African culture: events in April 2022
Elephant balaclava from the Kuo'si secret society.
Detail of the poster for the exhibition “On the road to the chiefdoms of Cameroon.
From the visible to the invisible”, from April 5 to July 17, 2022 at the Musée du Quai Branly.
© Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum
Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow
10 mins
In Paris, Brussels, Cannes, Montreal, Tourcoing, Venice or Dakar, indoors or outdoors, here are 19 African culture events not to be missed this April.
Don't hesitate to send us your “must-see” cultural events at rfipageculture@yahoo.fr.
Advertising
Read more
The Museum of Black Civilizations in Dakar, Senegal, inaugurates this April 1
Picasso in Dakar, 1972-2022
.
This exceptional exhibition brings together works from several French and Senegalese museums to initiate a dialogue between the Spanish master and African art objects.
Journey beyond illusion
.
From April 1, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium are organizing a Focus exhibition on the work of Senegalese artist
Omar Ba
.
In some twenty large-format canvases, produced especially for the exhibition, the artist deals with themes such as chaos, destruction and dictatorship, treated "
in a pictorial language entirely his own, both fierce and delicate.
".
Tukah mask worn.
Exhibition “On the road to the chiefdoms of Cameroon”, from April 5 to July 17, 2022 at the Quai Branly Museum.
© The Route of the Chiefdoms
►
Discover the new
RFI Culture Newsletter
.
Receive free, every Thursday in your mailbox, international cultural news that does not forget Africa.
To subscribe, it's
here.
After a week online, the 38th edition of
Vues d'Afrique
, in Montreal, will welcome its indoor audience at the Cinémathèque québécoise, from April 1 to 10.
Among the key events of the largest African film festival on the American continent is the North American premiere of
Haut et fort
by Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch, the unprecedented shock documentary
L'empire du silence
by Thierry Michel, the comedy
Les trois lascars
by Burkinabe filmmaker Boubakar Diallo and
The Gravedigger
's Wife by Somali filmmaker
Khadar Ayderus Ahmed
, the 2021 Fespaco Gold Stallion.
From April 2, the Parisian gallery 31Project presents, on a proposal by Liz Gomis, the exhibition
I am myself the sun
.
An invitation to five artists to react to this quote from Senegalese filmmaker Ousman Sembène who said: “
Europe is not my center […] Why do you want me to be the sunflower that revolves around the sun?
This group exhibition brings together the work of five visual artists from Africa and its diaspora: Leonard Pongo (Belgium/DRC), Nú Bareto (Guinea-Bissau), M'barka Amor (France), Valerie Asiimwe Amani (Tanzania), Hakeem Adam (Ghana).
Until June 15, the exhibition
I See a Bird / I see a bird
by
Chourouk Hriech
is presented at the Drawing Lab, in Paris.
A succession of "
drawn journeys
" where the birds are our guides, thus deploying "
a metaphorical geography, a city-world whose birds would be the first inhabitants
".
Born in 1977, the Franco-Moroccan artist graduated from the National School of Fine Arts in Lyon.
On April 9, there will be a multidisciplinary evening,
I See a Bird Party
, with performances, showcases, flash tattoos, DJ sets...
The ndop, a fabric characteristic of the Grassfields.
Exhibition “On the road to the chiefdoms of Cameroon”, from April 5 to July 17, 2022 at the Quai Branly Museum.
© The Route of Chiefdoms, photo: Eyidi
On April 2,
Circulation(s)
, the Festival of Young European Photography, opens its doors at the Centquatre cultural center in Paris.
Among the thirty guest artists,
Rosi Silvia
, who lives between Italy and England, questions her Togolese roots there “
by reappropriating the artistic codes of traditional West African studio portraits
”.
Madrid-born artist Rubén Bermúdez presents an open, personal and collective archive of the construction of Negritude as a political force in Spain: “
Y tú, ¿por qué eres negro?
(And you, why are you black
?
).
And
Laura Quiñonez is inspired in
Accidentes geo-gráficos
a story passed down from generation to generation within the Afro-Colombian community: at the time of slavery,
maroons
(people resisting slavery) used their braids to secretly communicate the paths to freedom...
Picasso and the Arab avant-gardes
.
The Institute of the Arab World (IMA) in Tourcoing, in the north of France, sets up from April 2 an unprecedented dialogue between Picasso and key works by artists of the Arab avant-garde.
The paintings of Jewad Selim (Iraq), Rafic Charaf (Lebanon), Idham Ismaïl (Syria), Samir Rafi (Egypt), Mohamed Khadda (Algeria) make visible the relations between Pablo Picasso (who never visited the world Arabic) and the artistic scenes of the Maghreb and the Middle East.
►
Until Saturday May 7, you can apply for the 9th edition of the prestigious
RFI Theater Prize
.
The call for papers is open to authors between the ages of 18 and 46, born and living in Africa, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean or the Middle East.
The text in French must have a minimum of 15 numbered pages.
From April 5, the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris invites you to discover the art of the communities established on the high plateaus of the Grassfields, a region located in the west of Cameroon.
The exhibition
On the road to the chiefdoms of Cameroon.
From visible to invisible
brings together 270 works
most of which are kept by chiefs and family lineages.
Main entrance gate of the Bafou chieftaincy.
Exhibition “On the road to the chiefdoms of Cameroon”, from April 5 to July 17, 2022 at the Quai Branly Museum.
© The Route of the Chiefdoms.
Photo: Perez
The Museum of the History of Immigration in Paris questions from April 5 the history of
Jews and Muslims from colonial France to the present day
.
The exhibition promises through a hundred works of art, documents and audiovisual archives "
a new and documented look
" thus revealing the essential role of France and the State in the transformation of these relations, both in North Africa than in metropolitan France.
From April 7 to May 14, the Chauvy Gallery in Paris brings together works by Nigerian artists Victor Olaoyé, Wole Lagunju, Samuel Nnorom with those of Malian Ibrahim Ballo around the theme
The “voices” of textiles
.
These "voices" of textiles were, for a long time, in the indigo fields, those of slaves.
Ibrahim Ballo's ancestors were weavers of Bogolan, a traditional Malian fabric.
Wole Lagunju revives the textiles of Yoruba women in a contemporary artistic concept: Onaism.
Samuel Nnorom approaches the history of textiles through crossed voices.
Victor Olaoyé works with very graphic and indigo-dyed Adire textiles that are passed down from mother to daughter among the Yoruba, thus recounting the long colonial history.
The Mucem in Marseille has designed an ambitious exhibition around a character that Victor Hugo had nicknamed “
the pensive, fierce and gentle emir
”.
Do we know Abd el-Kader ibn Muhyî ed-Dîn well enough?
The
Abd el-Kader
event brings together from April 6 250 works and documents from public and private collections on "
the emir of the resistance, holy fighter, founder of the Algerian state, precursor of the codification of modern humanitarian law , warrior, statesman, apostle…
”
From April 5 to 10, the Artcurial auction house is organizing in Paris
Flamboyant homage to nature
, an exhibition of contemporary African art bringing together works by the Congolese
Pili Pili Mulongoy
and the Ugandan
Joseph Ntensibe
.
Works from the private collections of these two artists and presented to the public for the first time.
1-54
, the international art fair dedicated to contemporary African art and the African diaspora is back in Paris, at Christie's.
From April 7 to 10, it will host 23 international exhibitors, thus making visible the works of some fifty contemporary artists from Africa and its diaspora.
Detail of a queen's costume in Toghu, worn by its holder, Queen Nkwen, Mancho Calista Nchangwie.
Exhibition “On the road to the chiefdoms of Cameroon”, from April 5 to July 17, 2022 at the Quai Branly Museum.
© The Route of the Chiefdoms
At the same time,
Art Paris
, a major meeting place for modern and contemporary art, also opens its doors from April 7 to 10 at the Grand Palais Ephémère for 130 galleries from around twenty countries, including Ghana and the Côte d'Azur. 'Ivory,
On April 7, the Blachère Foundation inaugurates its new
Kaleidoscope / Dakar & Kinshasa
exhibition .
An artistic testimony of the urban explosion in Africa changing spaces and mentalities.
“
The city is thus… the place of all possibilities, of all waking dreams
” and “
in perpetual motion
”.
On April 14, the Cannes Film Festival will announce the films in its official selection for the 2022 edition, which will take place from May 17 to 28.
After two African films in competition in 2021, what place will African cinema have this year at the biggest cinema event in the world?
From April 21, the Congolese painter Thonton Kabeya invites us to dance
La Rumba Rosa
.
In Paris, at the Bonne Espérance Gallery, he explores the universe of “
this dance practiced in the Republic of Congo as an outlet, a meditation, a cultural phenomenon of acculturation
”.
An art bringing together “
all communities: heterosexuals, gays, lesbians, children, parents, grandparents, women, men
”.
The Milk of
Dreams
.
From April 23 to November 27, the 59th International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy will take place.
Curator Cecilia Alemani, the first Italian woman to hold this position at the Biennale, promised "
to give artists a voice to create unique projects that reflect their visions and our society .
".
Among the members of the international jury is the Cameroonian commissioner based in Germany.
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, who will occupy, from 2023, the post of director of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin.
Artists from 57 countries were selected, including Kapwani Kiwanga, an artist of Tanzanian origin.
Among the countries represented for the first time are three African countries: Cameroon, Namibia and Uganda.
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_EN
Culture
Africa culture
Senegal
Belgium
Quebec
Morocco
Togo
Cameroon
Italy
ground floor