Art and Politics in Africa Journal

Issue One, entitled Embodied Identities, proposes the body as a site of profound significance for African histories of gender, race, ecology, political emancipation, resistance and memory. 

It brings together a range of essays that consider how artists have used the corporeal to intervene in the typecasting of culture in Africa, to vivify pluralised conceptions of African and diasporic identities, and to reflect on, and shape, the political. 

Essays include:

• J.D. Okhai Ojeikere’s photographic documentation of hairstyles as expressions of freedom
• Corporeal resistance in Zanele Muholi’s self-portraits
• Gendered subject in Lawrence Lemaoana and Kawira Mwirichia’s Kangas
• Political and aesthetic shifts in Malangatana Ngwenya and João Craveirinha’s works
• Negotiation of women’s identities in the art of Houria Niati and Souad Abdelrasoul, among others

Together, these essays open critical perspectives on works that have sought to challenge and reshape societal narratives of the human form, and to test the limits of the body as a medium for, and site of, political expression and artistic resistance in Africa.

Issue Two, Heritage: Resistance, Memory and Generative Practice, seeks to open debate around the concept of ‘heritage’, and to interrogate its construction, contestation, and visual translations through the lens of contemporary art practice in Africa and the diaspora.

Recognising that heritage continually reproduces resistance, memory, and generative practice, this issue seeks to rejuvenate perspectives on the term by illustrating how heritage is not a neutral record of the past, but a dynamic and often contested arena of meaning-making. 

Overall, this issue aims to platform conversations that contribute to an ongoing definition of a reimagined heritage.

Heritage is approached here through three interrelated strands: 

• Resistance and resilience
• Preservation and memory
• Futurity and generative practice

Within these frames, essays consider: colonialism’s role in Moroccan art and architecture; Pan-African identity strengthened by Vodou in post-emancipatory Haiti; queer contemporary art in the Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region; seeking heritage in exile through Salih Basheer’s photography; transcultural and multi-temporal memory systems in the installations of Lina Iris Viktor; intersections of tradition and futurity in the work of Gani Odutokun; and decolonial heritage and artistic freedom in South Africa’s Triangle workshops, among others.