Arts
African Voices Archive
Faustin Linyekula
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Minne Atairu is an interdisciplinary artist and doctoral student in Art and Art Education at Columbia University. Her academic research emerges at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence, Art/Museum Education and hip-hop-based education. Her ongoing project, Igùn, investigates a 17-year Artistic Absence [1897-1914] in the Benin Kingdom following the 1897 Benin invasion. Minne appeared on Open Restitution Africa's podcast, Episode 2: Digital Collections (Part II). This project is an online index of de-installed, repatriated and yet-to-be-repatriated Benin Bronzes. The list dates back to 2014 and will always be in progress. All entry descriptions are excerpts from existing text entries on the related website.
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Published Work: Benin Bronze Tracker
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Sylvie Njobati is a passionate restitution activist whose work is focused on confronting the colonial to reclaim Africa’s heritage stuck elsewhere in the world. She is also the founder of Sysy House of Fame, an Arts and Culture organization in Cameroon working to empower Africa to an awakening that fosters our ability to reshape our present and the future. As a Pan-Africanist restitution activist, she supports communities in Africa to make their restitution requests for collections looted from Africa in a colonial context. Among her achievement is the recent success in the restitution claim of the Ngonnso from one of the world's most powerful Foundations holding thousands of collections from colonial contexts. This record enters history as it is the first-ever restitution success led by an activist and grassroots organization. Sylvie has a vision for Africa, an informed people with the power to reclaim what was forcefully taken from them and to shape global conversations and actions to their favor. She holds a BSc in Sustainable Development and Management for the ICT University in Cameroon and is looking forward to a master's in Film, Theatre, and Television. When she is not preaching Africa’s renaissance, She is taking photographs, watching and talking about African Football.
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Molemo Moiloa is the Executive Director of Andani Africa and cofounder at Open Restitution Africa. She also lectures at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she received her Master’s degree in Social Anthropology cum laude. She was an Africa No Filter (ANF) Fellow in 2021. Her study explored how art and artefact restitution are being discussed across the continent. At Andani Africa she is involved in various projects engaging with museum practice. At Open Restitution Africa, she is the research lead. She also co-leads The Ungovernable, an experiment in community practice and ungovernability. Molemo is a Soros Arts Fellow 2023/24, was a Chevening Clore Fellow 2016/17, and winner of a Vita Basadi Award for 2017.
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Published Work: Reclaiming Restitution: Centering and Contextualising the African Narrative
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Eric Otieno is a scholar, writer and facilitator interested in the intersections between social justice, postcolonial politics, the global ‘order’ and contemporary art & culture. He is a PhD candidate at the Department of Development and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Kassel, Germany, following degrees in Sociology/Political Science (B.A., Frankfurt DE) and Global Political Economy (M.A., Kassel & Coimbra-PT). Eric is also part of the decolonial memory-politics project kassel postkolonial, a commentator on various online/print platforms and contributing editor and content creator at GRIOT mag.
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Published Work: The First Reactions to the Report on Restitution of Looted Art
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Faustin is a versatile artist and storyteller with a background in dance, choreography, writing, and theatre. Hailing from the Democratic Republic of Congo, they've performed across the globe and received numerous awards, including the 2007 Principal Award from the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development and the 2019 Tällberg / Eliasson Global Leadership Prize. In 2001, they returned to their homeland and established Studios Kabako, a unique space that provides comprehensive support to artists, transcending traditional artistic boundaries. Their work extends to community and environmental projects, such as supplying clean water and offering computer literacy workshops in underserved areas. Through their art and initiatives, they foster unity and positive change in communities.
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Published Work: My Body, My Archive
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Professor Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie specializes in the arts and visual culture of Africa and its Diasporas, especially in terms of how art history discourses create value for African cultural patrimony in the age of globalization.
Published Work: How to Bring Africa’s Artifacts Back Home from Europe’s Museums
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Nana Oforiatta Ayim is a writer, filmmaker, and art historian who is a mobilising force in the Presidential Committee on Ghana’s Museums and Cultural Heritage. In her work, she has sought to understand the various relativities of cultural contexts and to give voice to that understanding in a way that speaks to both the actors and communities of that context, as well as the wider world. She is director of the ANO Institute of Arts & Knowledge, through which she has pioneered a pan-African Cultural Encyclopedia, reimagining narratives from across and about the continent; and a Mobile Museums project that travels into communities to collect material culture and exhibits them in those communities to, creating discourse about narratives, memory and value. Ghana announced the Presidential Committee on Ghana’s Museums and Cultural Heritage, a Committee appointed to propose new policies to investigate radical new ways of presenting narratives, as well as engaging communities from across social divides in Ghana, so that they might see themselves properly represented in their museums. Their report is available to the public as of 2021.
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Published Work: Speak Now in Frieze Magazine A New Chapter: Ghana's Museums and Cultural Heritage
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Jim Chuchu is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans music, film, photography, and the visual arts. Chuchu's artistic journey is marked by the exploration of identity, culture, and the complexities of the African experience. In 2012, Chuchu co-founded The Nest Collective, serving as co-director until 2021. Concurrently, he co-founded HEVA in 2015, a fund investing in East Africa's creative economy, which has since invested more than $3 million in creative businesses. Chuchu's involvement with the International Inventories Programme (2018-2021) marked another transformative phase in his career. This project, exploring the presence of Kenyan cultural objects in global institutions, led to a deepening of his understanding of the historical injustices that form part of Kenya’s colonial history, and the ongoing systemic challenges faced by Black individuals globally. The project catalogued an inventory of more than 32,000 objects and engaged various publics on urgent debates about object movement and colonial history. His work on this project culminated in his selection as a TED Fellow in 2021, where he delivered the talk: Why are stolen African artefacts still in Western museums? Chuchu's current projects reflect his continued exploration of diverse mediums and themes. He currently serves as Creative Director for African in the Anthropocene, a multimedia project examining how communities across Africa experience and respond to climate change. He is also co-producing Fight for Food, a documentary exploring food production in Kenya, while developing new experimental design work and his second feature film project.
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Published Work: Invisible Inventories: Questioning Kenyan Collections in Western Museums. International Inventories Programme’ (Kwani? and Iwalewa Books, 2021)
