Abdoulaye Konaté studied painting at the Institut National des Arts in Bamako, and later at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, Cuba, where he lived for seven years before returning to Mali.

In his work, Konaté combines different media bringing ancestralism to contemporary art. Through textile or raw-materials such as sand, Konaté draws on the traditions from Mali, his home-country, as a way of reflecting on subjects such as spirituality, politics and collective consciousness.

Alexandra Karakashian’s work stems from her personal and family history and reflects on current issues of exile and migration. Employing used engine oil and salt as a medium for painting, she engages in ecological discussions and the unethical seizing of rapidly dwindling natural resources, particularly on a resourceful continent such as Africa. Furthermore, Karakashian investigates notions of mourning – both of an individual and collective nature – and the lamentation of the loss of land and of those who have been ‘unhomed’.

António Ole is interested in traditional art to develop a contemporary discourse directly related to his time and experiences. The elements used by the artist in his works mainly tend to evoke the colonial period, slavery, war, destruction, the human nature, and the ability to resist and survive. As an artist, António Ole stood out for his sculptures inspired by the murals of the Tchokwe people, located east of the country, and for his contemporary paintings that incorporate many popular elements, making him one of the strongest international figures that elevate Angolan culture.

Buhlebezwe Siwani works predominantly with performance and installation. Her work has been described as “revealing” and “political”, covering topics of black femininity and spirituality, through the interrogation of the patriarchal framing of the black female body and black female experience within the South African context.

Dawit L. Petros’ work is informed by studies of global modernisms, theories of diaspora, and postcolonial studies. Throughout the past decade, he has focused on a critical re-reading of the entanglements between colonialism and modernity.

"My work looks at the representations of black women in a colonial context and explores how the colonial gaze has been subverting their portrayal. The depictions of black subjects throughout history have been instrumental in building the present stereotypes that stand out vividly in the representations of black women in South Africa today."

Edson Chagas is one of the most iconic African contemporary photographers. Based between Luanda and Lisbon, Chagas holds a degree in photojournalism from the London College of Communication and studied documentary photography at the University of Wales, Newport. In 2013, he represented Angola at the country’s first Venice Biennale national pavilion. He was the recipient of the Golden Lion Award for Best National Pavilion.

Ernest Mancoba's work represents a unique synthesis of modern European art and African spirit. His goal was to bring to European art his deep understanding of African culture, represented by the frequently appearing totems in his drawings and paintings that reflect the umuntu philosophy.

Shumba is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses drawing, painting, video, text, and installation work. His work attempts at deconstructing spaces (real or imagined)—which he describes as Fold Fields Space (FFS). These are sites generally characterized and haunted by death, trauma, tension, restraint, psychic terror, ecological damage and use of the military as an apparatus of control.

Frida Orupabo is an artist and sociologist. Orupabo creates collages that take the shape of fragmented black female figures, exploring questions of race, sexuality, identity, and representation. Her research is grounded in her own experience of cultural belonging. Her artistic practice is divided into two formats that complement each other: an Instagram page entitled @nemiepeba, where she carefully curates a selection of reference imagery, archival images related to black culture in general, and large-scale collages.

Grada Kilomba’s interdisciplinary practice addresses memory, trauma, and gender interrogating concepts of knowledge, power, violence and the creation of narratives. Kilomba uses performance, staged readings, video, installation and sound pieces as a conduit for her very particular practice of storytelling. Inspired by the griots and using theatrical methods, she subversively translates text into images, sound and movement, using a hybrid language that oscillates between academic, poetic and lyric, creating a bodily experience for her own critical writing.

Hank Willis Thomas is a conceptual artist whose work explores themes related to perspective, racial identity, commodity, media and popular culture. Appropriating a range of industrial materials, such as retroreflective vinyl, he challenges both conceptual and physical perspectives. Thomas employs recognized icons to explore how they reinforce generalizations surrounding race, gender, and ethnicity.

The raw material for Uambembe’s work is memory. To deal with its fragility, she uses various practices such as painting, printing techniques, performance and installation. Her work is anchored in the memories of the city where she was born, home to former soldiers and refugees from Angola, along with the stories rooted there.

Hicham Benhohoud is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice incorporates painting, new media, photography, and more, exploring themes of identity politics and power relations. His images defy categorization, playing with the viewer’s perception and questioning preconceptions.

Januário Jano is an interdisciplinary artist who works with a variety of mediums, including sculpture, video, photography, textile, sound installation,and performance. His practice reflects on notions of home and self, challenging conventional norms and mainstream historical narratives by exploring history, fiction, memory, and place.

Andrianomearisoa has participated in a number of group shows, including Africa Remix, Rencontres Africaine de la Photographie in Bamako (2009); the Havana Biennale (2006); The progress of love, Menil Collection, Houston (2012); and Divine Comedy (2014) among others.

The art of Keyezua addresses individual stories, expressed in films, paintings, poems and sculptures. She believes that an African artist can only break the epidemic stigmatized and prejudiced image on Africa through the media, breaking the silence and traditionalist stereotypes.

Kiluanji Kia Henda employs a surprising sense of humour in his work, which often hones in on themes of identity, politics, and perceptions of postcolonialism and modernism in Africa.

Evincing a strong poetic and aesthetic sensibility, his work blurs the boundaries between the formalities of painting and photography. Katembo’s mirroring technique, best visualised in his photographic series Un regard (2008-2009), captures vignettes of Kinshasa’s streets in the reflections of puddles. His photographs and short films address the economic and political realities of the capital, yet produce moments of intense serenity.

Mónica de Miranda works in an interdisciplinary way with drawing, installation, photography, film, video and sound, in its expanded forms and in the boundaries between fiction and documentary.

Stemming from an itinerant life in Amsterdam, Berlin, and Paris; and his contrasting experiences of growing up in South Africa, the artist interrogates his own position by embracing almost every artistic medium. Through painting, video, drawing, installation, sculpture and photography, he creates an ongoing index of items and observations.

His videos, installations, drawings, paintings and sculptures bring to light our doubts, fears and desires.
By using materials such as antenna cable, typewriters and VHS tapes, Mounir Fatmi elaborates an experimental archeology that questions the world and the role of the artist in a society in crisis. He twists its codes and precepts through the prism of a trinity comprising Language, Architecture and Machine. Thus, he questions the limits of language and communication while reflecting upon these obsolescent materials and their uncertain future.

His work is characterized by its variability, since he confines himself in his artistic work neither to one medium nor to a particular set of issues. While his themes may be various, they all use the artist himself as a person as their point of departure.

Firmino’s present narrative is contained in a broader theme that enquires into history. “History as presented is often biased and one-sided, so to get a better understanding I reimagine my past in this so-called truth.” Personal memories and historical events are combined and presented in interior scenes that present themselves as both possibilities and invitations to reimagine history.

While his practice, expressionist in nature, is entirely underpinned by drawing, constructed by filming a drawing, making erasures and alterations, and filming it again, his method combines studio-based and collaborative practices to create artworks that draw on politics, science, literature and history, and maintain a space for contradiction and uncertainty.

Over the past decade, he has become well known for his exploration of colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalization. Working in painting, sculpture, photography, film and installation, Shonibare’s work examines race, class and the construction of cultural identity through incisive political commentary on the tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe, and their respective economic and political histories.

Yonamine’s prolific and diverse artistic practice includes painting, drawing, graffiti, photography, video, and other media, such as tattooing and body art. His multimedia installations are both personal diaries and explorations of African history and politics.

Zanele is a visual artist and activist that works with photography, video and installation media. Muholi's work focuses on race, gender and sexuality, with a wide range of production linked to black lesbians, gays, transgender and intersex people.

Zoulikha Bouabdellah’s works -through installation, drawing, video and photography- deal with the effects of globalization and question their depictions with humour and subversion.