When things fall apart
Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.
9 Articles by:
Riason Naidoo
Born in Durban, Riason Naidoo is an independent curator, writer, researcher, and artist. Naidoo directed the South African National Gallery (2009-15) and the South Africa-Mali Project: Timbuktu Manuscripts (2003-09). He is currently a Mellon/HUMA Doctoral Research Fellow in Art History at the University of Cape Town.
How to unmake the world
In this wide-ranging conversation, para-disciplinary artist Nolan Oswald Dennis reflects on space, time, Blackness, and the limits of Western knowledge—offering a strategy for imagining grounded in African and anti-colonial traditions.
What comes after liberation?
In this wide-ranging conversation, the freedom fighter and former Constitutional Court justice Albie Sachs reflects on law, liberation, and the unfinished work of building a just South Africa.
Coming home
In 1991, acclaimed South African artist Helen Sebidi’s artworks were presumed stolen in Sweden. Three decades later, a caretaker at the residential college where they disappeared found them in a ceiling cupboard, still in their original packaging.
Out of the fire
Senegalese art historian El Hadji Malick Ndiaye on curating one of the two longest-serving biennales on the African continent.
When paintings are dreams
The vivid imagery of Zimbabwean artist Portia Zvavahera touches powerfully on themes such as womanhood, religion and spirituality.
The lesson of the turtle and the dove
The South African musician known as Madosini passed away in 2022. She was one of the last of a generation who learnt to play traditional Xhosa instruments, in so doing sharing the spirituality, dignity, and joy of Xhosa culture through her inimitable song.
James Barnor, ever young
Riason Naidoo talks to the curator and editor of a book and traveling exhibition about the work of the legendary, 90 year-old Ghanaian photographer.
The great opus of “Small Bobby”
Ranjith Kally (1925-2017), a legendary photographer, documented South African Indian life in famed magazine Drum.