10 weeks online course on Modern and Contemporary African Art
Come on a journey around the modern and contemporary art of Africa. Each week, we will take a different strand of the rich tapestry of African artistic culture and history to explore.
Africa is a huge continent with over fifty different countries and thousands of different ethnic groups. The cultures of each of these differ dramatically, making Africa a rich and fertile ground for the creative arts.
On this course we will join Alinta Sara on a journey around the modern and contemporary art of Africa. As well as seeing some astonishingly beautiful works of art made over the past 100 years, the course will challenge the assumption often made by art historians that African art belongs under the categories of folk art or so-called ‘tribal’ art.
As we will see, Africa has an exciting art history, sometimes unique to the African experience, and sometimes chiming with the interests of non-African artists.
The course is taught in an open and inclusive way, so your thoughts, experiences and opinions will be welcome as part of the discussion. It is aimed at complete beginners, and no previous qualification or knowledge of art or art history is necessary.
Course Programme
- Week 1: Representing Africa, Modernity and the contemporary
- Week 2: Négritude and Natural Synthesis In the formation of modernism in West Africa
- Week 3: Beyond Négritude and the École de Dakar
- Week 4 Modernism in Sudan: Ibrahim El-Salahi
- Week 5: Photography in Mali
- Week 6: Malangatana & Modernism in Mozambique
- Week 7: Cheri Samba and Popular Painting in the Democratic Republic of Congo
- Week 8: South African Artists in the Struggle against Apartheid
- Week 9: South African artists after the Apartheid
- Week 10: Modern art in North Africa
Your Tutor
Alinta Sara is an art historian and independent curator who studied at SOAS University of London.
Her current research focuses in the cultural links between Africa and the Diaspora, and also includes looking at Afro-Brazilian architectural heritage in the Bight of Benin and reflects on the link between collect memory, space and architecture. She co-founded Bokantaj, a collaborative initiative to raise greater awareness about the historical trajectories and universal themes that connect communities in the global South.
Alongside her research, Alinta works as a French language tutor at Imperial College London as well as an independent curator and freelance workshop producer with various organizations and galleries in London, such as the October Gallery, Lon-Art, the Africa Centre, Greenwich Maritime Museum, and the Tate Modern.
She co-curated the Divinations of Worlds to Come exhibitions at the Agency Gallery (2018), Our Story, Our Journey at the Black Cultural Archives (2021), and curated The Colour of Pain at Imperial College (2019). In 2021, she managed the Sickle Cell Society heritage project “Our Journey, our story,” which looked at the history of sickle-cell disease in the UK.Lately she works as curator for Art 360 Artist legacies project in museum. Her curatorial practice links oral histories and visual arts and finds innovative ways to engage audiences.
This course is open to all, and no previous qualification or knowledge of art or art history is necessary.
Special rate: £ 99
Register online by the 1st October 2023.
