After Àsìkò. Artistic and Curatorial Practices in Africa
What are the genealogies of curatorial and artistic pedagogies within West Africa? Which models of transmission can enable cross-border solidarities, exchanges, and sustainable education? In a discussion with curators and cultural practitioners active on the African continent or taking part in its diaspora, we will reflect on the contemporary art ecosystem through the lens of alternative pedagogies. Taking Àsìkò* as a point of departure and gathering, we will evoke transmission genealogies and their potential and desirable futures. With Oyindamola Fakeye, Aymen Gharbi , Aude Christel Mgba, Iheanyi Onwuegbucha and moderated by Philippe Pirotte. *Àsìkò is a curatorial and pedagogical initiative founded in the CCA, Lagos by Bisi Silva in 2010. In 2017, the CCA, Lagos published ÀSÌKÒ : On the Future of Artistic and Curatorial Pedagogies in Africa , retracing the history of this initiative. This event is dedicated to Dominique Malaquais and organized in the framework of the second chapter of the Diaspora at Home exhibition, held in KADIST Paris until January 30, 2022 after a first chapter was held at the CCA, Lagos between March 2019 and January 2020. Participant’s biographies: Oyindamola Fakeye is an Experiential Art Curator and Learning & Participation Producer working to facilitate contemporary art workshops, events and exhibitions. She is the current Artistic Director of the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos (CCA, Lagos), where she co-founded the Video Art Network Lagos, alongside artist Jude Anogwih and Emeka Ogboh (2009). Oyindamola sits on the board of Arts in Medicine Projects and is the Director of Special Projects for the Arts in Medicine Fellowship. Oyindamola has curated various exhibitions and projects including the 2017 Lagos Biennial ‘How to Build a Lagoon With Just a Bottle of Wine’. She consults within the art and tech space and was an Associate Arts Consultant with the British Council, supporting digital collaboration, creative entrepreneurship and new narratives. Aymen Gharbi is a Tunis-based curator with a focus on contemporary art in dialogue with cultural heritage. He is a part of the teaching team of the TASAWAR CURATORIAL STUDIOS since 2019. His focus is on the linguistic transit between Tounsi, Arabic, French, and English. Since 2016, jointly with Bettina Pelz, he directs the International Light Art Project INTERFERENCE in the Medina of Tunis as well as the International Media Art Biennial SEE DJERBA in Houmt Souk, Tunisia. Presently, he is working on DOOR-WAHDEK, a webzine linking scientific and artistic research, critical review and intellectual debate in an online platform, an app and a series of roundtables in the Medina. He teaches curatorial studies within the Higher Institute of Fine Arts in Sousse. Aude Christel Mgba is an independent curator and art historian based between Cameroon and the Netherlands. She was a participant of the De Appel 2018/19 curatorial Program. Aude engages with decoloniality through research projects and the creation of platforms that aim to transcribe, translate, and embody ancestral knowledge. Her curatorial experiences include collaborations that question forms of making and showing art that tends to be centered between art institutions and art workers. She is more interested in collaboration that expands beyond those spaces to embrace different communities. In 2017, Aude worked as an assistant curator for the SUD2017, an international triennial of art in the public space, organized by doual’art, a center for contemporary art, for the city of Douala. Since 2019, she has been working as the co-curator of sonsbeek20->24, an international exhibition in the city of Arnhem. In 2010-2021, Aude conducted My learning is affected by the conditions of my life , a research symposium commissioned by ARTEZ Studium Generale, that was looking into art education from an historical perspective that took as cases study West Africa before and after colonization. Iheanyi Onwuegbucha is a Nigerian curator and art historian. He is a doctoral student in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. He was Artistic Director of the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos. He is presently researching the Nsukka Art School and post-civil war art dynamics in Nigeria. His recent curatorial projects include Diaspora at Home with Sophie Potelon at CCA, Lagos and Kadist, Paris, and Uncensored: How Free Are the Arts , with Joao Simoes. Philippe Pirotte is Adjunct Senior Curator at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and Professor Art History at Städelschule Frankfurt. Currently he is a recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts fellowship, researching the ‘third-way’ political imagination catalyzed by the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung, Indonesia. Recently Philippe Pirotte curated Bili Bidjocka’s solo show at Savvy Berlin (2021) and the group show Arus Balik, From Below the Wind to Above the Wind and Back Again for the Center for Contemporary Art Singapore (2019). He was a member of the curatorial team of the Jakarta Biennale in 2017. As a lecturer he presented a.o. at: the forum Tense Switching: Non-Aligned Movement, Third Worldism and Asian Art (Asia Culture Centre in Gwangju, 2018), and the symposium Postcolonial Perspectives from the South (Goethe Institute Jakarta, 2019).