Theme 4: Listen, I Speak

Christine Chetty Payet was born in the Seychelles in 1969. She has a BA in Art and Design Education from Sussex University, UK, and an MA in Tertiary Education Management from the University of Melbourne, Australia. She is currently Director of the Seychelles Institute of Art and Design. In 2017 she was appointed as the Chairperson for the Creative Industries and National Events Agency in Seychelles.

Chetty Payet participated in the Dakar Biennale in 2000, and Africa Now! at The World Bank, in Washington D.C. in 2008. She has participated in group exhibitions in Seychelles, Europe, North America, Asia and Africa. She has received awards, including 3rd place at the 2nd Triennial of Contemporary Art in Mauritius in 2005.

Eva Chikabadwa was born in Blantyre, Malawi in 1980. She graduated from the University of Malawi with a Bachelors’ degree in Sociology (awarded in 2003) and Fine Arts (awarded in 2009). As a sculptor and a painter, Eva has exhibited locally and internationally since 2002 in over 25 group shows and three solo exhibitions. Her work focuses on her cultural background, and the politics and indigenous mythology of her homeland. Her Masters Project at the University of Cape town Michaelis School of Fine Art (2016-2017) focused on colonial and missionary interpretation and representation of African religious practice, particularly the M’bona beliefs of the Man’ganja from Southern Malawi. She is currently a lecturer in Industrial ceramics at the Malawi University of Science and Technology.

Born in Gaborone, Botswana, Kim Karabo Makin is a Master of Fine Art (MFA) student, at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town (South Africa). Much of her work is informed by her multiculturalism and lived sense of displacement, with particular attention to the role that context plays in identity formation. Makin’s practice compounds aspects of her background in Sculpture (her undergraduate major), with her experience in New Media and Radio, having worked on-air at UCT Radio since 2016. Her practice thus combines sculpture, sound and installation, with a research archival base. She has participated in group exhibitions and in 2018 she was shortlisted as one of the Top 100 finalists in the AbsaL’Atelier. Most recently she was selected to represent The Botswana Pavilion as a Hub Manager at the Creative Hubs Academy (created in partnership with Nesta, British Council and Hivos). She continues to manage The Botswana Pavilion alongside core members, with upcoming projects planned in collaboration with Pro Helvetia (Johannesburg) and the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (Bulawayo).

Valerie Asiimwe Amani is an artistic explorer from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Using a multi-disciplinary approach incorporating textile, poetry, the moving image and digital collage, she experiments with notions of memory, hybrid spirituality and the complexities of body. She is also a writer, curator and art educator, mentoring emerging artists within her community.

Her work has been featured in various international exhibitions and publications, including The Main Complaint at the Zeitz Mocaa Cape Town (2018-19) and Magician: Black Bodies and Portraiture at the FFCA in Los Angeles (2020). Furthermore, she has co-authored a multimedia book titled Black Amara, a visual and literary shared journal on life through a Neo-African feminine lens that will be available in late 2021. She studied for her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Oxford.

A self-taught photographer with a Masters’ degree in Architecture from the San Francisco Academy of Art, Alun Be lives and works between Senegal, France and the United States. He is part of a new generation of African photographers who are establishing creative new ways of perceiving Africa, throwing off the stereotyping colonial gaze and imagining new futures for the continent and its people. His work has explored female empowerment, technology and inter-generational issues.

Serge Attukwei Clottey is a multidisciplinary artist from Ghana who works across installation, painting, sculpture, photography and performance. Clottey has coined the term “Afrogallonism” for his body of work that uses yellow plastic jerrycans (known locally as “Kufuor gallons”) to highlight the socioeconomic, cultural and environmental legacies of colonialism. The jerrycans, first used by Europeans importing cooking oil into Ghana, became associated with President John Kufuor at a time of acute water scarcity when they were used by Ghanaians to carry water for everyday use.

Serge Clottey and his team stitch together pieces of these discarded plastic containers and other waste materials to construct elaborate, tapestry-like installations reminiscent of Ghana’s kente cloths. These works express concerns about water scarcity in Ghana, and the environmental implications of the widespread use of plastic in our daily lives.

Apollinaire Guidimbaye, alias “Doff,” is a self-taught, full-time Chadian artist working in mixed media with special emphasis on non-traditional art materials and found objects. Nicknamed Doff (“the fool” in the Wolof language) for his brave  expeditions to dump sites in search of scrap materials for his bricolages—rusted metals, electronic equipment parts, discarded clothing items—he gained recognition for the ingenious ways in which he puts to creative use almost any material that others simply dispose of. He has been exhibiting his work since the age 20 in Africa and Europe, and We Are Afrika is his first exhibition in the United States.

Mampuya Mayimona (artist alias Massy) is a Congolese painter known for imaginative portraits of people whose bodies are made of woven strips of plant fiber, like baskets. Massy studied painting on his own as well as under the artists Mukendi Bamwa and Achille Katemo. However, it is thanks to his participation in the workshop of Patsheli Kahambo (b. 1990), the contemporary symbolist artist from Kinshasa, DRC, Massy decided to embark on a career in the visual arts.

Combining elements of modern global culture with traditional Luba people beliefs in a symbolic play, Massy’s paintings are an ongoing quest into the exchanges, material and spiritual, between humans and the universe.

Joseph Obanubi is a multimedia artist based in Lagos, Nigeria. He received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Graphic design from the University of Lagos. Obanubi's practice consists of digital and tactile experiments, constantly finding balance between image making and graphic/visual design as a communication conduit. Drawing on his background in graphic design and advertising, Obanubi uses a technique of what he calls “visual bricolage”—constructing images out of diverse photographic and graphic elements. A surrealist mix of reality and delusion, these re/constructions provide the viewer with alternative ways to look at and think about familiar things. Obanubi’s practice, which synthesizes African culture and the promises of technology, can be placed within the context of Afrofuturism.

The Asmara All Stars is a group of Eritrean singers and musicians brought together in 2008 by French music producer Bruno Blum. Comprising musicians from around the country, the Asmara All Stars are known for their contemporary take on the traditional Eri-jazz sound. Through their live concerts and recorded album, the Asmara All Stars uplift Eritrean music and bring it into dialogue with the rest of the continent.

In 2006 Bruno Blum was invited by the Alliance Française to Asmara to play with local musicians. Soon after, the Eritrean Cultural Affairs Office arranged for Blum to audition singers and musicians, with the goal of recording an album of Eritrean music. When word got out, many of Eritrea’s top local and international talent flocked to Admas Studio to join the innovative and exciting music-making collaboration. Following two months of almost daily practicing, the Asmara All Stars started playing live shows and recorded the album Eritrea’s Got Soul. As highlighted by their record label OutHere Records, "The Asmara All Star project is all about leaving politics behind and focusing on making exciting music."