Project MUSE®: Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/522
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art.daily12026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (1994) through current issueLatest Articles: Nka: Journal of Contemporary African ArtTWOProject MUSE®Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art2152-77921075-7163Latest articles in Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. Feed provided by Project MUSE®From the Editor: In Memoriam: Koyo Kouoh
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972909
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Our dear friend and colleague Koyo Kouoh died on May 10, 2025, leaving behind a legacy of profound accomplishment and, sadly, much more unfinished work. She was 57. Her career as a curator of contemporary African and African diaspora art was peerless, especially after the equally shocking demise of our late friends Okwui Enwezor and Bisi Silva in the spring of 2019. Koyo was driven by a singular vision of and passion for changing the landscape of contemporary art in Africa across diverse platforms and institutions. She may have died too soon, but the impact of her work must and will live on.Born in Cameroon, Koyo and her family relocated to Switzerland when she was thirteen. In 1996, she returned to the continent
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/522/image/coversmallFrom the Editor: In Memoriam: Koyo Kouoh2025-10-31text/htmlen-USFrom the Editor: In Memoriam: Koyo Kouoh2025-10-312025TWOProject MUSE®72552026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-10-31Harmonic Artistry: The Photographs of Mohamed A. Yakub
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972910
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Mohamed A. Yakub has been a photographer for a long time—more than forty years, drawn to the camera's magical ability to, in his words, "capture light."1 That obsession eventually led him to two recent series of works that either capture the fleeting passage of light over time in long exposures with the camera in motion or transform architectural spaces into imaginative, otherworldly places. He then composes portions of these images, mirroring them vertically or horizontally, and sometimes multiplying them.The first approach was inspired by an early discovery while riding in the last car of a New York subway train: he kept his camera shutter open as the train moved through the dark winding tunnels under the streets
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/522/image/coversmallHarmonic Artistry: The Photographs of Mohamed A. Yakub2025-10-31text/htmlen-USHarmonic Artistry: The Photographs of Mohamed A. Yakub2025-10-312025TWOProject MUSE®395222026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-10-31African Objects and Restitution: In the Thought of Achille Mbembe
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972911
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"So many of [Africa's] … treasures are to be found abroad today," Achille Mbembe observes. Restitution stands at the heart of his thinking about decolonization and wider human relations.1 Calls for the return of African objects have become widespread during the last decade. Within this debate, African intellectuals such as Senegalese philosopher Felwine Sarr have been key thinkers, as demonstrated in the French government-commissioned 2018 Sarr-Savoy report and the coauthor's subsequent book.2 To date, Mbembe has remained more marginal to the debate. This article argues that Mbembe must be understood as a key thinker on restitution. It outlines his account of the European capture of African objects, critique on
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/522/image/coversmallAfrican Objects and Restitution: In the Thought of Achille Mbembe2025-10-31text/htmlen-USAfrican Objects and Restitution: In the Thought of Achille Mbembe2025-10-312025TWOProject MUSE®787282026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-10-31Worldmaking from the Margins: Black Figuration and Pan-Africanism in Two US Exhibitions
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972912
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Installation view of The Time Is Always Now, showing Arthur Timothy, And the Clamour Became a Voice (E Il Clamore è Divenuto Voce), 2023, oil on linen; and Lubaina Himid, Le Rodeur: Exchange, 2016, acrylic on canvas. Courtesy Philadelphia Museum of ArtInstallation view of The Time Is Always Now, showing Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Still You Bloom in This Land of No Gardens, 2021, acrylic, transfers, color pencil, and collage on paper; and Toyin Ojih Odutola, The Adventuress Club, Est 1922, 2016, charcoal, pastel, and pencil on paper. Courtesy Philadelphia Museum of ArtIn the last year, a number of exhibitions have centered on Blackness and Black solidarity movements across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/522/image/coversmallWorldmaking from the Margins: Black Figuration and Pan-Africanism in Two US Exhibitions2025-10-31text/htmlen-USWorldmaking from the Margins: Black Figuration and Pan-Africanism in Two US Exhibitions2025-10-312025TWOProject MUSE®480582026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-10-31Sharjah Biennial 16: Sharing Space in to carry
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972913
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Installation view, Sharjah Biennial 16, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah, 2025, featuring Stephanie Comilang, Search for Life II, 2025. Commissioned by TBA21, Sharjah Art Foundation and Vega Foundation. Photo: Danko StjepanovicInstallation view, Sharjah Biennial 16, Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, 2025. Front: Mila Turajlić, Geste / voix / histoires, 2024; back: Mila Turajlić, Dzazairouna, 1960 / enceremos, 1967 / Blood and Tears, 1970, 2025. Courtesy Stevan Labudović and Dragutin Popović for Filmske Novosti. Photo: Shafeek Nalakath KareemFilmmaker Mila Turajlić's ongoing artistic research project Non-Aligned Newsreels takes as its starting point film archives held in Belgrade, the capital of former
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/522/image/coversmallSharjah Biennial 16: Sharing Space in to carry2025-10-31text/htmlen-USSharjah Biennial 16: Sharing Space in to carry2025-10-312025TWOProject MUSE®412182026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-10-31The Right to African Interiority: The Power of Quiet in Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972914
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Inevitable, essential, sovereign; expressive and lush; a little foreign to our thinking on black culture, but there all the while: quiet.To SEE, to lay eyes on these "black interiors," is at first startling. Then it is amazing.There from the start in Le Jeu, Abderrahmane Sissako's first film, is an aesthetic of quiet that would become hallmark of his now celebrated body of work. Submitted in 1989 as his final graduate work at the State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow, the twenty-three-minute film is sheer poetry in black-and-white.1 Shot in the Karakum desert in Turkmenistan, the film is as much a hushed mediation on war as it is about everyday desert life.Intercutting between two storylines, Le Jeu
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/522/image/coversmallThe Right to African Interiority: The Power of Quiet in Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako2025-10-31text/htmlen-USThe Right to African Interiority: The Power of Quiet in Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako2025-10-312025TWOProject MUSE®897532026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-10-31Ethiopia's Contemporary Artists: Reshaping Their Country's Politics
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972915
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"You know I'm not interested in politics, but I'm a part of it," artist Dawit Abebe says as he sits in his home studio in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.1 He leans back, looking outside at the assortment of collected objects that litters his compound. Giant buckets filled with paint brushes are strewn about. Pieces of wood haphazardly lay across the driveway. The entire area buzzes with creativity; a new project just waiting to happen.A week later, another contemporary Ethiopian artist, Ashenafe Mestika, echoes this statement; "I'm not interested in politics, but politics finds us one way or another." He continues, "I'm interested in social ideas, but it's really not separate from politics. Whatever happens in politics is
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/522/image/coversmallEthiopia's Contemporary Artists: Reshaping Their Country's Politics2025-10-31text/htmlen-USEthiopia's Contemporary Artists: Reshaping Their Country's Politics2025-10-312025TWOProject MUSE®188762026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-10-31First Look: Emma Prempeh
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972916
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In this issue, I share the work of Emma Prempeh, who was born in England in 1996 of a Vincentian mother and Ghanaian father and whose emerging practice as a painter is at once breathtaking, refreshing, and brimming with captivating confidence. As a skeptic of the soapy Black Lives Matter figuration in the international scene of recent years, what struck me on first encounter with Emma's painting is her investment in a kind of awkwardly expressive portraiture, her vigorous drawing, and what the South African painter Penny Siopis, in a different context, called "material acts," that is, the sustained exploration of the physiochemical characteristics and affective qualities of specific material substance deployed in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/522/image/coversmallFirst Look: Emma Prempeh2025-10-31text/htmlen-USFirst Look: Emma Prempeh2025-10-312025TWOProject MUSE®149732026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-10-31Who Knows Tomorrow by Ozioma Onuzulike (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972917
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Ozioma Onuzulike's Who Knows Tomorrow is the artist's second solo presentation in the United States. As a professor of ceramics and African art history and director of the Institute of African Studies at the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Onuzulike's practice is intimately linked with Nigerian art histories and ongoing pedagogies of craft production, interpretation, and social use. The exhibition features eleven clay, palm kernel, and copper tapestries that merge ceramics, beadwork, and textiles, presenting multivalent modes of craft. Though modest in size, the gallery exhibition is impressive in the material and conceptual dimension of each work.The works are primarily
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/522/image/coversmallWho Knows Tomorrow by Ozioma Onuzulike (review)2025-10-31text/htmlen-USWho Knows Tomorrow by Ozioma Onuzulike (review)2025-10-312025TWOProject MUSE®197522026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-10-31Between Wood and Wheel by Christina Kimeze (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972918
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In May 2025, after visiting Between Wood and Wheel, Christina Kimeze's debut institutional solo exhibition at South London Gallery, I was moved to ask ChatGPT to create an image in the style of the artist.1 I needed some reassurance that being alive and able to bear witness was still a human privilege. That artificial intelligence could not even dare replicate what I had just witnessed. Its answer was: "This image generation request did not follow our content policy." It is not clear what their content policy is, but I knew we were safe. For now.Once OpenAI launched their image-generation model in April 2025, social media was flooded with generated pictures of ChatGPT-assisted replicas of artists and illustrators.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/522/image/coversmallBetween Wood and Wheel by Christina Kimeze (review)2025-10-31text/htmlen-USBetween Wood and Wheel by Christina Kimeze (review)2025-10-312025TWOProject MUSE®284112026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-10-31Sharjah Biennial 16 (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972919
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The sixteenth edition of the Sharjah Biennial convened a curatorial quintet under the theme "to carry," positing the urgency of survival in foreign spaces and the distinct process of maintaining cultural continuity across geographies. Open-ended, the proposition asks, What do we carry when we travel? What remains when we flee? What is lost when we stay? In a moment marked by increasing global crises and accelerated resource extraction, world politics takes center stage at this and the critical investigations it births. For artists of the African diaspora, more so, if the work is not critiqued or reviewed to address its formal, aesthetic, year's edition. Opening remarks from president and artistic director Hoor Al
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/522/image/coversmallSharjah Biennial 16 (review)2025-10-31text/htmlen-USSharjah Biennial 16 (review)2025-10-312025TWOProject MUSE®198912026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-10-31