The contextual backbone of her works lies in revealing the violence, both visible and invisible, in society

The exhibition "IT IS ALL AROUND US" is showcasing NFT artworks from a variety of artists all around the world. The world of NFT, and digital art in general, is a vast, unexplored land rife with possibilities. We had a chat with the curator of the show, Jérémy Chausse, about why he thinks NFT is the future and what we can look forward to in the exhibition.

There are a variety of stories, techniques, and visual language that will give the visitors of “IT IS ALL AROUND US” an understanding of just what NFT and digital art can do. 

Within his works, many of which are self-portraits, he turns the Black queer body into a sensual, ethereal being, whose existence is desired by all.

Featuring over 600 of her drawings, the exhibition ‘A Black Hole is Everything a Star Longs to Be’ becomes the first glimpse the outside world will have to the mind of Kara Walker.

With distorted figures, Chase defies the binary gender structures in society, blending different characteristics within one singular body

Program is a global live-streaming event set to bring audiences around the world into the four David Zwirner gallery spaces in New York, London, Paris, and Hong Kong.

Packer often asks the people in her life to be subjects in her works. By depicting them in paint, she’s creating a message that the people in her work deserve to be recognized and deserve to exist.

For the 2021 edition of Art Brussels, the fair has decided to collaborate with the art online marketplace, Artsy. From June 1-14, 2021, collectors and art enthusiasts all over the world will be able to view what Art Brussels has to offer through Artsy’s website.

Artist Greg Breda creates portraits that are grounded in reality but with a whimsicality and softness to them.

At the end of her life, she was beloved by many and instilled the belief in the power of art as a tool of social justice.

His technique involves tracing the contour of the subject’s face as if mapping every part of the figure’s presence.

The ninth Art Basel Hong Kong was held on May 19-23. The first held since the pandemic, the fair was met with both enthusiasm and criticism.

As a fiber artist, she’s created many story quilts that tell the tales of African Americans.

After a barrage of criticism for his initial NFT inspired by the late Chadwick Boseman, artist Andre Oshea created a new work that addressed many of those critics. His new work, in comparison to his last, showed the capabilities the digital medium has.

Though he started his career in painting, he began experimenting with fabric as another way of telling the stories of labor and slavery.

Mitchell’s softly rendered portraits convey emotions and feelings that are achieved by contrasting the photorealistic details of the figures with acrylic swaths of flat colors.

Artist Alex Gardner is known for his oil paintings of faceless silhouettes with as few identifying details as possible.

Quaicoe’s stunning paintings always touch upon his experience as an African entering the African American community.

There’s a child-like sense of play that comes from his use of colors and shapes.

Set in front of a single bright colored background, Sherald would only paint her figures in shades of gray.

For the first time since May 2020, New York City had its first in-person art fair. Though limited in size and scope due to the pandemic, the Frieze Art Fair might be a sign that things are starting to return to normal in the art world.

Let’s unfold three long-standing polarities at stake in the art world: Government vs. Market, Freedom vs. Authority, and Provocation vs. Decadence. 

Not only to make them ‘real’, Bey also illustrates the idea of possibilities and forgotten intimate historical violence. In the words of Maurice Berger for the New York Times, Bey transforms the “epochal story into a flesh and blood reality… through images of contemporary Americans who are no different from us”.

Hailed as one of the most innovative artists from Africa, Victor Ehikhamenor creates stunning visual masterpieces inspired by his African roots.

When the world was in turmoil, he wanted to create calm.

Boafo’s distinctive style began developing once he ditched the brush and used his fingers instead. Boafo’s large, almost raw streaks of paints create a striking image.

Beneath the chaotic lines lie the heart and soul of the work, the people of Baltimore themselves.

After a series of seizures, artist Nick Davis found comfort in art and exploring the beauty of being Black.

As a Nigerian artist, Barry Yusufu has one main goal: to tell the stories of his people

With techniques both seen in graffiti art and abstract expressionist paintings, Jansen’s paintings are full of colors and textures.

Her abstract, impressionistic paintings captured our imagination. Artist Omoyeni Racheal Arogunmati talks about her works and the amount of work she does before putting paint on canas.

He started his craft with a smartphone camera, and even though he's since upgraded to a better camera, his photography still carries the same "make do with what you have" spirit. We chatted with Awuku Darko Samuel to find out more about his photography and more.

With prices dropping from the initial boom, is NFT here to stay?

My dream would be that in 5 or 10 years we will pass this purgatory and stop categorizing artists, talking about them in their own name, forgetting the African qualifier. I hope they’ll be in the most beautiful galleries and the greatest museums. For my activity, I would also like to get out of this categorization in order to be able to exhibit, probably always on the theme of Africa, artists who come from all over the place. Indeed, my deepest wish and it becomes the case is that the name no longer comes with the qualifier African. This is especially the case when we hear names like Chéri Samba or Barthélémy Toguo and that makes me happy.

Life is difficult to predict. It often throws unexpected obstacles our way. As much as we try to conquer the world and all its variables, much of it remains unconquerable. It’s a word that artist Ndidi Emefiele, along with curator Amy Andrieux, has chosen to describe Eefiele’s body of works.

Photography as a way to change and empower communities is a method that’s been used many times throughout history. It speaks to the power that images, especially photography, have. Or as renowned photographer Gordon Parks liked to call it, it’s a powerful weapon.

Her series with fellow photographer Loïc Hoquet, titles Malaïka Dotou Sankofa, won the Leopold-Sédar-Senghor Grand Prix, the top prize for the Dakar Bienalle of Contemporary Art. It’s a stunning series that comments on how the media portrays Africa. The series is built with layers upon layers of symbolism finished with an impeccable aesthetic sheen. An androgynously-dressed model bears wings made of fabrics created by the Baye Fall Muslim religious community in Senegal. It is a poignant commentary on how the African body is often hidden or manipulated to fit the mold of Western society.

Years later, another photographer captured images of herself within staged scenes in a series titled The Kitchen Table Series. Just like Sherman’s series, nothing was completely out of the ordinary in these photos. At first glance, they look like something out of the film roll of any ordinary family or film stills from a yet-to-be-seen film. A woman is embracing a man. A mother is teaching her daughter how to put on make-up. A woman is getting her hair done by another. Scenes from daily life. They’re all completely ordinary, yet that is exactly why they are extraordinary.

“Like the majority of Palestinians who became exiles inLebanon after 1948, they were never able to obtain Lebanese identity cards. It was one way of discouraging them from integrating into the Lebanese situation.When I went to London in 1975 for what was meant to be a brief visit, I got stranded there because the war broke out in Lebanon, and that created a kind of dislocation, [which] manifests itself in my work…” Mona Hatoum (1998)

His work is characterized by Arabic letters that come together in a colourful design. Because of the nice prints these designs consist out of his work fits perfectly on bigger objects, such as planes and architecture.

For the past few weeks, a new buzzword has been flitting around in art circles: NFT. This buzz comes from a debate of whether non-fungible token (NFT) artworks are the future of the art world or a danger to the planet. Debate aside, NFT art has certainly made its mark on history. On March 11, 2021, auction house Christie’s sold its first-ever purely digital artwork by an artist named Mike Winkelmann — known online as Beeple — at almost $70 million. This marks not only the first time Christie’s have sold a purely digital artwork but also accepting cryptocurrency along with other, more traditional forms of payment.

“My soul belongs to so many lands and cultures that it makes it impossible for me to conceive the geographical borders inherited from the colonial age.” — Nuits Balnéaires

His heritage had influenced not only the Surrealists but the whole perception of the photography, particularly the documentary one. Eugène Atget created a series of visually informative documents that launched a creative pursuit of new forms and optics revealing a mysterious side of the city life that enchants even the most blasé audience of modern times.

As a Nigerian, he draws inspiration from his surroundings, telling the stories of friends and families and their resilience and pride within this world

For African women, hair and beauty is an integral part of their lives. Yet the current discussion of African hairstyles is often seen through a colonial, western civilization lens, without any thoughts on the pre-colonial times and what it actually means to African women. Nigerian-German artist Ngozi Schommers tackles this issue, and many others unique to African women, in her transcendent works.

Massey’s works are always rooted in the African American vernacular and their experiences. She draws inspiration from a variety of topics, like the hip hop scene or the beauty shops, commenting on racial stereotypes and class separation.

If you’re a Black artist, you’re always expected to make art that is directed towards your struggle that reflects your pain or your challenges of being Black. However, I think that just your existence alone is already a protest, in Western context, and that’s the way I see myself. Being able to make art in this Western environment and for some people to be able to accept it is kind of my protest anyway. It’s because most of my work is of Black people and most of my audience and the people that buy my work is white, so I’m pushing this Black image to beyond what they see on TV, in the movies or in the music videos. 

Mous said: "Two people kissing under a scarf has been read as being about homosexuality or two people meeting for the first time after a wedding…For me it's just nice to start the conversation and make you think because normality doesn't actually exist."

With limited access tostudios and materials, did their medium or style change? With everyone being forced to spendfar more time inside, with less social interaction, did this allow artists more time to create? Ordid this time inside create a shift in their artwork? Furthermore, has this pandemic and thelooming recession caused artists to reconsider their creative profession, or drive them tocommit to it further?

What is important to Manal is to make an impact on the viewer. In her most popular piece, Suspended Together, she unifies women around Saudi Arabia in representing them as a flock of birds. The birds are suspended in air yet are immobilized, reflecting the immobility of Saudi Arabain women in their own countries, in their own home. This piece shows the audience the feeling women have to deal with on a daily basis, as they need special slips in order to move around. The words of the slip are etched onto the white birds - free but not completely - from real slips allowing women from all around to travel. Manul wrote the following about the piece, “regardless of age and achievement, when it comes to travel, all these women are treated like a flock of suspended doves.”

In the search of self discovery one can learn not only of himself but help others discover similarities between you and them. As an extension of this idea, as human beings we spread our culture in the same, if not intertwined way. This is what El Seeds work is about. His art is based off of a very distinctive form which makes it easy to recognize all around the world. Yet each piece has a unique meaning associated with a particular time, place or idea.

GRID is an art collective that hosts exhibitions with the single aim of providing accessible creative opportunities to anyone who wants to participate, regardless of background or experience.

Ghanaian artist Kwame Acheampong perfectly captures the essence of his seaside town, Jamestown, Accra, with his camera. Using bold colors and composition, Acheampong records the spirit and soul of the people from his town. They’re both playful and hard workers, but also not entirely devoid of their own misgivings and troubles.

Rewa has been creative most of her life. That creative tendency was often directed towards her financial career as a manager to solve issues and come up with marketing strategies. In 2016, needing a truly creative outlet, Rewa picked up a brush and started painting. She hasn’t looked back. In 2020, she sold thousands of dollars of her paintings in international markets.

Travys Owen is a photographer that knows how to work with color. Most if not all of his creations are a result of him masterfully playing with colors. A model surrounded by drabs of grey sky and concrete is highlighted by red light. Another model with vitiligo is painted with contrasting colors, shot in front of a solid background that makes the paint, not their mottled skin, pop. A tattooed artist is bathed with green light that made them seem otherworldly and their eyes even more piercing.

In reality the colourful pattern splattered on the entire body does the exact opposite, it takes away identity. It mystifies race and betters our understanding of whatever other political statement Emmett is exploring in a single piece. It is also a reflection of the word coloured which is the way in which African Natives of many racial origins refer to each other. 

In 2018, I took a DNA test and discovered my roots which at first was a bit confusing but based on the US’s history it made more sense – My bloodline comes from Cameroon, Congo, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Africa Southeastern Bantu, Mali, Europe, and the UK. The artists on our roster reflect the areas of my DNA. As a black man, I truly want the business to be a reflection of these amazing artist who haven’t been introduced the large art collector community.

Characteristic vividness of colors in sharp contrast to his dark-skinned models capture a spectator’s eye more than easily. Exactly that is what 25-year-old Yannis Davy Guibinga aims to emphasise through his lens: the revolutionary voice of the modern African continent, perspective shift on African ethnicities and their identity in post-colonial times.

Colonialism had a lot of consequences, one of them being indigenous art and utensils that were stolen from colonized countries. These objects often behold financial, cultural and spiritual value and therefore in the new ‘woke’ era many parties are aiming for the artefacts to be returned to their home country.

Born in 1991, the photographer discovered ballrooms In Baltimore, when she was still a teenager. This culture really helped her shape her sexuality and gender expression. She said that as a gay Black woman, she developed an androgynous version of herself, which ran counter to the typical « dominant, butch » lesbian stereotype that prevails. Through voguing, she could express both her feminity and her masculinity (or at least what is seen as feminity and masculinity)

So what’s next for Michael? He’s got an upcoming solo exhibition with Artgence where he would be showcasing some of the works he’s done over the years. Other than that, he’s working on a book featuring Black people. As a Black artist himself, the recent going-on with the Black Lives Matter movement hits close to home. He received criticism for not being so vocal about it on social media, but he thinks social media shouldn’t be the metrics of his activism. He’s an artist, so what he creates is art. “This is my way of saying something about it.”

For Harper his arthas been a way to translate the wide range of shades and body types that sitwithin the African Diaspora into art. His work therefore showcases the diversitythat exists within blackness.

Tadeas Podracky is an artist based between Eindhoven and Prague, and his graduation project is bringing light to the concept of “Metamorphosis”. Podracky believes that “design has rendered our environment impersonable”. Furniture are being massively and extensively produced, and to escape these impersonal environments, we tend to escape to virtual words. 

Available from the 19th of September 2020 to the 3rd of January 2021, the new exhibition ‘Trembling Landscape:Between Reality and Fiction’ brings together eleven artists from North Africa and the Middle East. Presented at the EYE FILM Museum in Amsterdam, these engaged and versatile artists look at landscapes from a novel and critical stand. Not only exploring the question of borders, these artists bring to life stories about landscapes’ past, present and future.

The film follows the director in his pursuit in helping Congolese people, and more specifically palm oil and cocoa plantation workers who are being exploited, reclaim their land from the conglomerate Unilever. 

Her main aim in her pieces to show humanity within Black women against the more common narrative built by society today. Which is also why nature is very prominent in her paintings as well, alluding to representing the true essence of black women. She introduces a new perspective on Black women and who they are - confident and comfortable.

The biggest virtual exhibition is now available to everyone, wherever you are in the world. More than 3000 square meters, 42 stands, 100 photographers and 570 photographs are now on display on the website : https://openeye-by.artgence.co/ . This exhibitions features photographers and artists such as Myriam Martinez, Bernard Moncet, Jean Paul Marbach. 

In three words: troubling, confronting, revealing. 

The term ‘Afrofuturism’ was originally defined by cultural critic Mark Derry in 1993, in an essay called ‘Black to the Future’. Yet, the idea has existed for much longer. Missy Elliot, Janet Jackson and Solange Knowles have explored the movement.

Are we witnessing a redefinition of the concept of art, with a more global, less elitist vision of what makes the beauty of a work? It seems that the artistic landscape is changing, through its promotion on social media and the use of less traditional mediums.

Sheppard’s paintings, their compositions, their dress, and hair, are reminiscent of images from ‘50s America, yet in truth, Black people are rarely ever shown in media during that time.

There’s also a certain tension in his paintings. This tension can be from an unbreaking, confronting gaze from his subjects or a cleverly placed block of color precariously balanced in a field of color.

A closer look reveals that these portraits are not what they seem to be. Mlengenya did not paint these African women wearing white dresses in front of a white background.

One of his shots showed a Black man running, followed by a herd of police officers wearing riot gears. He posted it on Instagram and Twitter. It went viral. A few days later,he was contacted by Time magazine.

Symbols of repossession by Africa of its history and identity, these two exceptional sculptures aim to question and highlight the underlying colonial stories wiped from collective consciousness but written under the neat surface of European architectural heritage.

She has since created many works that explore femininity and female empowerment and reflect her identity as a woman in today’s society.

Grace portrays tender moments as the hands of her figures rest on swaths of delicately layered areas of patterning and puffy tufts of material that compose of clothing.

Bright, geometric shapes are cleverly intermeshed with photos of Black models. The words Pop Art and Afrofuturism come to mind. These are descriptions of Maxime Manga’s eye-catching creations.

Eyes that stare into the depths of your soul and demand that you acknowledge their existence. This is a recurring theme in comments about Ronald Jackson’s works.

To reflect modernity and ultimately transgressing assumptions on Black identity and history, the art movement centered its focus on a novel approach to developing art – not only acknowledging ancient tradition but defining the contemporary Blackness.

In a nutshell, the poster combines the efficiency and the aesthetics of Soviet propaganda and Warhol’s art.

With a direct and raw narration, Jafa transfers the message in another form of protest and expression of Black culture, as it is the exact opposite of calculated, cold and always (slightly) censored White media and authors.

In times where a global pandemic prevents us from checking out our favorite artists in the offline world, creatives need to get creative and think of new, innovative ways to display artworks.

Available from the 19th of September 2020 to the 3rd of January 2021, the new exhibition ‘Trembling Landscape:Between Reality and Fiction’ brings together eleven artists from North Africa and the Middle East. Presented at the EYE FILM Museum in Amsterdam, these engaged and versatile artists look at landscapes from a novel and critical stand. Not only exploring the question of borders, these artists bring to life stories about landscapes’ past, present and future.

Twenty-six pieces of the"Treasure of Behanzin" looted from the Abomey Palace in 1892 will leave the Quai-Branly Museum for Benin.Even though we can only appreciate these gestures, we must also realise that it represents a small share of stolen African art. If President Macron (or any other European leader) decides to massively restitute stolen pieces of art that African countries have been claiming for a long time, it could turn the tide and lead to a structural change in mentalities.

The trend and appeal for the African art market has been consolidated by the proliferation of artistic events in African capitals such as ART X in Lagos...

Robert Hughes’ once stated “Apart from drugs, art is the biggest unregulated market in the world”...

Taking place from September to October 2020, Kadara Enyeasi’s last exhibition at KÓ Art Space in Lagos is truly fascinating. Entitled “Is it not enough for the sea to be beautiful?”, this new body of works focuses on the ocean as a symbolic representation of alienation...

Imaginary Trip seems especially relevant in the year 2020 when most of the world is under lockdown and wishing they could travel elsewhere...

The women depicted in her paintings are either draped or posed next to colorful, intricate fabric akin to those commonly found in Nigeria...

Rob Grad’s visual arts career didn’t start like most artists...

Portraits in high black and white contrast, Zanele Muholi proposes a visually appealing and engaged work rooted in her affirmed ‘visual activism’...

Today we feature artist Ervin A Johnson and his recently released series "#InHonor".

Artgence takes a moment to look at the work of Ortega, a Colombian graphic designer turned photographer.

Artgence invites you (in 3D) to a virtual exhibition: FABRIC, a hi-tech 3D exhibition dedicated to innovation. An innovative media and display for an exhibition about innovation intertwining with the everyday.

Todd Williamson’s abstract paintings evoke an image of a person, a portrait if you will. It is not that these lines and colors resemble anything close to the physical characteristics of a person...

The art world is no exception. We’ve accepted the museum-going experience as the de facto method of viewing art, but with lockdown in force, how are we supposed to enjoy the art that we love so much? Do we just give up on ever enjoying art?

Over time I came to terms with injustice and accepted it, as accepting abuse because of the color of my skin was just the way things were and are. It is part of the norm...