Tag: African Sculpture artists
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Rashid Johnson: The Architect of Anxiety Rashid Johnson (b. 1977, Chicago) uses materials that carry a heavy cultural “charge.” He often works with shea butter, black soap, tropical plants, and wax—materials that are associated with African “wellness” and domesticity. He creates massive “grids”—steel structures filled with these materials, along with books by Black authors (like…
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Wangechi Mutu: The Architect of the Future Female Born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1972, Wangechi Mutu work is a bridge between the ancient and the futuristic. She moved to the United States in the 1990s, where she began creating collages that combined images from fashion magazines, motorcycle manuals, and ethnographic photography. These collages depicted “mutant”…
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Yinka Shonibare CBE, RA: The Post-Colonial Dandy Yinka Shonibare was born in London in 1962 but moved to Lagos, Nigeria, at the age of three. Returning to the United Kingdom to study art in the 1980s, he was famously asked by a tutor why he wasn’t making “authentic African art.” This question sparked a lifelong…
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Sir El Anatsui: The Alchemist of the Everyday Born in 1944 in Anyako, Ghana, during the final decade of British colonial rule, El Anatsui journey began with a curiosity about the objects discarded by society. He was trained in a Western-style art curriculum at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, but he soon…
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In the hands of Gerald Chukwuma, discarded timber does not simply find a second life; it finds a voice. Based between the vibrant creative hubs of Nigeria and the global stage of the United Kingdom, Chukwuma has emerged as a titan of contemporary African art. He is not merely a sculptor or a painter; he…