Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art

07/09/2015

Getting our special issue on black fashion, guest-edited by Noliwe Rooks, ready for design. Can't wait to see this one laid out!

06/24/2015

From our friends at X-TRA: "Risk Assessment," a review by Sarah Petersen http://x-traonline.org/article/risk-assessment/

The exhibition Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art invites the kind of argumentation that political art seems to inspire, including the urge to parse out the terms of discussion. I overheard and read quite a few of these types of responses, including those from viewers who asked,…

06/24/2015

"Where indeed are the voices of the Donaldsons, Beardens, Purifoys, and Ringgolds of the movement?"

06/24/2015

In our new special issue editor Chika Okeke-Agulu asks, "When will contemporary artists acknowledge through their work that something profound . . . is happening in our streets?"

06/16/2015

Special issue 36, Visualizing the Riot, is due to mail on June 19! If you haven't yet subscribed to Nka, now is the time.

05/28/2015

The Swenkas, a documentary by Jeppe Ronde

Director: Jeppe Ronde DoP: Lars Skree Editor: Olivier Bugge Coutté Producer: Rasmus Thorsen & Anne Diemer Cosmo Film

05/07/2015

Cornell's LYRAE VAN CLIEF-STEFANON joins in responding to Jacob Lawrence painting.

The Great Migration of 6 million African-Americans from the rural South to the urban North was a shift that reshaped America forever. Artist Jacob Lawrence captured that story in an epic work of art known as the Migration Series. Now all 60 of Lawrence's small paintings are on show at the Museum of…

05/01/2015

“Voodoo,” a long-unheard opera by the pioneering African-American composer and Harlem Renaissance figure H. Lawrence Freeman, will return this June to New York.

“Voodoo,” by the pioneering African-American composer H. Lawrence Freeman, will be performed in a pair of June concerts at Columbia University that will be recorded.

04/28/2015

BOMB's Oral History Project: an interview with Stanley Whitney

Stanley Whitney at his studio in Parma, Italy, 2012. Photo by Marina Adams. Courtesy of the artist.It gives me great honor to present BOMB Magazine’s Oral History of Stanley Whitney. Stanley is a New York based artist born and raised in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. He studied art at various institutions…

04/03/2015

AfrikaBurn 2015

AfrikaBurn is the kind of experience that truly gives meaning to the expression ‘a picture tells a thousand words’. Here you’re able to browse photos and videos from previous years to get an idea of the colourful, vibrant and extraordinary creativity that grows each year in Tankwa Town. IN THIS SECT…

02/26/2015

Congrats to Nka's own Chika Okeke-Agulu on the publication of his book Postcolonial Modernism, from Duke University Press!

Postcolonial Modernism, Duke University Press

02/24/2015

Bisi Silva appointed Artistic Director 10th Bamako Encounters

Independent curator and founding director of the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos, Bisi Silva, has been appointed Artistic Director of the 10th Bamako Encounters, (Rencontres de Bamako), African Biennale of Photography. This edition of the Biennale, which will run from 31 October to 31 December 20…

02/24/2015

Dance of the Butterflies by Romuald Hazoume.

Dance of the Butterflies at Manchester Museum might be visually stunning, but it also gestures to a much wider – and more sinister - context. We found out how.

01/20/2015

Sara Raza selected as Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator, Middle East and North Africa

The Guggenheim Museum

01/20/2015

Artists have a dream.

In June of 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a speech to a throng of 25,000 Detroiters. “I have a dream,” he told them, a dream of equality for blacks and whites, as well as a dream specific to the city, "that one day right...

01/15/2015

Has anyone read any of the titles on this list? I'm especially interested in "Just Mercy."

Research is a big component of Mr. Kaphar's work. So at the end our chat, we asked him to share reading suggestions based on books that he's currently using for research, or those that have left a ...

01/13/2015

Body Talk: Feminism, Sexuality and the Body in the Work of Six African Women Artists

Ever since, the existence of a specifically African – and black – feminism, together with the spread of artistic practice and the economics of art to international networks, have given shape,...

01/13/2015

We've exceeded 1,000 "likes!" Thanks for your support! And keep spreading the word.

12/08/2014

One of the greats, whom we're proud to have in the pages of Nka!

BOMB’s Oral History Project documents the life stories of New York City’s African American artists. [ Download as a PDF, EPUB, or MOBI file ]Portraits of the sculptor, Melvin Edwards, October 1965. Photo © Museum Associates/LACMAMichael Brenson Your life has been an epic one, so I don’t know how we’…

09/23/2014

"I look back at myself as a gypsy." An interview with Nick Cave in BOMB Magazine.

Krystian von Speidel sits down with artist Nick Cave to talk about his incredible Soundsuits and his concurrent exhibits at Jack Shainman and Mary Boone Galleries.

09/16/2014

Check out the NYer article on Samuel Fosso.

Self-portraits by the influential African photographer, whose studio in the Central African Republic was ransacked last February.

09/09/2014

How (Nka's Own) Okwui Enwezor Changed the Art World

Next year, the Nigerian-born curator and writer will become the first African director of the Venice Biennale, where he'll continue his career-long project of challenging the status quo.

07/31/2014

07/31/2014

Adger Cowans talks to Carrie Mae Weems for BOMB's Oral History Project.

BOMB’s Oral History Project documents the life stories of New York City’s African-American artists.Adger Cowans, Sun and Trees, 1959. All images courtesy and copyright ©Adger Cowans.Adger Cowans is a renowned fine arts photographer and painter whose works have been shown by The Metropolitan Museum o…

07/21/2014

Check out our shiny new website!

06/11/2014

Exciting special issue on black collectivities, edited by Huey Copeland & Naomi Beckwith, coming soon!

06/10/2014

How Domino Sugar Refinery is keeping pests off Kara Walker's sugar sculptures.

Kara Walker's 75-foot-long, 35-foot-tall sculpture made of 160,000 pounds of sugar rests in the expansive, soon-to-be-razed Domino Sugar Refinery, surrounded by 15 five-foot-tall statues of boys co...

06/09/2014

Call for applications for the post-graduate HISK program:

The post-graduate educational programme of the HISK is a two-year, full-time programme, which starts on January 1, 2015, and ends on December 31, 2016.