” […] My practice allows me to explore fictional narratives, which enable me to remove all concrete limitation and boundaries. I make art to try to understand myself, my environment and the greater world beyond. […] I paint characters that investigate and confront the void. I paint characters that are facets of myself, but not earthbound. I paint characters that stem from a distant, lingering yearning for freedom.” (extract from Daniela’s ‘Artist Statement’)
Author: Mawena Yehouessi
Diplomée de Philosophie puis Gestion de Projets Culturels, Mawena fait ses premières armes dans les milieux de l’art contemporain tout en menant de front divers projets : soirées, édition, collectifs artistiques… Fondatrice et directrice de Black(s) to the Future, son objectif est simple : mettre en lumière la part « afro » du monde et performer le futur. | www.mawenayehouessi.fr // @ma.wena
shout me down if you can
« A reasoned conversation about how artists and curators of all backgrounds represent collective traumas and racial injustice would, in an ideal world, be a regular occurrence in art museums and schools. [Yet, it is a deeply puritanical and anti-intellectual strain to] putting moral judgment before aesthetic understanding. We may understand artworks to be indicators of racial, gender, and class privilege — I do, often. But presuming that calls for censorship and destruction constitute a legitimate response to perceived injustice leads us down a very dark path. » Coco Fusco
DALILA DALLÉAS BOUZAR: EATING HUMAN FLESH. EATING ONESELF.
“My first artistic act was to go to the Falkland Islands in search of penguins.Totally imersed, into the wild, I experienced this adventure as a manifesto that would redefine my relationship with the world … “
Hack for (y)our rights
AFRICA’SOUT! is a creative dynamic space made to initiate + create radical ideas that change the way we all engage with Africa. Highlighting the urgency of pressing social and political issues, they, like us, believe in ‘Imaginative Activism’. And we are more than thrilled they asked us to collaborate on a short art curation format to be also featured through their instagram : @africasout. <3
UNDERCOVER AFROFUTURISM (2/2)
Last year in october, we subtitled Sun Ra’s unique ‘Space is the Place’ in French. It was about time we share it with you ! / Though, as we are the talkative type it is also the opportunity to share with you few thoughts we developed on a speech in Johannesburg at the occasion of Black Portraitures III Conferences (november 2016).
UNDERCOVER AFROFUTURISM (1/2)
Last year in october, we subtitled Sun Ra’s unique ‘Space is the Place’ in French. It was about time we share it with you ! / Though, as we are the talkative type it is also the opportunity to share with you few thoughts we developed on a speech in Johannesburg at the occasion of Black Portraitures III Conferences (november 2016).
On love and violence
« All I really remember is the pain, the unspeakable pain […]. Yes, it does indeed mean something ― something unspeakable ― to be born, in a white country, an Anglo-Teutonic, antisexual country, black. You very soon, without knowing it, give up all hope of communion. Black people, mainly, look down or look up but do not look at each other, not at you, and white people, mainly, look away. And the universe is simply a sounding drum ; there is no way whatever, so it seemed then and has sometimes seemed since, to get through a life, to love your wife and children, or your friends, or your mother and father, or to be loved. »
3 steps to Afrofuturism: EXPANSION(S)
SF and other fantasy genres are no longer counter-cultures, as they lost their alternative and sometimes subversive nature. However, sustainable development brings the future closer and urges us to change the present, the here and now. Knowledge & practices also expend, as well as styles & references that changed the notion of margins (dematerialized spaces, virtual communities etc.). AFROFUTURISM thus engages in a global, creative change full of actions. From the point of view of people who were outcast for centuries and have incarnated alterity, afrofuturism more than ever addresses the whole world. Inclusive and frentic, heterogeneous and free, trans (meaning « going through »), it invites us to perform the world.
3 steps to Afrofuturism: CONCEPTUALISATION
Afrofuturism’s relation to fiction and even sometimes science-fiction helped it come forward. It is more than a way to esape, as it offers alternatives to a present that we have no grasp on and that can deprive us from our existence. It is the advent of using new imaginaries as critical tools to question the world in order to come up with new narrations of History. Afrofuturism is full of authors who present new — more or less radical but always new — representations of the world in order to think of, imagine and concretize another version of the world. Beyond dreams, Afrofuturism becomes a prospective methodology.
3 steps to Afrofuturism: INCARNATION
Afrofuturism is first a matter of individual paths. Between personal fantacies, provocation and leadership, it comes from strong and free-minded characters, and its mission is to give everyone enough courage to free themselves and to define themselves. Afrofuturism plays with common or imposed laws and habits, it writes its own mythology and manifesto. Musicians have benefitted from the popularity of « black music » to broadcast their eclectic, impossible and dense message. Afrofuturism is then an original and auto-determined way of life : it is the strength of the myth.
Philippi Music Project
Philippi is the name of a township of Cape Town (South Africa), but it is also the origin of Philippi Music Project, a social innovation and musical project launched in 2014 by Sibusiso Nyamakazi and Baptiste Guillemet.
Neals Niat : Follow The Story Between The Lines…
“I have been drawing since I was little, it has always been a passion, which since recent years has become something more concrete. As my works are mostly inspired by my childhood in Cameroon and the world surrounding me, it has always seemed obvious to work in black and white, pretty much like VHS : I call it the “Monochromatic Visual Metaphor”. I want to share my cultural wealth through my work in a playful way . “Neals