Installation view of Rotimi Fani-Kayode in the FotoFest Biennial 2020 exhibition African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other, Houston, TX. Courtesy of FotoFest. Photo: Emily Peacock.
On view: March 8 - April 19, 2020
Gallery Hours:
March 8–29, Monday–Sunday, 11AM–6PM
April 1–19, Wednesday– Saturday, 11AM–6PM
Silver Street Studios, 2000 Edwards St., Houston, TX 77007
Winter Street Studios, 2101 Winter St., Houston, TX 77007
Curated by Mark Sealy MBE, Director of the renowned London-based photographic art institution Autograph ABP, African Cosmologies is a large-scale group exhibition that examines the complex relationships between contemporary life in Africa, the African diaspora, and global histories of colonialism, photography, and rights and representation. The exhibition considers the history of photography as one closely tied to a colonial project and Western image production, highlighting artists who confront and challenge this shortsighted, albeit canonized lineage.
Taking its cues from John Coltrane’s avant-garde jazz oeuvre, wherein formal modernisms of the past are made complex by radical imagination and black-futurity, this presentation of diverse ideas, artistic approaches, and material histories proposes a “cosmological exploration” of Africa and the African diaspora — one that defies easy categorization and spatial and temporal boundaries. Succinctly, it explores the very notions of Africa and Africanness beyond traditional geographic and historical lines.
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The Biennial artists turn an eye to social, cultural, and political conditions that inform and influence concepts of representation as they pertain to image production and circulation within Africa and beyond. These artists question the ways in which subjectivity is constructed and deconstructed by the camera, and in the process, reveal legacies of resistance by those who defy traditional ideas of sexual, racial, gender-based, and other marginalized identities.
The artists featured in the Biennial 2020 Central Exhibition include:
Faisal Abdu’Allah (UK)
Akinbode Akinbiyi (Nigeria/UK)
Hélène A. Amouzou (Togo/Belgium)
Sammy Baloji (Congo/Belgium)
James Barnor (Ghana/UK)
Bruno Boudjelal (France/Algeria)
Edson Chagas (Angola)
Ernest Cole (South Africa)
Jamal Cyrus (United States)
Jean Depara (Angola/Congo)
Laura El-Tantawy (Egypt/UK)
Samuel Fosso (Cameroon/France)
Rahima Gambo (Nigeria)
Eric Gyamfi (Ghana)
Lyle Ashton Harris (United States)
Samson Kambalu (Malawi/UK)
Rotimi Fani-Kayode (Nigeria)
leo with Shobun Baile (Brazil/United States)
Mónica de Miranda (Angola/Portugal)
Santu Mofokeng (South Africa)
Sethembile Msezane (South Africa)
Zanele Muholi (South Africa)
Aïda Muluneh (Ethiopia)
Eustáquio Neves (Brazil)
Nyaba L. Ouedraogo (Burkino Faso/France)
Rosana Paulino (Brazil)
Dawit L. Petros (Eritrea/United States/Canada)
Zina Saro-Wiwa (Nigeria/United States)
Aida Silvestri (Eritrea/UK)
Lindokuhle Sobekwa (South Africa/United States)
Wilfred Ukpong (Nigeria/France)
Carrie Mae Weems (United States)
Curator Mark Sealy writes, “The impact and the gravitational pull of the contemporary African photographic artist on the universe of photography has resulted in photography’s traditional epistemes–its deadly colonialities–being reluctantly dragged into processes of remaking, delinking and rethinking the work of images in culture. The artists presented in African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other are not simply reflective commentators, travelers, flaneurs, or self-appointed interpreters, rather they represent a commitment to human well-being and the production and sharing of new and old knowledges.”
AFRICAN COSMOLOGIES PROGRAMS
An exhibition book co-published by FotoFest and Schilt Publishing will be produced in conjunction with the FotoFest Biennial 2020, African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other. The publication will feature images by the included artists and essays by Steven Evans, Christine Eyene, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Azu Nwagbogu, Olu Oguibe, and Mark Sealy.
FotoFest is organizing a series of films with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston to accompany the African Cosmologies exhibition. Dates and titles to be announced in January 2020.
A symposium exploring the themes and artists of the African Cosmologies program will take place March 21, 2020 from 10-5pm at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. The symposium will include panels and presentations from Biennial artists with experts on contemporary and historic African history, diaspora, colonization, art and photography. Details and participants to be announced in January 2020.
Other public cultural programs, including artist talks and tours, culinary, music, literary, and family events are planned, and will be announced as finalized.
ADDITIONAL BIENNIAL PROGRAMS
FotoFest organizes the International Meeting Place Portfolio Review for Artists during the FotoFest Biennial 2020, March 8–21, 2020. A two week-long event that brings together 450 artists from over 30 countries, to meet one-on-one with nearly 200 national and international curators, publishers, gallerists, and photography industry leaders. The Meeting Place remains the most international and largest portfolio review program of its kind in the world.
In coordination with the Meeting Place, and in addition to the African Cosmologies program, FotoFest organizes the exhibition Ten by Ten: Ten Reviewers Select Ten Portfolios from the Meeting Place 2018. This exhibition showcases ten artists selected from the previous portfolio review in 2018 by an invited group of international reviewers.
Over 75 independent museums, art galleries, non-profit art centers and corporate spaces will participate in the FotoFest Biennial 2020 by presenting photographic work and events during the festival’s six weeks.
On March 12, FotoFest will hold its 2020 Fine Print Auction at the Whitehall Houston hotel. For more information and to purchase tickets to attend, please visit www.fotofest.org/auction, or contact Aubrey F. Burghardt, FotoFest Auction Manager, at aubrey@fotofest.org.
ABOUT MARK SEALY, BIENNIAL 2020 CURATOR
Dr. Mark Sealy MBE is interested in the relationships between photography and social change, identity politics, race, and human rights. He has been director of London-based photographic arts institution Autograph ABP since 1991 and has produced numerous artist publications, curated exhibitions, and commissioned photographers and filmmakers worldwide, including the critically acclaimed exhibition Human Rights Human Wrongs at Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto in 2013 and at The Photographers’ Gallery, London in 2015.
Sealy has written for international photography publications, including Foam Magazine, Aperture, Creative Camera and Next Level, and written numerous essays for publications and artist monographs. In 2002, Sealy and professor Stuart Hall coauthored Different, which focuses on photography and identity politics. In his essay about politics Stuart described the principles of photography and the main points. Recent notable projects include the exhibition The Unfinished Conversation: Encoding / Decoding for the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto and critically acclaimed exhibitions on the works of James Van Der Zee, Gordon Parks, Carrie Mae Weems, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and on the works of Mahtab Hussain and Maud Sulter.
His most recent book, Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time, was published in 2019 by Lawrence and Wishart.
BIENNIAL 2020 SPONSORS
Generous funding for this publication, exhibition, and related programs is provided by:
Houston Endowment, The Brown Foundation, Inc., National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts and its Cultural District Program, City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation, The Powell Foundation, The Wortham Foundation, David and Martha Moore, Nina and Michael Zilkha, and FotoFest Board of Directors.
Additional support for the Participating Spaces programming and the FotoFest Biennial 2020 is provided by:
Art Houston, Arts District Houston, Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, Deal Co., Foundation for a Civil Society, French Cultures Festival, HexaGroup Inc., iLand Cloud Services, Institut d'Estudis Baleàrics, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Silver Street Studios, and WYNG Foundation.
FotoFest Inc. is proud to collaborate with the Society of Photographic Education for their 57th annual conference, Hosted by the The University of Houston’s Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts, held March 5 – March 8 at the Westin Galleria in Houston. For information about the conference, visit www.spenational.org.
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