Always Moving Forward Contemporary African Photography from the Wedge Collection

Curated by Kenneth Montague

gallery 44, toronto | Platform, winnipeg | Art Gallery of Peterborough Mohamed Bourouissa Always Moving Forward May 1 to 29, 2010 Contemporary African Photography Gallery 44 Mohamed Camara from the Wedge Collection Centre for Contemporary Photography 401 Richmond St. W, Suite 120 © 2010, Mohamed Bourouissa, Mohamed Toronto, ON M5V 3A8 Calvin Dondo Camara, Calvin Dondo, Samuel Fosso, November 3 to December 10, 2011 Hassan Hajjaj, Bouchra Khalili, Antony PLATFORM centre for Kimani, Lebohang Mashiloane, Aïda photographic + digital arts Muluneh, Dawit L. Petros, Zwelethu Samuel Fosso 121-100 Arthur St. Mthethwa, Guy Tillim, Andrew Winnipeg, MB R3B 1H3 Tshabangu, Nontsikelelo ‘Lolo’ Veleko, and Pamela Edmonds January 13 to March 4, 2012 Hassan Hajjaj curator Kenneth Montague Always Art Gallery of Peterborough exhibition coordinator Maria Kanellopoulos ISBN 978-0-9738294-9-5 250 Crescent St. Peterborough, ON K9J 2G1 All images courtesy of Dr Kenneth Montague / The Wedge Collection Bouchra Khalili Wedge Curatorial Projects would like to thank the artists, Moving as well as the following galleries: Essay Pamela Edmonds Mohamed Bourrissa | Galeries les filles du calvaire, Paris Antony Kimani managing editor Mohamed Camara | Galerie Pierre Brullé, Paris Alice Dixon Forward Calvin Dondo | Gallery MOMO, Johannesburg Lebohang Mashiloane copy Editors Samuel Fosso | Galerie Jean Marc Patras, Paris Alice Dixon, Gaye Jackson Hassan Hajjaj | Rose Issa, London / Third Line, Dubai Design Bouchra Khalili | Galerie of Marseille, Marseille Aïda Muluneh Zab Design & Typography Antony Kimani cover Lebohang Mashiloane Dawit L. Petros Zwelethu Mthethwa, Untitled, 2000 Zwelethu Mthethwa | Jack Shainman Gallery, New York Aïda Muluneh | Gallery MOMO, Johannesburg inside covers Dawit L. Petros | Alexander Gray Associates, New York Zwelethu Mthethwa Hassan Hajjaj, repeated detail from Nido Bouchra, 2009 Guy Tillim | Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town next spread Andrew Tshabangu | Gallery MOMO, Johannesburg Guy Tillim Andrew Tshabangu, Butchery, Nontsikelelo ‘Lolo’ Veleko | Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg Traders and Taxis (detail), 2003 Printing Andrew Tshabangu David Schulman, Shapco Printing, Inc. Nontsikelelo ‘Lolo’ Veleko Always Moving Forward

4 5 Directors’ Foreword

4 This catalogue documents Always The photographic works presented are We would like to acknowledge the fourteen participating artists. Thank you 5 Moving Forward: Contemporary African recent additions to the Wedge Collection support of the Consulate General of France to David Schulman from Shapco Printing, Photography from the Wedge Collection, produced by international contemporary in Toronto for providing travel funds to Inc. for his financial support and expertise a new exhibition curated by Kenneth artists: Mohamed Bourouissa, Mohamed Paris-based artists. Thank you to the in the printing of this catalogue. Most Montague. Featuring an impressive Camara, Calvin Dondo, Samuel Fosso, programming committee at Gallery 44, importantly, thank you to Kenneth selection of contemporary photographic Hassan Hajjaj, Bouchra Khalili, Antony and a special thank you to Sally Frater Montague and all the artists featured artists, the exhibition reveals a collection Kimani, Lebohang Mashiloane, Aïda for bringing this important exhibition for in Always Moving Forward: Contemporary of empowering and timely stories of Africa Muluneh, Dawit L. Petros, Zwelethu consideration. We also wish to thank our African Photography from the Wedge and African identity. In the words of the Mthethwa, Guy Tillim, Andrew Tshabangu, supporters, members, and volunteers in Collection for bringing this fresh perspective exhibition’s curator Kenneth Montague, and Nontsikelelo ‘Lolo’ Veleko. It is a helping us to participate in the dialogue on on African photography to Canada. “our aim is not to define an ‘African’ pleasure for us to co-present this exhibition, contemporary art. commonality, but rather to suggest that opening in 2010 at the CONTACT Festival of On behalf of the organizing galleries, Lise Beaudry, Gallery 44 there exists a wealth of diversity and a Photography, and touring to Winnipeg in we would like to thank Pamela Edmonds for J.J. Kegan McFadden, p l a t f o r m strong desire to express individuality.” 2011, and Peterborough in 2012. her insightful essay about the works of the Celeste Scopelites, Art Gallery of Peterborough Always Moving Forward Contemporary African Photography from the Wedge Collection

Time would pass, old empires would fall and by Pamela Edmonds new ones take their place. The relations of classes had to change before I discovered that it’s not the quality of goods and utility that matter, but movement, not where you are or what you have, but where you come from, where you are going and the rate at which you are getting there. — C.L.R. James In Chaos and Metamorphosis, the 9 opening catalogue essay for Africa Remix, Africa is a continent in constant mutation. the largest survey exhibition of contemporary A mountain in the making. African art to date, curator Simon Njami — Simon Njami articulates the incessant struggle to define and represent African life. “It is impossible to fully comprehend what Africa is. Like placing a bet that cannot be won.”1 With an estimated population of one billion people, Africa is made up of over fifty nations with an estimated one thousand different languages spoken and as many distinct ethnic groups. It is perhaps the most Mohamed Bourouissa, ‘Le Téléphone,’ from the series linguistically and ethnically diverse of the Périphéries,109 x 95.5 cm entire world’s continents. digital print, 2006. Revealing the complexity and diversity remarkably cohesive private collection, an African Photography, the Bamako Encounters whom were born during or after the years of African heritage through the photographic impressive range of photographic portraits (held in Mali since 1994), have brought of independence in the 1960s. This group image has been one of the goals of Wedge by both historic and contemporary artists worldwide attention to a rising number of emerging and established artists has Curatorial Projects and its founding director taken in varied contexts and styles from of artists who have turned to lens-based gained visibility in Africa and throughout Dr. Kenneth Montague, whose projects archival, documentary and studio portraits, practices to open up a critical ‘third space’ the international art world with work have been asserting or ‘wedge-ing’ a to street photography and conceptually that counters the history of Western media that reflects the current shift away from space for African diasporic creativity in the staged tableaux. The works range from as a purveyor of ‘Afro-pessimism’. the commercial studio portraiture that contemporary Canadian arts landscape for vintage Harlem Renaissance images, to These critically praised exhibitions and predominated in Africa in previous decades, over a decade. Based in Toronto, Wedge documentary photographs of Africans in representations are part of a larger shift to reveal an increasing emphasis on exhibitions have been acclaimed features in Latin America; from pictures taken in black away from western ideals and biases, toward conceptual art, documentary, and fashion the city’s annual international photography British neighborhoods in the 1970s, to shots an African identity defined by Africans and photography. They also emphasize a modern festival, CONTACT, premiering the work of urban street life in New York’s burgeoning the diaspora. The significance of this shift and urban Africa, a place that’s responding of some the world’s most acclaimed 1980s hip-hop scene. These works are linked cannot be underestimated: for Africa to to the myriad challenges of globalization. photographers including Jürgen Schadeberg, by the impetus to represent the complex, move beyond the ever-present image in the The artists in Always Moving Forward are: Dennis Morris, Malick Sidibé, Seydou Keïta, changing nature of identity within modernity, media of “the wretched of the earth” (Frantz Mohamed Bourouissa, Mohamed Camara, 11 Rotimi Fani-Kayode, and J.D. Okhai Ojeikere. particularly as it relates to the global Fanon), we must turn toward those who Calvin Dondo, Samuel Fosso, Hassan Hajjaj, Beginning as a private gallery in diasporic experience of ‘blackness’. know it, and Africans must tell their own Bouchra Khalili, Antony Kimani, Lebohang Montague’s home, a loft designed by Del In the last decade, photography, video stories. Against this backdrop, photography, Mashiloane, Aïda Muluneh, Dawit L. Petros, Terrelonge (who also designed an extensive and installation have gained popularity one of the most democratic of mediums, has Zwelethu Mthethwa, Guy Tillim, Andrew ten year Wedge retrospective publication as prime mediums of expression for an emerged significantly within post-colonial, Tshabangu and Nontsikelelo ‘Lolo’ Veleko. FLAVA in 2007), Wedge has grown to emerging generation of global artists post-apartheid and increasingly globalized Living and working across Africa, North include a range of innovative programming, exploring different dimensions of the locations as a strategic device to challenge America and Europe they are a generation including group exhibitions and focused African imaginary and African spaces. Major the Western conceptions of Africa allowing of savvy cultural observers, uniquely solo projects, partnered presentations with exhibitions including Okwui Enwezor’s the continent to speak for itself. conscious of, and responsive to recent Canadian and international arts institutions, Snap Judgments: New Positions in African This group exhibition brings together African history, global economics and their community workshops, lectures and musical Photography, the exhibition titled Flow at new and recent works from the Wedge distinct local environment. Pinpointing what compilations. New York’s Studio Museum and the recent Collection by a cross-section of artists unites these disparate artists is difficult; Montague’s vision is driven by his work presented at the renowned Biennial of from throughout the African region, all of each has their own “intuitive response to the persistent pressure of our media- Samuel fosso, The Golf Player, 30.5 x 30.5 cm, chromogenic print, 1998 saturated society” says Montague. And yet there are commonalities: many works explore the challenges and upheavals imposed by twenty-first century life. As the exhibition title suggests, migration, exile, and displacement are part of the the underlying pressures of globalization. fabric of contemporary African life, and Playing with the viewers’ expectations, these upheavals are explored in subtle and their imagery ranges from colourfully complex ways. banal to starkly bizarre; from politically It is important to make clear that involved or compassionate, to objective or this collection does not offer a definable poetic. Beauty, street culture, immigration, contemporary African identity; in fact, the memory, dreams, survival, and everyday life work points to the reality of African diasporic are among the themes addressed. Taken 12 identities as being fluid, constantly in flux. together they capture a spirit of strength Montague comments that “the aim is not to and perseverance activated through creative define an ‘African’ commonality, but rather to resistance and unyielding invention. suggest that there exists a wealth of diversity Curator Simon Njami contends that the and a strong desire to express individuality. problem that confronts the contemporary These new voices are often a response African artist lies in the inadequacy of to emerging technologies, transitioning existing tools for expression. “It is a matter landscapes, rampant globalization and therefore of inventing, creating oneself, in forces of capitalism including the influence the very sense of the term, of finding a 2 of advertising and new media.” language that reflects one’s aspirations.” With an historical awareness, these One artist who exemplifies the persistent artists force us to confront preconceived drive to create oneself is Samuel Fosso, the ideas of national and ethnic identities celebrated Cameroonian-born Nigerian and elucidate the tensions that arise from photographer who for over thirty-five years, has transformed himself into multiple guises (left) Nontsikelelo “Lolo” Veleko, Vuyelwa, 30 x 39.9 cm including sailor, pirate, drag queen, golfer, pigment print on cotton rag, 2004 flight attendant, rock star, and African tribal (right) Hassan Hajjaj, Nido chief, in his campy self-portraits. Fosso is Bouchra, 136 x 93.5 cm digital often spoken of as Central Africa’s answer to chromogenic print, 2009 Cindy Sherman. But as Leslie Camhi points out, “Sherman’s art evolved in the waning However, instead of spotlighting single years of the American dream, amid the heady subjects, Dondo’s photographs plummet bohemia of late 1970s Manhattan. Fosso viewers directly into harried scenes full of arrived at his signature style, while a teenage anonymous crowds. His series Charge Office refugee living in Bangui, the remote capital of Harare (2000) presents myriad commuters the Central African Republic.”3 threading their way through the city, and Urban street photographers Hassan each other. They gaze at us, at others, or Hajjaj and Nontsikelelo “Lolo” Veleko seem disconnected, suggesting an emotional 14 explore similar themes, employing clothes alienation that becomes familiar in an urban and fashion as props to deliberately city. The trope of the congested city is also challenge assumptions of identity based explored by South African artist Andrew on appearances and historical background. Tshanbangu. Renowned for his distinctive Hassan dresses up Marrakech locals in black and white photographs, his works self-made fashion brands, revealing his explore and document the transitions taking vision of the city through colourful and place in his hometown of Johannesburg. humorous narrative portraits, while Veleko’s Tshabangu’s Johannesburg is not beautiful or street shots of Johannesburg hipsters vividly romantic, but aggressive and gritty, uneasily dressed in eclectic, highly individualized shouldering its burden of exploding wealth styles, exude a stark confidence and cool and mass immigration, constantly changing rebellion. its shape, and never at rest. Butchery, Zimbabwean artist Calvin Dondo also Traders and Taxis (2003) (see pages 2-3) is situates his work in the urban landscape. an example of photographs the artist has calvin dondo, Untitled from the Lumumba became the first legally elected series Harare Charge Office, 40 x 60 cm chromogenic print, 2000 Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1960, but was assassinated in 1961. Tillim explains, “Patrice Lumumba’s dream, his nationalism, is discernible in the structures, if one reads certain clues, as is the taken from inside moving taxis. death of his dream in these de facto A more sombre, recurring theme is monuments.”4 He adds, “In the frailty of this evident in the transcendental homelessness strange and beautiful hybrid landscape emanating from Guy Tillim’s photographs of struggling to contain the calamities of the cell-like apartments in decaying high-rises in past fifty years, there is an indisputably Johannesburg, or in Lebohang Mashiloane’s African identity. This is my embrace of it.”5 documentation of Somalian refugees in The people in these powerful and poignant transit to South Africa in hopes of a better landscapes are often positioned as life. Their imagery speaks to the desire for peripheral, located at the edge of the frame, 17 self-determination and freedom, and the or slightly out of focus, but there is an acute price that is sometimes paid for such dreams. sense of their humanity and their strong will Tillim, who grew up in a South Africa to survive. when it was still under apartheid, began Blurring the lines between cinema and his career as a photojournalist with the the fine arts, documentary and experimental, collective Afrapix in the mid 1980s. He French-Moroccan artist Bouchra Khalili is one of South Africa’s most celebrated explores borders, emigration, and photographers, and is known for his complex displacement in her video and installation storytelling. For the photo essay Avenue work. Shot from a single vantage point Patrice Lumumba (2008), Tillim travelled Mapping Journey (2008) reveals the throughout Africa, documenting city streets disordered hidden maps that a migratory named after Patrice Lumumba, a leader experience can yield as a path is traced back in the African independence movement. and forth on a map, following the 18 19 complicated journeys of migrants in several previous spread (left) guy tillim, Apartment Building, Avenue Mediterranean cities. The voice-overs and Bagamoyo, Beira, Mozambique from the series Avenue Patrice Lumumba, 91.5 cm x 131.5 cm archival pigment subtitles explain the dangerous attempts to ink on cotton rag paper, 2008 slip across borders into safe havens. Because (right) Lebohang Mashiloane, Untitled, from the illegal immigrants are not offered straight series Somali Refugee, 29.7 x 42 cm digital print, 2009 itineraries and are set adrift by forced detours, their trips reconstruct the physical Bouchra Khalili, Mapping Journey #1, video, 2009 landscape, and produce an alternative mental geography built from the imagination. identity crisis, gender, race and social South African artist Zwelethu Mthethwa imbalances.”6 is also concerned with the living conditions The jarring inequalities between rich and and experiences of the migrants who come poor become painfully apparent in from rural areas to the city to seek Johannesburg, South Africa’s economic hub. employment in the industrial centres of Photojournalist Antony Kimani documents 20 South Africa. His art addresses the cultural the lifestyle of the city’s upwardly mobile in disorientation of newcomers in their search his Black Diamonds series, a marketing term for survival as they create homes for created to describe members of the new themselves, recycling materials such as black elite. Most of this group have long wood, corrugated iron, plastic sheeting and abandoned the townships for the city’s cardboard for shelter. In his large-format upmarket northern suburbs, but many still colour photographs, he captures the dignity return on weekends to drink in shebeens and pride of his subjects in the modest posing in designer clothes and flashy cars. interiors of their dwellings, which are often These ‘Afropolitans’, to use another term decorated with discarded consumer products. coined by Ghanaian/Nigerian/British writer Says Mthethwa, “Art in our day is not really Taiye Tuakli-Wosornu, take pride in their done for art’s sake; it questions issues Africanness while acknowledging that they related to global processes such as urban exist in a cosmopolitan environment industrialization, contemporary cultures, influenced by westernized preferences and Zwelethu Mthethwa, Untitled, 96.5 x 129.5 cm process has provided a set of expansive chromogenic print, 2000 relationships; an awareness of the necessity of simultaneity; and the recognition of the contradictory ties that bind the dispersed to physical and psychic places.”8 Petros’ mixed- media installation The Idea of North (2007) 7 consumption habits. was inspired by pianist Glenn Gould’s radio Several artists engage with perceptions documentary of the same title. Gould’s of difference, particularly with the notion of documentary is a meditation on the absence and presence in relation to the relationship between the Canadian ‘othered’ body and the space surrounding it. imagination and the vast northern frontier. Mohamed Camara’s satirical and ironic, By linking the American west, Kilimanjaro, staged self-portraits present him as a tourist and Canada’s north, Petros’ contemplation in European ski resorts, while Dawit L. Petros’ becomes frontier as an internal space, one conceptual landscapes connect disparate informed by multiple locales. 23 locations through ideas of movement and Proposition 1: Mountain (2007) is a close- embodiment. up vivid colour photograph of a hand holding In Camara’s Certain matins, je suis le what appears to be a pile of ice, positioned as cactus de Siberie (2005), the artist is surveying a mountain set against a white background a monumental landscape; his contemplative and blue sky. In actuality, this scene is not of pose enhanced by his natural surroundings. a northern climate, but the arid salt flats of By isolating himself within a postcard setting, California and it is this very ambiguity that Camara becomes a metaphor for exile and suggests how displacement can open up loneliness. Describing his process, Petros creative and emotional possibilities. As states: “Living between geographical Simone White suggests, place is defined as locations; Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, much by our ideas and ideals as a physical Canada and the United States, has required landscape: “location is not a place, but a the navigation of myriad terrains. This proposition.” left Antony Kimani, Berlin from the series Black Diamonds, 29 x 42 cm digital print, 2009 right Mohamed Camara, Certain matins, je suis le cactus de siberie, 37.5 x 28 cm, inkjet print, 2005

Through his concept of the Black Atlantic, Paul Gilroy stressed the importance of understanding race as a phenomenon that both emerged and was resisted transnationally. Scholars like W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James and Frantz Fanon also examined the ways in which slavery and racism were pivotal to the formation of Western modernity. Each focused on the ways in which blackness was absolutely necessary for the construction of whiteness as an identity and documented the myriad ways in which the black diaspora communities, in their attempts to construct artistic and aesthetic responses to racism, contributed to an African identity that now informs the West. Mohamed Bourouissa deconstructs these power dynamics through racially charged images within Paris’ suburban housing projects in a photographic series called Périphérique. Home to large numbers of often impoverished immigrants, many from Bourouissa’s native Algeria, les banlieues Dawit L. Petros, Proposition 1: have served as the centre for volatile debates Mountain, 66 x 86.4 cm digital print, 2007 surrounding the acceptance of immigrant communities in France. The pictures look like live-action reportage, but in fact the scenes are entirely staged and performed. The expense of real connection. Accordingly, the artist’s models, whom he meets when artwork’s title points to the object of focus, scouting for locations, are asked to pose and Le Téléphone, as the mode of communication: play roles, in what becomes a collaborative technology trumps the individual. Here the event and a collective fiction. artist re-appropriates subjects that have Bourouissa describes his photographs as been made into clichés by the media and deriving from an ‘emotional geometry’, a way recontextualises them as actors in their own of placing a subject in space to create a real-life dramas. moment of heightened tension, when Conversely, Aïda Muluneh does not 26 anything, or nothing, could happen.9 Staged present staged scenes, but documents real like cinema shots, his compositions reference lives of ordinary people in her native Ethiopia, grand European painters such as Caravaggio, as a drive to oppose Western mainstream Delacroix, Gericault, and conceptual ideas of the country. Moved by distorted photographers such as Jeff Wall. In Le media images of the Ethiopian famine, Téléphone (2006) (see page 8), Bourouissa Muluneh took up the camera to present captures an intense stare-down between two another side of the story. Her elegantly young men. In the background, another composed black and white scenes have a youth is poised, cell phone in hand, ready to timeless quality, showing Ethiopian people in document a possible drama. Behind him all their dignity. Her subjects are often another stares vacantly into the phone and women such as Girl in the Light (2001) and Girl not to the others, echoing perhaps our in Car (2001), the quest in her work seems to globalized preoccupation with social be an effort to rediscover the landscape and networking and virtual realities at the people she left as a young girl. Of Girl in Car (2001) she writes: “I shot this picture on my Aïda Muluneh, Girl in Car, 49.5 x 76 cm chromogenic first trip to Ethiopia after I had been gone print, 2001 nearly 21 years. I had spent a few days walking and driving in Addis Ababa and it was by coincidence that I saw the little girl riding so proudly with her father… I wanted to show that regardless of our differences in the world we all share the same emotions that can transcend cultural boundaries.”10 In photography, Muluneh has found a medium of transformation. Frantz Fanon wrote: “A national culture is not a folk-lore, nor an abstract populism that believes it can discover a people’s true 28 1 Simon Njami, “Chaos and 6 http://www.rosekorberart.com/artists/ 29 nature. A national culture is the whole body Metamorphosis” in Africa Remix: mthethwa.html , accessed February 6, 2010. Contemporary Art of a Continent (London: of efforts made by a people in the sphere of 7 Taiye Tuakli-Wosornu, “What is an Hayward Gallery, 2005), 13. thought to describe, justify and praise the Afropolitan” in The Afro Beat, http:// 2 Simon Njami, “Times of Confusion” theafrobeat.blogspot.com/2007/03/ action through which that people has created in Juxtapoz Arts & Culture Magazine: The what-is-afropolitan-by-taiye-tuakli.html, itself and keeps itself in existence.”11 African Art Issue (November 2008, vol. 15, accessed February 6, 2010. no. 11), 63. Thriving on contradiction, movement 8 http:www.alexandergray.com/Images/ 3 Leslie Camhi “A Man of a Thousand Files/Petros_Press_Release_10-15-2008.pd, and the need to look back into the past and Faces” in New York Times (Spring 2009), accessed February 6, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/ 9 Magali Jauffret, “The Suburbs as Visual forward into the future, Always Moving indexes/2009/03/08/style/t/index. Object” in Périphérique:Mohamed Bourouissa html#pageName=08fasso, accessed Forward is a testament to the vibrancy and (Toulouse: Le Château d’Eau, 2008), 7. February 6, 2010. diversity of contemporary African 10 Aïda Muluneh, “Profile: Aïda Muleneh” 4 Guy Tillim and Robert Gardner, in Juxtapoz Arts & Culture Magazine: The photography and African life, a collection Avenue Patrice Lumumba (New York: African Art Issue (November 2008, vol. 15, Prestel, 2008), 2. that reinvents with surprising possibility. no. 11), 44. 5 Ibid. 11 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1968), 188. Artist Biographies Mohamed Bourouissa Calvin Dondo Hassan Hajjaj Antony Kimani powerful images of people living and Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. He Born in Blida, Algeria, Mohamed Calvin Dondo was born in Harare, Born in Morocco in the early 1960s, Born in Nairobi, Antony Kimani has working in post-apartheid South has also exhibited at the Photographic Bourouissa describes his latest Zimbabwe, where he studied Hassan Hajjaj moved to London at worked as a freelance photographer Africa. His work has received national Resource Center at the Massachusetts series Peripheries as derived from an photography at Harare Polytechnic the age of fourteen. Hajjaj created his since 2005. He currently lectures part and international acclaim, and he has College of Art in Boston, and the ‘emotional geometry’, a way of placing College. Since 1988 he has worked own fashion label R.A.P. in the 1980s, time at Witwatersrand University. had over thirty-five solo exhibitions the Maison de la culture Frontenac a subject in space to create a moment as a freelance photographer and which revealed his capacity to bridge Kimani has worked as editor and in galleries and museums in the in Montréal. Petros has received of heightened tension where anything curator. He also teaches photography British and Moroccan culture. His staff photographer for the Nation United States, Italy, Germany, Spain, Fulbright and J. Armand Bombardier or nothing could happen. Bourouissa courses and works on international photographs combine stereotypical Mediain Nairobi. In South Africa he France, Switzerland and South Africa. Internationalist Fellowships, as well graduated from the École Nationale development projects. His work has imagery such as the odalisque, a freelanced with the Sunday Times Mthethwa lives and works in Cape as an Art Matters foundation grant Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris been published by the Associated female slave sometimes seen as and Reuters News Agency. He now Town. and he has participated in residencies and completed a Master’s Degree at Press, Agence France Presse and a 19th century symbol of oriental prefers shooting features and stories at the Center for Photography, the Sorbonne. His work was featured Black Star USA, and is also found exoticism, with icons of contemporary at his own pace, taking the time to Aïda Muluneh Woodstock, and the Studio Museum in The New Museum’s first triennial in international collections and fashion. Hajjaj is keen to explore the understand and engage with his Born in Ethiopia, Aïda Muluneh left in Harlem. The Generational: Younger Than Jesus museums. In 2003, he was curator perception/reflection relationship subjects on a deeper level. Antony the country at a young age and spent in New York. In 2010, among for the National Exhibition devoted between the Orient and the Occident. has been published in BBC Focus her childhood between Yemen and Guy Tillim other group and solo exhibitions, to Zimbabwe, and in 2007 he received His work was recently included in magazine, and in Africa Magazine England. Muluneh received her BA in Born in Johannesburg, Guy Tillim Bourouissa will be participating in the Grand Prix at the Bamako the 8th Bamako Encounters, African among others. Kimani lives and works film, radio and television from Howard started photographing professionally Manifesta 8, in Murcia, Spain. He lives Encounters, African Photography Photography Biennial. Hajjaj currently in Johannesburg. University, and worked as a freelance in 1986. He joined a collective of South and works in Paris. Biennial. Dondo’s work focuses on the lives and works between London and photographer for The Washington African photographers called Afrapix, effects of globalization, and he lives Marrakech. Lebohang Mashiloane Post. She was chosen to be part of with whom he worked closely until Mohammed Camara and works in Zimbabwe. Born in the Free State Province in the groundbreaking show Ethiopian 1990. Tillim’s work as a freelance Born in Bamako, Mohamed Camara’s Bouchra Khalili South Africa, Lebohang Mashiloane Passages: Dialogues in the Diaspora photographer in South Africa, for 30 resume boasts widely travelled shows Samuel Fosso Born in Casablanca, Bouchra Khalili studied fine art photography at Vaal at the Smithsonian’s National local and foreign media, included 31 including Bamako 03, Bamako 05, Born in Kumbain, Cameroon, Samuel studied cinema at the Sorbonne University of Technology, as well as Museum of African Art in Washington. positions with Reuters Agency and Snap Judgments: New Positions in Fosso is one of Africa’s most Nouvelle and Fine Arts at the Ecolé photojournalism and documentary Recipient of the European Union Prize between 1986 and 1988, and Agence Contemporary African Photography. celebrated photographers, and his Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris- photography at the Market Photo for her work on Ethiopia exhibited at France Presse in 1993 and 1994. He Camara has had solo shows in Paris, art is a unique exploration of identity. Cergy. A dedicated artist and activist, Workshop in Johannesburg. His series the 7th annual African Photography has received many awards including and at the Tate Modern in London. His After opening his own photography her work moves between fine art and on Somali refugees was exhibited Biennial in 2008, she is also the the Prix SCAM (Societe Civile des work is featured in the collections of studio at the age of thirteen, he began documentary questioning physical at the 8th Bamako Encounters, founder of D.E.S.T.A. FOR AFRICA that Auteurs Multimedia), Roger Pic in the National Museum of Modern Art, making a series of self-portraits. and imaginary frontiers, displacement, African Photography Biennial in stands for Developing and Educating 2002, the Higashikawa Overseas the Centre Pompidou, and the Maison The excitement of assuming new territory and immigration. Her work 2009. Mashilone lives and works in Society Through Art. Muluneh lives Photographer Award (Japan) in 2003, Européenne de la Photographie. He personas encouraged what has has been shown internationally, at Johannesburg. and works in Addis Ababa. the 2004 DaimlerChrysler Award for began his career in 2001 as a self- become his signature style. Fosso’s the African Photography Biennial, the South African photography, the Leica taught photographer with a borrowed work has been shown in venues such New York Video Festival, at MACRO Zwelethu Mthethwa Dawit L. Petros Oskar Barnack Award in 2005 and digital camera. Camara lives and as the Photographers’ Gallery, the and Villa Médicis in Rome, the Born in Durban, ZwaZulu-Natal, Dawit L. Petros was born in Asmara, the first Robert Gardner Fellowship works in Paris and in Bamako. Guggenheim Museum, and the Tate Biennial of Moving Images in Geneva, Zwelethu Mthethwa graduated in Eritea and currently lives and works in Photography from the Peabody Modern. Fosso currently lives and and the La Force de l’art at the photography from the Michaelis in New York. He has exhibited his Museum at Harvard University in works in Bangui, Central African Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais School of Fine Art in Cape Town work in group shows throughout 2006. Tillim lives and works in Republic. in Paris. Khalili is also a contributor in 1985. He received a Fulbright Canada and in the United States, South Africa. to film magazines and catalogues, Scholarship, which allowed him to including the Studio Museum in and the co-programmer of the study at the Rochester Institute Harlem, the Museum of Contemporary Cinémathèque de Tanger in Morocco. of Technology in New York State. Art in Detroit, Wedge Curatorial She lives in Paris. Mthethwa is renowned for his Projects, Prefix Photo, and the Andrew Tshabangu Curator Writer Born in Johannesburg, Andrew Kenneth Montague Pamela Edmonds Tshabangu’s series Johannesburg Kenneth Montague is an art collector Pamela Edmonds is a visual and media Transitions captures the rituals of daily and curator based in Toronto. Founder arts curator originally from Montreal, life in an African metropolis where the and director of Wedge Curatorial Quebec. She received her BFA and pleasures and tribulations of street Projects, for over a decade he has an MA in Art History from Concordia life are simplified extensions of a been collecting and exhibiting University. The former co-editor of complex politic. Tshabangu studied at photo-based work that explores black KOLA, a Black literary magazine the Alexandra Community Art Centre identity and the African diaspora. In based in Montreal, she is interested in Johannesburg, and in Stipendium 2007, Wedge published the catalogue in developing and curating projects Gasworks Art Studios in London. FLAVA (D.A.P./Distributed Art that focus on the creative production Tshabangu regularly participates in Publishers, Inc.), a document of the of African diaspora artists, and in workshops abroad and was invited by projects, exhibitions and community work that deals with contemporary the Nairobi Arts Trust and the Centre workshops that Wedge had produced issues surrounding the ideologies of for Contemporary Arts of East Africa throughout its first decade. race, gender, cultural identity to conduct a photographic workshop Recent shows curated by and representation. Edmonds is in Nairobi titled Amnesia: Platform Montague include Becoming at the former Program Coordinator of III. The workshop culminated in an the Museum of Contemporary Art A Space Gallery, Toronto, and exhibition at the National Museum Detroit; head room at the Museum currently works as curator at the Nairobi. Tshabangu lives and works in of Contemporary Canadian Art, Art Gallery of Peterborough, Ontario. South Africa. Toronto; and an upcoming exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum in 32 Nontsikelelo ‘Lolo’ Veleko Toronto titled Position As Desired Born in Bodide, South Africa, that investigates African-Canadian Nontsikelelo ‘Lolo’ Veleko studied identity. graphic design at the Cape Technikon Montague sits on the Photography in Cape Town and photography Curatorial Committee of the Art at the Market Photo Workshop Gallery of Ontario, and the Advisory in Johannesburg. In 2003, she Board of the Ryerson Photography was nominated for the MTN New Gallery and Research Centre. He Contemporaries award and was is a frequent lecturer and panelist part of the 2006 group exhibition at international art symposiums, Snap Judgments: New Positions in including Bamako Encounters, African Contemporary African Photography Photography Biennial in Mali, and at at the International Centre of ARCO Madrid. Photography in New York. Her The Wedge Collection has grown signature series, Beauty is in the Eye of to encompass both historical and the Beholder, was included in the 7th contemporary photography, as well as annual African Photography Biennial non-photo based works that challenge in 2008. Veleko lives and works in notions of representation and identity. Johannesburg.