Page 35 - ART GIANTS issue of World of Art (WOA) Contemporary Art Magazine

IDEAS OF AFRICA:
PORTRAITURE AND POLITICAL
IMAGINATION

The Museum of Modern Art presents Ideas of Africa:
Portraiture and Political Imagination, an exhibition
examining the role of photographic portraiture in shaping
Pan-African identity and solidarity. The exhibition
explores Africa as a political idea, shaped by decolonial
movements across the continent alongside the Civil
Rights movement in the United States.
This is the third exhibition celebrating Jean Pigozzi’s
2019 gift of modern and contemporary African art,
featuring core works from this collection alongside
recent acquisitions and key loans. Inspired by V. Y.
Mudimbe’s The Idea of Africa (1994) and Robin D. G.
Kelley’s Africa Speaks, America Answers (2012), the
exhibition brings together photographs by Seydou Keïta, Brathwaite further illuminate Pan-African image-making
Malick Sidibé, Jean Depara, Sanlé Sory, and Ambroise across the diaspora. Contemporary artists, including
Ngaimoko - artists who documented vibrant urban life Samuel Fosso, Silvia Rosi, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby,
in West and Central Africa during the “golden age of alongside archival material from Air Afrique, explore the
African portraiture.” Works by James Barnor and Kwame circulation of these visual narratives.

Kwame Brathwaite. Untitled (Sikolo with Carolee Prince Designs). 1964–68.
Inkjet print, printed 2018. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Committee
on Photography Fund, 228.2018. © 2024 Kwame Brathwaite
Malick Sidibé. Regardez-moi! (Look at Me!). 1962. Gelatin silver print, printed
2003. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Jean Pigozzi, 400.2003. © Silvia Rosi. Sposa Italiana Disintegrata. 2024. Inkjet print on Baryta paper.
2024 Malick Sidibé. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY. Courtesy of the artist and Collezione Maramotti.

WORLD of ART 35