Dakartnews

11/08/2026

𝐁𝐚𝐬𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐚𝐭 𝐂𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐀𝐛𝐢𝐝𝐣𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝟏𝟗𝟖𝟔. 𝐀𝐧𝐧𝐚-𝐀𝐥𝐢𝐱 𝐊𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐢 𝐈𝐬 𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐢𝐬 𝐇𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞

Forty years after Jean-Michel Basquiat's only journey to the African continent, STEREO FE**SH will investigate his 1986 stay in Côte d'Ivoire from the place where it happened, establishing for the first time what was actually shown in Abidjan. Conceived and directed by Anna-Alix Koffi, with Simon Njami as general curator and Ange-Frédéric Koffi as guest curator, the season opens in Abidjan in October 2026, travels to Paris and closes in New York in August 2028.

Link in comments.

03/07/2026

𝐌𝐞́𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐚, 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐤𝐚𝐫 𝐍𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐓𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐈𝐭𝐬 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐚 𝐋𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐮𝐦

In Dakar's Medina, murals do more than brighten walls. They preserve history, celebrate community, and transform everyday streets into spaces of memory and artistic expression.

Our latest field report explores how street art has become part of the neighborhood's identity.

Link in comment.

09/06/2026

𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝟏𝟕–𝟐𝟏, 𝐀𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚 𝐁𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐝𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐫𝐭 𝐁𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐥 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤, 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐥𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐫.

As the first fair dedicated to contemporary African art and its diaspora in Basel, the event is moving this year into Klybeck 610, a former industrial site that has become a symbol of the city’s cultural transformation.

At a time when African galleries remain significantly underrepresented at major international art fairs, Africa Basel’s second edition seeks to strengthen its position within the global art ecosystem.

To understand what is at stake this year, DakArtNews spoke with returning exhibitors, first-time participants, artists and the fair’s co-founding director about the opportunities, challenges and evolving ambitions of Africa Basel.

Featured in this article:

Benjamin Füglister, Co-founding Director of Africa Basel.

Eleri Fanshawe, Curator at London’s October Gallery .

Ba Taonga Julia Kaunda-Kaseka, Director of Modzi Arts (based in Lusaka, Zambia).

Natasha Evans , artist exhibiting with Modzi Arts Gallery.

Mwamba Chikwemba , artist exhibiting with Modzi Arts Gallery.

Lorna Mashiba Albou, Founder of Dar es Salaam’s Rangi Gallery and Curator of the Tanzanian Pavilion (In Minor Keys) at the Venice Biennale. Andrea Dyrland , Curator with KE'CH Collective (operating between Marrakech and Switzerland).

As the art world descends on Switzerland, the second edition of Africa Basel moves to a raw new venue at Klybeck 610, shifting the focus from mere visibility to long-term market viability.

06/06/2026

📣 Welcome to Dakar, Olivier Mbabazi!

We are pleased to welcome Olivier Mbabazi this summer in Dakar, as an intern.

Originally from Rwanda and currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Global Arts and Cultures at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in the United States, Olivier is conducting research on the role of the Dak’Art Biennale in shaping contemporary narratives around African art, digital transformation, and sustainability.

His time in Dakar will be an opportunity to engage with the wider contemporary art ecosystem while deepening his research on the dynamics of contemporary art in Senegal and across the African continent.

Beyond his research, Olivier is also a practicing artist — and Dakar is already finding its way into his sketchbook, one drawing at a time.

05/06/2026

The Venice Biennale has long been a place where Africa appeared only intermittently. A presence that was rare, often mediated through the gaze of others, and at times reduced to a footnote in the grand narrative of contemporary art.

For decades, African artists, critics, and curators were compelled to fight a battle that seemed both simple and fundamental: the battle to exist within the field of vision of the global art world. That struggle produced its own figures, controversies, and victories.

From the pioneering exhibitions of the 1990s to the work of Okwui Enwezor, the first African curator to direct the Biennale in 2015, the question of visibility became one of the defining threads in the recent history of contemporary African art.

The edition conceived by Koyo Kouoh appears to mark the culmination of that trajectory. Never before, perhaps, have so many African and diasporic artists occupied such a prominent place within the International Exhibition. From Dakar to Nairobi, Lagos to Cape Town, via Accra, Marrakech, and the Black Atlantic, their works traverse the Giardini and the Arsenale as a presence that can no longer be ignored.

Yet as one moves through the exhibition, another question gradually emerges. A question more complex than that of representation. What becomes of African art when visibility ceases to be its primary horizon? This is the condition this review proposes to call the post-visibility blues.

For being seen is not an end in itself. Once the doors have been opened, once dominant narratives have been challenged, once presence has been secured, what remains is the essential question: What new ideas are being produced? What forms are being invented? What narratives are being constructed? What institutions will endure?

Koyo Kouoh’s Biennale may ultimately be less significant for the number of African artists it brings together than for the question it compels us to ask.

It invites us to look beyond visibility toward a new moment in which the challenge is no longer simply to occupy a place within the global narrative of art, but to participate in its redefinition.

Review accessible via Link in bio.

01/06/2026

Your June art guide is here — continent edition. 🖤

We curated the exhibitions and art events from the galleries of Marrakech to the studios of Cape Town, with stops in Dakar, Abidjan, and Lagos along the way.

Save this post, share it with your art people, and go see something beautiful.

28/05/2026

In the hushed halls of the 17th-century Palazzo Donà dalle Rose, where the light filters through ancient windows onto Venetian floors, .anne.art has quietly inserted an Afro-diasporic voice into one of the most prestigious stages in contemporary art.

As the curator and driving force behind 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑭𝒊𝒔𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒆𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝑳𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 – 𝑫𝒊𝒂𝒔𝒑𝒐𝒓𝒂: 𝑫𝒊𝒔𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒆𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝑭 𝑴𝒊𝒏𝒐𝒓, selected as an official Collateral Event of the 61st Venice Biennale, the Franco-Senegalese curator, filmmaker and founder of has transformed a historic palace into a contemplative space of memory, fracture and repair.

In a conversation with DakArtNews, Mama Anne reflects on the significance of this milestone and the evolving place of African and diasporic artists on the global stage.

Full interview available on dakartnews.com

26/05/2026

Zaouli Henry is a self-taught Ivorian naïve painter. His work draws directly from the social and cultural reality that surrounds him, far from academic virtuosity.

For him, naïve painting is not a simplified style or a technical shortcoming, but a precise and deliberate method of observation: “It’s what you see in the city that you reproduce.” He captures everyday scenes (improvised football matches, street restaurants, sidewalk healers, hair salons) and renders them not faithfully, but transformed by memory, vibrant colour, and exaggerated volumes.

His series on hair salons holds a special place in his oeuvre. A former barber himself, Zaouli paints these spaces from intimate memory, capturing their hand-painted signs, bright colours, and inventive names.

These paintings bear witness to an urgency: to document popular forms of urban sociability and creativity that are rapidly disappearing in the face of modernisation (replaced by uniform plastic panels).

DakArtNews met the artist in Grand-Bassam, Côte d’Ivoire, where some of his works are currently displayed at the Maison des Artistes Plasticiens de Grand-Bassam.

14/05/2026

A new foundation based in Basel, Switzerland, has been created to continue the legacy of the late curator and cultural thinker Koyo Kouoh, one of the most influential figures in contemporary African art.

The Koyo Kouoh Foundation aims to structure and extend the work she initiated throughout her career by supporting contemporary African cultural production globally. Based in Basel, where Kouoh lived and worked, the foundation will operate internationally through funding, resources, research, and institutional support for artists, curators, and cultural practitioners engaged in contemporary African cultural production worldwide.

According to its mission, the foundation seeks to continue a living tradition rather than preserve it as a static legacy. It is grounded in the belief that art is shaped by history, power, access, and the material conditions in which artists and curators work.

The governance of the foundation brings together a constellation of international profiles drawn from contemporary art, cultural institutions, and the economic sphere. Curators, artists, cultural strategists, and figures engaged in supporting the arts form a board conceived as a transcontinental network of perspectives and expertise.

The foundation also continues the intellectual and institutional structures Kouoh helped build, including Raw Material Company in Dakar, the influential art center she founded in 2008.

Its program focuses on supporting research, education, production, and circulation, with particular attention to practices connected to Africa, its diasporas, and Afro-Caribbean contexts. The foundation argues that these spaces are central to contemporary global culture and critical thought.

It also calls for cultural institutions to become more open, responsible, and connected to social realities, insisting that culture is not secondary but structural.

For the foundation, artists and curators do not simply produce culture; they also create knowledge, relationships, and new possibilities for the future.