Like Steve Biko, "I write [about] what I like", chiefly: art, music, printed matter (books, mags), images (still & moving) as well as politics and (the) culture, widely defined. My work has been featured on Frieze, Sleek, Contemporary And, Nataal and Africa is a Country. My writing in German has appeared on Monopol (print & online) and Zeit Online. I also co-edit GRIOT griotmag.com
Online
In a cosy yet sparsely furnished living room, a young girl in pink, Disney-themed pyjamas sits on a low folding chair cradling a doll and gazing off to one side. From behind, her father wraps his arms around her in a similarly protective manner.
The Nigerian-born and Antwerp-based artist's new exhibition at Gropius Bau investigates the ecological, economic and political issues negotiated through landscapes-By Eric Otieno
There are at least two liminal frames that offer themselves when looking at images of Black people. The first is that on a fundamental level, images generally and images of Black people in particular remind us that no matter how advanced the equipment is, image-making is always a transaction in light and shadows.
Europe's cultural sector is still reeling from a report presented to the French president Emmanuel Macron last Friday. The report entitled The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics was commissioned by Macron as part of his efforts to jumpstart political discussions around the repatriation of cultural heritage.
Grada Kilomba's first solo exhibition on the African Continent at Goodman Gallery, Johannersburg, is firmly embedded within a postcolonial iteration of the following questions: Who can speak? What can we speak about? And what happens when we speak?
"Because I live here" places post-migrant German society under the microscope to reveal structural violence
The artist translates conceptual affirmations of her creative self into the multi-sensory piece and way of thinking, Power to the God Within Almost three years after the release of Jojo Abot's debut EP, Fyfya Woto, I remain drawn to her subversive sonic aesthetic that sound simultaneously familiar yet new.
Das Wort “Gastfreundschaft” klingt etwas altmodisch. In Zeiten der Globalisierung, in der jeder easyjet-setter mit entsprechendem Pass, Outfit, Wortschatz und Habitus überall ein “local” sein kann, ist die Rolle der Gastfreundschaft in den Hintergrund gerückt. Teju Cole und Fotograf Fazal Sheikh haben zusammen ein neues Fotobuch herausgebracht, in dem diese alte Tugend abgestaubt wird
German
Die Frankfurter Schirn hat mit ihrer Ausstellung "König der Tiere: Wilhelm Kuhnert und das Bild von Afrika" eine Debatte entfacht: Wo bleibt die kritische Einbettung dieses Malers im Gefüge des deutschen Kolonialismus? Die Kritik ist berechtigt, schreibt Eric Otieno in seinem Gastkommentar für Monopol