Sanjo Lawal, Headstart I, 2023
AKAA – Also Known As Africa – the first and foremost contemporary art fair focused on Africa in France, reflects an Africa with many facets that transcends borders and whose voices resonate around the world, carried by the vision of each artist.
For its 9th edition, THIS IS NOT A WHITE CUBE presents "Decolonial Perspectives": a project, developed and curated specifically for AKAA - Art & Design Fair 2024, which seeks to generate a dialogue between countries with colonial and historical affinities, reflecting on the concept of decoloniality. The aim is to promote a reflection on how contemporary African art has been asserting itself on a global scale.
This assertion has been validated through a disruptive discursive position within the context of a postcolonial debate, which for decades has been marked by a certain blind Eurocentrism—a deeply rooted theorization stemming from the processes of occupation and partitioning of African territories by colonizing powers, who produced a unilateral interpretation of their influence on the cultural and artistic constitution of the colonized countries.
The project reflects on the emergence of a critical vision of colonialism and on the importance that the African diaspora—embodied in the works of Barbara Wildenboer, Kébé, Osvaldo Ferreira, and Sanjo Lawal—as well as curatorial projects, research, and documentary studies more broadly, assume in the production of a renewed historical discourse on contemporary art.
Given the quality of the project, Sanjo Lawal's work was highlighted by the selection committee of the event as a central element of the art fair's communication. For more information about this artist's work and the photographic works available, please contact the gallery at gallery@thisisnotawhitecube.com | +351 967042186 . Sónia Ribeiro (CEO . Director) | +351 967260472 . Graça Rodrigues (Director and Curator).
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