Project MUSE®: African Arts - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/675
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in African Arts.daily12026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 49, (2016) through current issueLatest Articles: African ArtsTWOProject MUSE®African Arts1937-21080001-9933Latest articles in African Arts. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Building Continuity: Reflections on the ACASA Archival Project
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985798
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When the Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) was awarded grant funding from the Mellon Foundation in 2022, the primary goal was to hire an arts administrator and project manager to cultivate organizational continuity through streamlined board processes, managerial support, and a centralized physical and digital archive. At first glance, this archival task appeared administrative: Determine who has valuable records, locate them, collect the materials, and decide where the physical archive will be. Yet as the work unfolded, it became clear that archiving ACASA was not simply an act of preservation. It was a process shaped by relationships, judgment, and care, one that raised fundamental questions
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/675/image/coversmallBuilding Continuity: Reflections on the ACASA Archival Project2026-03-20text/htmlen-USBuilding Continuity: Reflections on the ACASA Archival Project2026-03-202026TWOProject MUSE®180502026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-20An Optimistic Survey of Southern African Art Scenes
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985799
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In the Summer 2024 issue of African Arts, Dialogue editor Amanda M. Maples posed a number of questions for early career African art historians to which I would like to respond (Maples 2024). I have kept her questions intact and respond to each of them below.I get excited and optimistic each time I reflect on the developments happening on the African continent and among African communities in the diaspora. What gives me hope is the effort artists and various cultural workers are putting into their work and practices, and the ever-expanding networks and communities built on collaboration within our sector.I emerged from a research program led by Professor Ruth Simbao1 at Rhodes University where I met and worked with
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/675/image/coversmallAn Optimistic Survey of Southern African Art Scenes2026-03-20text/htmlen-USAn Optimistic Survey of Southern African Art Scenes2026-03-202026TWOProject MUSE®250222026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-20Elephant and Leopard Symbols in the Cross River Region and Its Caribbean Diaspora
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985800
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“When we sit in ceremony, we use elephant tusks as our foot-stools to give us the energy that radiates from the crown.”Únyìn ìdí Ékpè. Ékpè Ékpè ófúk únàm, únàm ísífúkké Ékpè.1 “We are the Leopard society. Only the leopard can devour another animal, but no other animal can devour a leopard.”Throughout West Africa’s Cross River basin, regional identities developed in recent centuries through t rade exchanges among sma ll forest-dwelling communities, from the foothills of the Bamenda Highlands to the port of Calabar (Fig. 1). In the process, the Ékpè “leopard” society was established as the community police of the region, each “principality” having its own lodge (Miller 2009; Miller and Ojong 2012).2 At the top of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/675/image/coversmallElephant and Leopard Symbols in the Cross River Region and Its Caribbean Diaspora2026-03-20text/htmlen-USElephant and Leopard Symbols in the Cross River Region and Its Caribbean Diaspora2026-03-202026TWOProject MUSE®988982026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-20Between a Torch and a Wing: Liberating Women in Two Public Sculptures in Johannesburg
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985801
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In 2015, a 3.5-meter-high sculpture by Lawrence Lemaoana was unveiled in Beyers Naude Square in front of the Central Library and facing the Gauteng Legislature in downtown Johannesburg (Fig. 1). The work depicts a female protestor who wields a placard saying “Democracy Is Dialogue”—a phrase which is also the title of the work. Carrying a child on her back (Fig. 2), she is poised with her right foot on two pillars that are angled towards one another and her left foot on one that is tilted seemingly precariously. The work reveals how ordinary mothers were a significant part of the liberation struggle that brought an end to apartheid in 1994. As the information plaque accompanying it makes evident, its depiction of a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/675/image/coversmallBetween a Torch and a Wing: Liberating Women in Two Public Sculptures in Johannesburg2026-03-20text/htmlen-USBetween a Torch and a Wing: Liberating Women in Two Public Sculptures in Johannesburg2026-03-202026TWOProject MUSE®883112026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-20Kwame Nkrumah and the Artistic Nation: A Cultural History of Ghana’s First Republic with Emphasis on Music
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985802
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Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah (1957–1966), believed that nation-building depended on cultural development. He advocated for a national culture based on indigenous customs as the cornerstone of Ghana’s identity and advancement rather than separating politics from culture or economy (Yorke, Amissah, deGraft-Yankson, and Essuman 2017; Fuller 2010; Botwe-Asamoah 2013).Nkrumah’s idea of the “African Personality” idea (Figs. 1–2), advocating for building the new country on the basis of the people’s own traditions and way of life, was essential to this vision (Amoh 2022; Bobie, Darkwah, and Gough 2021; Dei 2012). In actuality, this entailed utilizing Ghana’s artistic and cultural assets to promote pride
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/675/image/coversmallKwame Nkrumah and the Artistic Nation: A Cultural History of Ghana’s First Republic with Emphasis on Music2026-03-20text/htmlen-USKwame Nkrumah and the Artistic Nation: A Cultural History of Ghana’s First Republic with Emphasis on Music2026-03-202026TWOProject MUSE®927862026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-20The Idea of Africa: Queer Visual Arts, Time, and the Postcolonial Archive
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985803
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A musician costumed as a mosquito plays the organ in an empty church, against the backdrop of Yoruba ritual drumming and chants. An academic book on gender and sexuality affirms the existence of sexual diversity in precolonial Nigeria. Glimpses of life outside the church pinpoint the resistant underground lives in postcolonial Nigeria of queer Nigerians and indigenous Nigerian religions. In the central aisle of the church a woman captures the musician with a net. A second woman joins the first woman in an interpretive dance where they both wield African grass brooms. A big rainbow flag, assembled from six geles (headdresses), makes its way across the central aisle of the church. These fragments from the short film
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/675/image/coversmallThe Idea of Africa: Queer Visual Arts, Time, and the Postcolonial Archive2026-03-20text/htmlen-USThe Idea of Africa: Queer Visual Arts, Time, and the Postcolonial Archive2026-03-202026TWOProject MUSE®874242026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-20Indigo Waves and Other Stories: Re-Navigating the Afrasian Sea and Notions of Diaspora by Natasha Ginwala and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung with Michelangelo Corsaro (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985804
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The first time I entered the water, I had just crossed the sea, flying from Thailand to Germany. Dipping my feet into the deep indigo tide, I was swept into a hold, lost in the gaze of Zwarte Anna (2021) as she cradled an ambiguous infant up to her bleeding bosom (Fig. 1). This was my introduction to the extensive show entitled Indigo Waves and Other Stories: Re-Navigating the Afrasian Sea and Notions of Diaspora curated by Natasha Ginwala and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung with Michelangelo Corsaro at Gropius Bau in Berlin.1 That summer of 2023 I sat on the lone bench enclosed in a dark room for quite some time. There she was, suspended in a black abyss, myself lulled by the echoing soundscape. For many, the Black
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/675/image/coversmallIndigo Waves and Other Stories: Re-Navigating the Afrasian Sea and Notions of Diaspora by Natasha Ginwala and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung with Michelangelo Corsaro (review)2026-03-20text/htmlen-USIndigo Waves and Other Stories: Re-Navigating the Afrasian Sea and Notions of Diaspora by Natasha Ginwala and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung with Michelangelo Corsaro (review)2026-03-202026TWOProject MUSE®184772026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-20Embroidered Past, Imagined Future: Lucie Kamuswekera and the Violence in Eastern Congo by Sarah Van Beurden (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985805
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Embroidered Past, Imagined Future: Lucie Kamuswekera and the Violence in Eastern Congo was a timely presentation of images created by artist Lucie Kamuswekera (b. 1944). On view at The Ohio State University’s Urban Arts Space from September 19–November 18, 2023, the solo show featured Kamuswekera’s work documenting the history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and illustrating contemporary conflict in the eastern part of the country, where the artist lives. Trained to embroider by Italian missionaries in what was then the Belgian Congo, Kamuswekera’s art subverts the original colonial intentions for the skill, which aligned with European constructs of gender roles and expectations of domesticity.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/675/image/coversmallEmbroidered Past, Imagined Future: Lucie Kamuswekera and the Violence in Eastern Congo by Sarah Van Beurden (review)2026-03-20text/htmlen-USEmbroidered Past, Imagined Future: Lucie Kamuswekera and the Violence in Eastern Congo by Sarah Van Beurden (review)2026-03-202026TWOProject MUSE®149102026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-20Magdalene Odundo: A Dialogue with Objects by Sequoia Miller and Magdalene Odundo (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985806
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Captivating viewers from the threshold of the third-floor gallery of the Gardiner Museum, Magdalene Odundo’s ceramic works were on brilliant display in Magdalene Odundo: A Dialogue with Objects, the artist’s Canadian debut and largest North American survey to date. Odundo is renowned for the sleek, burnished, and carbonized clay vessels she makes by hand. Evocative of the female form, with their twisting necks, bulbous bellies, bell mouths, nipples, and buttons, her sculptures range in hues of warm ochre and glistening black (Fig. 1). In the exhibition, each vessel was displayed in its own enclosed glass vitrine, inviting audiences to spend time observing the subtle singularities of each work. The comprehensive
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/675/image/coversmallMagdalene Odundo: A Dialogue with Objects by Sequoia Miller and Magdalene Odundo (review)2026-03-20text/htmlen-USMagdalene Odundo: A Dialogue with Objects by Sequoia Miller and Magdalene Odundo (review)2026-03-202026TWOProject MUSE®135772026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-20A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography by Osei Bonsu and Cale Garrido (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985807
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Covering a wide range of topics, C/O Berlin is known as one of the German capital’s most prolific spaces for photography. From February to early May 2025, it presented A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography. Curated by Osei Bonsu from the Tate Modern and C/O Berlin’s guest curator Cale Garrido, the exhibition had first been on display at Bonsu’s home institution in London more than a year earlier. Already in 2015 C/O Berlin had focused on African photography when it hosted the Walther Collection’s show Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive curated by Tamar Garb.1 While Garb drew the line between the pasts of the archive and the present—contextualizing yet still including colonial
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/675/image/coversmallA World in Common: Contemporary African Photography by Osei Bonsu and Cale Garrido (review)2026-03-20text/htmlen-USA World in Common: Contemporary African Photography by Osei Bonsu and Cale Garrido (review)2026-03-202026TWOProject MUSE®166362026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-20New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations ed. by Amanda M. Maples, with Jordan A. Fenton and Lisa Homann (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985808
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Masks and masquerades have been a prominent topic of African art studies since the early twentieth century. Often, they were categorized within colonial frameworks of ethnic styles and identities. The distinction between masks, as the material objects (often wooden) that covered the face and sometimes the head of the dancer, and masquerades, as the gatherings where masks are danced, has been part of the colonial legacy and the hegemonic practice of collecting artworks for museums in the Global North. By separating the wooden headpiece from its costume and the performance that gave it meaning, the art world abstracted masks from masquerades in a way that made them suitable for museum displays.This publication aims
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/675/image/coversmallNew African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations ed. by Amanda M. Maples, with Jordan A. Fenton and Lisa Homann (review)2026-03-20text/htmlen-USNew African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations ed. by Amanda M. Maples, with Jordan A. Fenton and Lisa Homann (review)2026-03-202026TWOProject MUSE®98202026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-20