Arts
African Voices Archive
Valerie Asiimwe Amani
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Rehema Chachage
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Michael Makembe
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Valerie Asiimwe Amani is a Tanzanian artist and writer whose practice explores the intersections of body, language, and myth. Working across video, textiles, performance, installation, and text, her work responds to questions of belonging, memory, and how we make sense of ourselves in the world.. Amani and Rehema Chachage and the Germany-based PARA collective participated in the German Federal Cultural Foundation-funded project called Reinventing Grassi. SKD. “Moving Mountains” addresses the strange story of the theft of the “summit-stone” of Mount Kilimanjaro.
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Rehema Chachage has a research-driven, process-based practice characterized by a diverse range of media and methods. Grounded in generational knowledge, memory, and alternative storytelling methodologies, her work integrates performance, photography, video, olfactory, voice, text, and installation to create immersive, multisensory installations which engage visuality, sound, and scent. Through collective, polyphonic engagements, Chachage maps histories, spaces, and embodied narratives, offering alternative methodologies for engaging with the past and refusing erasure. Chachage and Valerie Asiimwe Amani and the Germany-based PARA collective participated in the German Federal Cultural Foundation-funded project called Reinventing Grassi. SKD. “Moving Mountains” addresses the strange story of the theft of the “summit-stone” of Mount Kilimanjaro.
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Ndeenda Shivute-Nakapunda is a prominent Namibian curator and artist currently serving as the Chief Curator of the National Art Gallery of Namibia (NAGN). Her work focuses on making museum collections more accessible and representative of the communities they serve. She graduated from the University of Cape Town, with BA in Fine Arts (Photography) and Honours in Curatorship. At NAGN she leads curatorial efforts, artist engagement, and exhibition development. She has been actively involved in promoting Namibian art, including facilitating workshops for local artists, and securing funding and collaborations with local and international institutions. In 2023, Shivute-Nakapunda co-conceptualised Artistic Research Communal Knowledge (ARCK) with Golda !Ha-Eiros. The objective of the project was to reintegrate 23 cultural belongings that had been repatriated through the Confronting Colonial Pasts, Envisioning Creative Futures Project into their societies of origin, through community research and the arts.
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Chansa Chishimba is a Zambian sculptor, textile designer and painter. He was trained at Nkwame Nkrumah Teachers College in Kabwe, Evelyn Hone College of applied Arts and Commerce in Lusaka, Zambia and at the Baltic School of Arts and Design in Skone, Sweden. He initially worked on paper, canvas and jute, but later started researching different types of trees and techniques of processing Zambian traditional tree bark fibre cloth. In 2004 he first experimented with Papaya tree bark fibre, which is commonly found around Zambia, and prides himself in being the first Zambian visual artist to paint on it. His art also often depicts symbols that are drawn from Zambian Cultures and traditions. In 2015, Chishimba was one of two assistant curators who worked with Lawrence Yombwe (Curator) to set up the first Exhibition in the newly built National Art Gallery. He went on to curate a second group art exhibiton. Currently Chishimba is the in charge of the Livingstone Art Gallery, which falls under the National Arts Council of Zambia.
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Lawrence Chikwa is a dynamic artist whose practice spans Zambia, the African continent, the United States, and Europe. He established Inter Art Studios in Lusaka in 2007, cultivating a professional discipline that attracts local and international collectors. He continues to work in his studio in Chongwe, Lusaka, collaborating with art galleries and cultural institutions. His work is celebrated for its ability to bridge local and global narratives, making him a significant voice in contemporary African art. His latest work touches on the topic of independence, on which he shares observations about national history and trajectory to the future.
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Fogha Mc Cornilius Refem (aka Wan wo Layir) is a self-prescribed severe drapetomania “patient”. He is an in[ter]discipline[ed]ary artist and an academic nomad with a background in sociology, international relations, and social work. He completed his Master's in social work at the Alice Salomon-Hochschule in Berlin with a focus on decolonizing social work practice and theory through what he called a ‘self-redemptive professional suicide’. He was a Humanity In Action Senior Fellow of the 2021 program and has participated in the untold stories project producing a short documentary about human zoos in Berlin. Refem has actively participated in the diasporic campaign to #BringBackNgonnso. He is currently studying towards his PhD at Universität Potsdam. He describes his dissertation project, titled ‘Ontologies In Conversation’: Restitution As A Cosmopolitan Practice' , as work that ""seeks to ‘pivot the center’ and theorize from multiple angles so as to make new approaches, themes, and questions visible in the current debate for the restitution of objects looted from Africa during colonization"".
Affiliation(s): Universität Potsdam Antikoloniale Visionen | Initiative Perspektivwechsel e.V. Humanity in Action
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Published Work: In Defence of Theft?: On the Theft and Restitution of Ngonnso’ and Punitive Exhibitions (In Fifteen Colonial Thefts: A Guide to Looted African Heritage in Museums); Embracing death so they may yet be space for life (In Atlas of Absence: Cameroon's Cultural Heritage in Germany) ; Human Zoos | Enforced Silences
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Michael Makembe is a Rwandan musician, multi-instrumentalist, producer, beat-maker, and sound archivist, who blends traditional Rwandan sounds with modern beats, preserving and innovating within Rwandan musical traditions. He produced the film ""Sounds of Rwanda"", using material that has been digital returned to Rwanda from the Royal Museum of Central Africa (AfricaMuseum) in Belgium. Through it, he explored the reappropriation of the sonic archives.
Affiliation(s): Independent
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Owo Anietie is a Nigerian 3D afrofuturism artist. His career in art began in 2009 as a traditional artist doing portrait paintings and drawings as commissions. He transitioned to motion design, animation and digital illustration in 2012 with a desire to reach a wider audience, as an African artist. In 2021 he established AfroDroids by Owo, a 12k PFP NFT project that depicts human life through the eyes of Africans. Each Afrodroid is a piece of art with increasing value and a number of hidden benefits that become apparent as the project advances. For the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023, Anietie served as a technical collaborator for Looty’s ""Mnemonic"" installation. He provided the breathtaking visuals of looted African belongings, such as the Benin Bronzes, bringing the concept of digital restitution to life.
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Chidi Nwaubani is a visionary designer, artist and tech practitioner. He experiments with XR/AR to redefine art by providing captivating experiences, and seeks to empower artists and reimagine ideas of memorialising history and culture using technology. In 2021, Nwaubani co-founded the virtual restitution project Looty with Ahmed Abokor. Named after a dog taken from China and given to Queen Victoria as a gift, the project contributes to the charged conversations around restitution in a witty and anarchic way. Looty produces NFTs of looted objects in major institutions and sells them, with 20 percent of the proceeds going to grants for young African artists. Looty uses an entirely legal process that sends representatives into institutions to digitally capture looted artifacts, render them in 3-D, and create NFTs from them. The next stage of the project will be the building of a virtual museum in the metaverse to house the reclaimed artifacts, as well as expansions into augmented reality and merchandise. The hope is to extend the project globally, creating a family of digital looters to add to the virtual museum.
Affiliation(s): Looty African Futures Institute (PinPoint)
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Published Work: Looting Back History: How This Digital Project Reclaims Stolen Artifacts
