When considering contemporary art museums and institutions on the African continent, there is no single best place to start. But, ten years ago, in 2012, a well-recorded gathering took place at RAW Material Company, Dakar, under the designation ‘Symposium on Building Art Institutions in Africa.’ As with all RAW’s symposiums past and present, this first symposium saw leaders across the cultural field speak to the most urgent cultural questions under well-chosen themes by Koyo Kouoh and the RAW team. Overwhelmingly, the consensus at the symposium was that museum and institutional growth across the continent were a result of impetus from independent initiatives rather than any support or instigations by governments. Despite this imbalance, as Kouoh elaborates, within administration systems inherited from colonial systems, in general, there is little importance placed on private initiatives. 

 

Reflecting on the 2002-2012 decade, Kouoh wrote, “during the last decade, a variety of independent private art initiatives has emerged to fill the vacuum left by unfulfilled promises of cultural and artistic programmes left by governments” and the “emerging scene of private art centres affirms the commitment to artistic interventions [and] whether large or small, generously funded or not, centres such as these are changing the cultural and artistic landscape and, if nothing else, they replenish the dearth in spaces of free expression, production, exhibition and reflection.” But equally, as curator Simon Njami elaborated, much like Europe, “these new spaces were also an attempt to satisfy personal needs” and were “not merely a passive reaction” to “the negligence of African states.” To assume so would be reductionist for sure. In brief, non-all-inclusive terms, initiatives from 2002 – 2012 included L’appartement 22, ZOMA Contemporary Art Centre, ARIA, CCA Lagos, RAW, Les Ateliers Sahm, Fondation Zinsou, Bandjoun Station, Darb 1718 and The Museum of Modern Art Equatorial Guinea, and numerous others. Now, ten years on, where are we now? What spaces have opened? What are these spaces like? Who has opened them and why? Who is engaging with them? And where will we be in 2033?

 

A few months after RAW’s symposium, the inaugural 1-54 Forum programme would be the presenting space for a book launch of the publication that came out of the discussions that took place: Condition Report on Building Art Institutions in Africa. For the following ten years, 1-54 and 1-54 Forum has continued to be a space for discussions - relaying what was happening across the continent and connecting talks happening in the US and Europe to those on the continent. Questions and comments from audience members at the book launch came from globally based cultural workers who were in attendance, asking facilitator Christine Eyene and speakers Koyo Kouoh (RAW) and Zineb Sedira (ARIA) about the rural and urban balance of independent initiatives, how their independent initiatives worked with national ones, and so forth.

 

Of these questions, a participant enquired about building initiatives on the continent in the face of such powerful Western institutions that were creating their own collections and narratives about the continent and whether or not they felt threatened. Beyond other answers given, all three pointed out that being at or engaging with these larger institutions “is not the ambition” and that “It’s a whole new generation of young, independent, highly educated African art professionals on the ground that are doing things that need to be done,” “Who might not want to be at Frieze or FIAC and all of those, it might not be appropriate for everyone.” One of the first initiatives that was established on the continent soon after the symposium, LE 18 in Marrakech, is perhaps a brilliant presentation of this in both whom it was established by, how it was founded and how it is confronting the established mode of generating and learning at major art institutions and events. 

 

Established by Laila Hida and Francesca Masoero in 2013, LE 18 has been a leading creative and collaborative hub for Marrakech’s creatives. The riad space evolved as the needs and growth of LE 18 has altered over its ten years. After a refurbishment a couple of years ago, the riad is now, even more, a purpose space for exhibitions, talks, residencies, workshops, library, and book shop that collectively hosts multiple creators, projects, and narratives at once. Beyond its space, LE 18 participates in projects globally, from 1-54 (LE 18 curated the 1-54 Forum Paris programme in 2021) to, most recently, documenta fifteen 2022. At the biennale, LE 18 made their exhibition space a place for gathering and conversation and titled it A Door to the Sky—or a Plea for Rain. The programme opened a platform for ‘addressing a sense of exhaustion and (self)-exploitation triggered by major art events.’ More and more, spaces on the continent are confronting modes of practice in the west because, not only are they slowly being included, but they are indeed participating and participating as much as possible on their terms within systems that typically resist difference and change. Spaces with a similar format to LE 18 opened in the last ten years include Les Ateliers Sauvages Concepteurs (Algiers, opened 2015) and Njelele Art Station (Harare, opened 2013). 

 

In the final minutes of the book launch in 2013, The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa was spoken about for one of the first times in broad and elusive terms by an audience member - “I believe it will rival the size, now this is hearsay, rival the size of MoMA in New York, so I think we should all be looking forward to that and they are collecting from Africa”. Zeitz MOCAA would open in Cape Town four years later. A non-profit museum, the museum was established by German businessman Jochen Zeitz and the V&A Waterfront. Zeitz loaned the museum his entire collection dedicated to contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora for life. Kouoh is now its Executive Director and Chief Curator. In response to the audience member at the time, Kouoh said, “African philanthropists are understanding the need and the necessity to invest massively and big time into preserving art and to promoting art and buying art for, you know, future generations.” It is not just Zeitz MOCAA that has been established in that way over the last ten years; it is perhaps the primary reason for the growing number of larger institutions continent-wide. A few months later, in 2018, Cape Town also saw The Norval Foundation open, a foundation financed by property investor Louis Norval. Norval had been collecting art from the continent for two decades. Zeitz MOCAA and Norval hold numerous exhibitions, workshops, screenings, and talks yearly. 

 

The same year Zeitz MOCAA opened, Fondation H was established in Madagascar. Now with two exhibition spaces, one in Paris and one in Antananarivo, Fondation H was started in 2017 by Franco-Malagasy entrepreneur Hassanein Hiridjee to promote young contemporary African talent. The foundation also sponsors major international exhibitions. A year before Zeitz MOCAA, The Norval Foundation and Fondation H opened, Musée d’Art Contemporain Africain Al Maaden (MACAAL), Marrakech, was established by collector and practising architect Othman Lazraq. Speaking at the 1-54 Forum in 2019, Lazraq mentioned one of the reasons he started MACAAL was to “open the possibility to other collectors on the continent.” MACAAL joined existing foundations, institutions, and spaces in Marrakech, such as LE 18 and Montresso* art foundation (opened 2009). Since 2016, MACAAL has held several exhibitions, workshops, and community-orientated events. Like LE 18 and Montresso*, MACAAL is a pivotal space in Marrakech, all three of which have presented projects at and alongside 1-54 fairs, particularly its editions in Marrakech. It’s important to note that the museums that have been successful follow a long line of smaller, grassroots initiatives in their geographies. Some, such as the Institute Museum of Ghana, founded by Joseph Awuah-Darko, are building off their own smaller initiatives. In the case of the Institute Museum of Ghana, it started with the Noldor Artist Residency, which was established in 2020; now, two years later, a museum is being formulated. In a similar vein, Foundation Kamel Lazaar Foundation opened B7L9 in 2019. Likewise, opened in 2013 was Thread, Sinthian (Senegal), an artist residency and cultural centre for local and international artists. It was established by the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and Dr Magueye Ba. Over the last ten years, it has had over sixty artists in residence and conducted numerous projects from dance festivals to using its Toshiko Mori-designed building as a study hall for local students. The Foundation is now building a museum and centre for culture and community in the Senegambia region. 

 

As with the previous decade, state-funded initiatives are still few and far between. The Museum of Black Civilisations opened in Dakar in 2018, but the most recent is Palais de Lomé, Togo, which opened in 2020. Sonia Lawson has led its establishment and programming. The space takes over a former colonial governor palace turned prime minister’s headquarters and is now a cross-disciplinary art centre and 26-acre rehabilitated park. Palais de Lomé uses a symbol of colonialism and oppression to present Togo as it is today and into the future. The first major presentation of the project happened at 1-54 Forum, Marrakech, and following that, Lawson would join multiple talks as a part of 1-54 Forum to speak about Palais de Lomé. 

 

Joining the philanthropist-entrepreneur-businessmen turned collectors opening spaces across the continent over the last ten years are artists who have grown up on the continent and diaspora artists who have been establishing initiatives across Africa. Nigerian artist Zina Saro Wiwa founded the Boys Quarter Project Space in 2014, a contemporary art gallery in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. In 2017, the artist also started Mangrove Arts, a foundation which uses arts and crafts to foster creative engagement with environmentalism in the Niger Delta. In Ghana, Ghanian artist Ibrahim Mahama would open The Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA), Tamale, in 2019. The space has multiple functions, from exhibition and project space to research hub and artist residency. A year later, in 2020, British-Kenyan artist Michael Armitage opened the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute (NCAI). This non-profit space is dedicated to the visual arts of East Africa, serving as an exhibition space, archive, resource centre, and educational hub for students and the public alike. 

 

Over the last couple of years, artist-run spaces have not only proliferated, but also those started by artists based or having spent more of their childhood in the diaspora have rooted spaces on the continent. Artist and performer Wura Natasha-Ogunji, who was born in the United States, but is of Nigerian descent, founded The Treehouse in Lagos in 2018. Focused on experimental practices, The Treehouse hosts artists for short-term residencies and creative workshops and performances. Also, in Lagos and beginning to be formulated not long after The Treehouse took off was Guest Artist Space Foundation (G.A.S), developed and built by Yinka Shonibare CBE RA. Of British-Nigerian descent, Shonibare opened the G.A.S residency space in May 2022. When speaking at the opening of the residency spaces, Shonibare explained how he initially wanted to open a Museum of Contemporary Art in Nigeria. However, on thinking about who would be the archivists, the curators, and the conservators, he decided that he would not have a sustainable institution without the grassroots being invested in first. From this, the residency spaces, one in Lagos and one in rural Ijebu, took shape. Around the same time, American artist Kehinde Wiley opened a residency space in Senegal called Black Rock. Hosting one-to-three-month long artist residences, Wiley purposefully mirrored the residence approach taken at the Studio Museum Harlem after having such positive and constructive residency experiences of his own there. Wiley has plans for another residency in Calabar, Nigeria (set to open in 2023) and is working on an exhibition space in Lagos.  

 

As we look to the next ten years, the most fitting initiative to speak about is Bikoka Art Project. The independent initiative in Lolodorf, Cameroon, was founded this year by Christine Eyene. The French-Cameroonian curator, who led the book launch with Kouoh and Sedira ten years ago, envisions a space that folds seamlessly into the existing community that her father heads. Starting with plans for a two-year programme, Bikoka Art Project focuses on Cameroonian artists of multiple disciplines, workshops for youth and women and the young creative professionals of Cameroon. 

 

There is growth continent-wide, no doubt. But the question is, will cultural growth across the continent still rely on independent initiatives in another decade? Diversity in initiatives - in mission, approach, geography, and context, as well as financial and physical structure - are vital for the continent’s innumerable visual cultures to flourish and strengthen. As with all continent-wide synopses, this text only scratches the surface of what has been and is yet to be but hopefully presents the momentum and energy of this moment. The initiatives of the decade previous, from RAW’s symposium and following documentation and 1-54 Forum’s recordings, allowed for a reflection such as this. May well-established, new, and anticipated initiatives continue to be the inspiring and resource and knowledge-producing spaces they set out to be. 

 

REFERENCES:

 

Koyo Kouoh (ed.), Condition Report on Building Art Institutions in Africa (2013), Hatje Cantz Verlag: 16, 21. 

 

1-54 Forum recordings: 

 

1-54 Forum London 2013 | Book Launch: Condition Report on Building Art Institutions in Africa

1-54 Directors Talk London 2019 | Supporting African and Diaspora Artists