Bamako Encounters – African Biennale of Photography Streams of Consciousness 30 November 2019 – 31 January 2020
Bamako Encounters, the historical and internationally renowned Biennale for Photography and Video Art on the African Continent, is proud to announce the artists who will contribute to its 25th anniversary edition. The Biennale will run in Bamako, Mali from the 30th of November 2019 to the 31st of January 2020. Conceived by Artistic Director Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and a curatorial team comprised of Aziza Harmel, Astrid Sokona Lepoultier and Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh, with artistic advisors Akinbode Akinbiyi, Seydou Camara and scenographer Cheick Diallo, this edition is an invitation to think about the artistic practice of photography as a stream of consciousness, as well as to consider photography beyond the tight corset of the photographic; the moment of a snapshot emanates from a flow of thoughts and associations reflecting the photographer’s inner voice, which is unavoidably and constantly in motion.
Cameroonian photographers Yvon Ngassam , Antoine Ngolkedo’o and internationally-acclaimed artist and filmmaker Jean-Pierre Bekolo and visual artist Guy Woueté have been announced in the selection of the 12th Bamako Encounters .
Les Rencontres de Bamako, Biennale historique et de renommée internationale de la photographie et de l’art vidéo sur le continent africain, est fier d’annoncer les artistes qui contribueront à son édition célébrant son 25ème anniversaire. La Biennale se déroulera à Bamako, au Mali, du 30 novembre 2019 au 31 janvier 2020. Conçu par le directeur artistique Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung et une équipe de curateurs composée d’Aziza Harmel, d’Astrid Sokona Lepoultier et de Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh, avec les conseils artistiques Akinbode Akinbiyi et Seydou Camara ainsi que le scénographe Cheick Diallo, cette édition est une invitation à réfléchir à la pratique artistique de la photographie en tant que courant de conscience, ainsi qu’à envisager la photographie au-delà du corset du photographe ; L’instant capturé par la photographie émane d’un flot de pensées et d’associations reflétant la voix intérieure du photographe, qui est inévitablement et constamment en mouvement.
Une exposition racontée en quatre vers
Environ 85 artistes de tout le continent africain et de la diaspora présenteront leurs projets artistiques.
La sélection artistique a donné lieu à quatre chapitres, chacun amenant le spectateur à son propre récit de courants de conscience. Les chapitres sont nommés d’après des vers tirés d’un poème figurant dans le prélude du Dilemme du fantôme, pièce de théâtre écrite par Ama Ata Aidoo.
Le bruissement soudain dans le sous-bois
Sur la présence de l’invisible, de la distance et d’autres questions fantomatiques
Car la bouche ne doit pas tout dire
Sur la politique et la poétique des écosystèmes
Nous sommes venus de gauche, nous sommes venus de droite
Sur les déplacements, l’errance et les diasporas
La brindille ne nous percera pas les yeux
Sur la possibilité d’espoir et l’avenir comme promesse
The Addis Foto Fest
The Addis Foto Fest is inviting submissions from photographers, photography collectives and curators from around the world for its 6th festival edition, which will take place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from December 3-7, 2020. The festival was founded in 2010 by Aida Muluneh and continues to be organised by the company she established, Desta (Developing and Educating Society Through Art) for Africa Creative Consulting.
Lagos Photo Festival 2019 October 25th – November 13th
10 Years of Lagos Photo Festival
The main goal of the festival is to bring together a community of talented photographers from across the African continent. Passports is the theme of the 10th edition of LagosPhoto Festival and it intends to delve into the constraints and prospects of the most important official document a human being holds. This year’s edition aims to bring alive, an alternative global environment in which artists of different nationalities are invited to explore options of creating a fluid and permeable world, where nationality, gender, and historical imbalances are secondary. Through the course of a decade, the festival has proven to be a space where artists can meet on neutral ground to share ideas, innovation, and capacities. Thus, the jubilee edition especially concentrates on the reciprocal energies the festival has experienced in past years and will open the discussion of how we can create a flexible and more egalitarian world within the existing global restrictions. What are the options of living freely in a world that will be determined by borders?
LagosPhoto invited artists to consider the festival platform as a laboratory for ideas and a safe space for experimentation with open and transformative forms of identity, creating new categories of an international identity that allows for diversity. What kind of passport could certify and authorize these overarching values? The 10th edition of LagosPhoto presents artists who are able to raise relevant questions and propose possible answers or sustainable alternatives and who believe in a versatile world that is not based on utopias but routed in the way we already live.
This year edition hosts forty-five photographers including Adeoku Osibodu, Alexis Fiasco, Anaka, Chukwuma Nwobi, Dan Halter, Daveed Baptiste, Dustin Thierry, Ella Eduozor, Gaelen Pinnock, Halima Abubakar, Jamil G. Baldwin, Jenevieve Aken, Joana Choumali, Johnny Miller, Kelvin Haizel, Magda Biernat and Ian Webster, Mahmoud Hojeij, Maimouna Guerresi, Nelly Atina, Obayomi Anthony, Yinka Babalola etc.