African culture: appointments in June 2023
In Paris, Cologne, Rabat, Berlin, Lyon, Carthage, Kampala, Saint-Denis, Nantes, Annecy, Chicago, Marseille, Gennevilliers, Bordeaux, indoors or outdoors, here are 23 events of Afro or African culture not to be missed this June. Do not hesitate to send us your next "unmissable" cultural events at rfipageculture@yahoo.fr.
"Canary" (detail), a 2023 work by Ugandan artist Mona Taha, featured in the group exhibition "Shapes of Water" at Afriart Gallery, Kampala. © Afriart Gallery
Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow
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From 1 to 11 June, the Festival de l'imaginaire offers music, dance, theatre and meetings from around the world at the Théâtre de l'Alliance française in Paris, but also in other prestigious venues in the Paris region. The Malagasy family troupe Rasoalalao Kavia presents Hira gasy, musical theater of the Highlands. The last great representative of Kenyan taarab, the group Lelele Africa, invites us to discover this popular music deeply rooted on the east coast of Africa. The Garinagu Wagia ensemble gives a show with Garifuna music and dances, a culture from an Afro-descendant population of Latin America, once escaped slaves and refugees in the island of Saint Vincent, in the Lesser Antilles. Fatima Tabaamrant, "the mother of all Amazighs", brings to life the culture and rights of this marginalized indigenous people. The Berbers or Imazighen are considered one of the oldest populations in Morocco. On 5 June, Tabaamrant will also participate alongside Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, a Fulani activist from Chad, in a round table: "Intangible heritage: a weapon of resistance and emancipation of indigenous women".
Africologne, the festival of African cultures in Cologne, Germany, welcomes artists from all over the African continent from 1 to 11 June. On the program of this forum of transnational artistic exchanges: Samson, musical theater by Brett Bailey, Bikutsi 3000 by Blick Bassy, the film Nafi's Father by Mamadou Dia, Terre ceinte, directed by Aristide Tarnagda of the play by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, the performance For my negativity by Kagayi Ngobi...
From June 1 to 11, Rabat will host the 28th edition of the International Publishing and Book Fair (SIEL). The Moroccan capital of culture honors African literature with more than 450 writers, academics, translators and artists expected and 700 publishers from twenty countries.
In Berlin, the cultural institution Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) celebrates its reopening on June 2 under the direction of Cameroonian Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung. Guided by the search for strategies to live and better inhabit this world together, this cultural house proposes a conception of the world "that encompasses the plurality of cultures, epistemologies, socio-political, spiritualities and ways of being in the world". On the program, the exhibition O Quilombismo. Resistance and insistence. Flight as well as fighting. Other democratic and egalitarian political philosophies, but also the Sonic Pluriverse Congorama Festival, a sound investigation and a musical journey that revolve around three places in the world called "Congo".
"Free Dress 2/3" (detail), a 2022 digital painting by Ugandan artist Charlene Komuntale, featured in the group exhibition "Shapes of Water" at Afriart Gallery, Kampala. © Afriart Gallery
From June 3rd, the Parisian gallery Magnin-A pays tribute to Kiripi Katembo (1979-2015) with the exhibition Un regard. Died suddenly at the age of 36, the Congolese photographer and director leaves behind a powerful body of work and a sublimated vision of Kinshasa through a unique photographic aesthetic.
From 8 to 11 June, Nigerian dancer and choreographer Qudus Onikeku presents Out of This World at the Centre Pompidou. Between performance and interactive installation, the piece is inspired by the Ifa divinatory system of Yoruba culture. Composed of sixteen totems, the creation gives rise to "a space for meeting, listening and exchanging where music, dance and words intertwine".
On June 8, the new season of Les Quartiers Lointains will be launched at the Centre Pompidou Métamorphoses. This itinerant program of short films from South to North, created in 2013 by Claire Diao, a Franco-Burkinabe distributor and film critic, is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year with Franco-Senegalese filmmaker Alice Diop as godmother. From Pantin to New York, from Los Angeles to Béjaïa, from Ouagadougou to Lyon, so far, this program has accompanied twenty-seven short films by twenty-nine filmmakers now recognized.
From June 9, the Musée des Confluences in Lyon immerses itself in the life of masks, statuettes and other objects from the collection of Ewa and Yves Develon. Afrique, mille vies d'objets proposes to explore differently the life of hundreds of objects, "from the process of creation to their use, from the ritual object to the work of art, from Africa to Europe"...
The exhibition Contemporary Identities of Côte d'Ivoirebrings together renowned artists in painting, design and fashion, from the Ivorian art scene to the international scene, until June 10. Among the artists exhibited in Paris under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture and Francophonie of Côte d'Ivoire are Aboudia, Jacobleu, Olivia Perez and Valérie Oka, recently deceased. An installation in his memory and some of his most emblematic works will be presented.
View of the group exhibition "Shapes of Water" at the Afriart Gallery, Kampala. © Afriart Gallery
Until August 30, the Galerie Africaine brings together the works of Faten Rouissi, N'Dorah, Zian Alabdeen and Yao Metsoko to give a particular echo to African art. A dialogue of paintings and sculptures "beyond their geographical origin" such as Tunisia, Cameroon, Sudan, Togo or Burkina Faso. Works that "respond to each other in the same sound that repeats itself".
On June 10, the Carthage Choreographic Days open with Archipel by French choreographer Mathilde Monnier. A choreography for the dancers of the Ballet de l'Opéra de Tunis and the choreographic ensemble of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris. On the program until June 17, among others the creation Libération by Ameni Chatti (Tunisia), Dbak Tbal by Imed Amara (Tunisia), Dihiya by Mohamed Lamqayssi (Morocco) or the iconic piece May B by Maguy Marin (France), transmitted for two years to the Syhem Belkhodja company and presented in a new light after its appropriation by young Tunisian dancers.
The group exhibition Shapes of Water at Uganda's Afriart Gallery in Kampala is showcasing works by women artists from Eastern and Southern Africa until 12 August to "spark conversations and inspire imagination for new possibilities". Among the artists exhibited: Charity Atukunda (Uganda), Amani Azhari (Sudan), Naseeba Bagalaaliwo (Uganda), Nelsa Guambe (Mozambique), April Kamunde (Kenya), Maliza Kiasuwa (DRC), Charlene Komuntale (Uganda), Kitso Lynn Lelliott (South Africa), Sungi Mlengeya (Tanzania) and Mona Taha (Uganda).
As part of the Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, Algerian dancer and choreographer Nacera Belaza presents Les Sentinelles on June 9 and 10 at MC93 Bobigny.2. A revival of "his founding piece created as a duo in 2010 by extending it to a group of amateur and professional dancers".
The sections on the Atlantic slave trade and slavery at the Musée d'histoire de Nantes are considered international references. With the third edition of Expression(s) décoloniale(s), the institution continues to take a different look at the collections to decolonize its thought and imagination. Until November 12, the Cameroonian artist Barthélémy Toguo presents about twenty works in the permanent exhibition and wished to associate five artists with the event: Jean-François Boclé (Martinique), Moreira Chonguiça (Mozambique), Rosana Paulino (Brazil), Monica Toiliye (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Kara Walker (USA).
"Sundays are not rest days I" and "Sundays are not rest days II", works from 2023 by artist April Kamunde (Kenya), presented in the group exhibition "Shapes of Water" at Afriart Gallery, Kampala. © Afriart Gallery
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I am Algerian by my ancestors and internationalist by my century " said Kateb Yacine (1929-1989). On June 11, the Arab World Institute pays tribute to the work and life of the great writer, poet, playwright, journalist and director through a meeting-debate and reading with Djalila Dechache, Albert Dichy and Waciny Laredj: Yesterday, today, tomorrow. Love, revolution, writing.
The Annecy Festival, the world's largest event dedicated to animation, will open its doors between 11 and 17 June. In the competitive section of feature films "Contrechamps" competes the Cameroonian film The Sacred Cave by Daniel Minlo and Cyrille Masso. It is the story of a poisoned African king who seeks the antidote capable of curing him in the sacred cave...
The new National Museum of Immigration History opens on June 12. After extensive work in the Palais de la Porte Dorée in Paris, the museum reopens its permanent gallery covering the period from 1685 to the present day. The completely renewed space aims to be more didactic and evolving, integrating recent research on immigration in France to "know and understand an essential part of French identity".
As part of the Move festival, which starts on 15 June, the Centre Pompidou is programming from 29 June to 1 July a creation by the American artistic duo Gérard & Kelly: Gay Guerrilla will be performed by Germain Louvet and Guillaume Diop, the Paris Opera's very first black star dancer. The show explores the legacy of queer African-American composer Julius Eastman (1940-1990) through dance, music and architecture.
From June 15 to 18, the Chicago International African Diaspora Film Festival (ADIFF Chicago) celebrates its 20th anniversary with programs and screenings around the Black and Indigenous experience, giving a multidimensional voice to often misrepresented realities and peoples.
From June 16, Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien presents her new project designed for the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The being, the other and the between draws on the different cultures that make up its identity. "Of Guadeloupean and Ivorian origin, the artist was introduced to manual activities in childhood, with his mother and grandmother. Each of her works syncretically combines elements from these different universes, whose symbols she explores by questioning the spaces and expressions of femininity, as well as the relationship to craft traditions within a society modernized by its industrialization.
»From June 17 to July 9, the Marseille Festival offers three weeks with 34 shows: dance, theater, concerts, films, exhibitions... Artists from more than 26 cities in 21 countries including Congo, Egypt, Morocco, Uganda and Western Sahara.
On June 30, the Théâtre Gennevilliers hosts the multidisciplinary project In vivo théâtre – Fantasticalité, which is part of Ircam's multidisciplinary ManiFeste festival. Four young composers come to work at T2G on the question of fantasy in theatre, based on a corpus of French-speaking female texts: Port-au-Prince et sa douce nuit by Haitian Gaëlle Bien-Aimé and Praia Do Eldorado by Beninese Dodji Do Rego.
From June 30, the Capc, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Bordeaux begins the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the institution with a monumental installation by Kapwani Kiwanga in the Nave. Born in 1978 in Canada, of Tanzanian origin, she now lives in France. Considered one of the most important artists of her generation, she announces "an unprecedented project thought in relation to the history of the place, which in the nineteenth century was a warehouse of colonial goods to become in 1973 one of the most emblematic places of contemporary creation in France and abroad".
► Thank you to all the artists and professionals for their proposals. You too can send us your "must-haves" of African culture in 2023 to the addressrfipageculture@yahoo.fr.
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