple strategies: video installation, photography, movie and documentary making, writing, curatorial projects, institution building and food initiatives to explore her place in the world and to construct a more thorough and integrated concept of environmentalism and ecological truth.
Zino Saro Wiwa founded also the Ilicit Gin Institute, a conceptual think-tank. It uses palm wine spirit (also known as ‘illicit gin’) as a lens and exploratory framework to expose deeper, richer, surprising narratives about the oil-cursed Niger Delta, the region in Nigeria where this spirit first took off. The Institute also utilizes this philosophical and spiritual lens to further our understanding of spiritual ecologies and help re-imagine indignity in this, a time of environmental precarity.
In 2013 Zino Saro Wiwa started to investigate local masquerade practices, traditionally performed by men in Ogoniland. She began creating the work ‘Men of the Ogele’, a photographic unmasking of a secret society of male performers based in the region. She decided to challenge the gendered tradition by commissioning her own mask as part of the multimedia installation ‘The invisible men’. The masquerade exists because it is about social cohesion, about honoring the land and healing. Her work is described in the books African Artists from 1882 to now and African Art now.
In my next blog, I will describe the second part of the exhibition ‘Counter histories’. I hope you will find my quest as fascinating and enjoyable as I did.
Johanna, 14th April 2025
