If you are looking for an amusing activity to do this weekend (bank holiday in France), here are 6 exhibits you must see this week-end. 

Fela Anikulapo-Kuti - Rébellion Afrobeat 

The musical style that Fela created which he called "Afrobeat" has its roots in a variety of musical genres, from Yoruba rhythms to free jazz with touches of soul and funk.

Afrobeat, as heard in the music of Fela's first band, Koola Lobitos, is a style that originated in West Africa and includes a lot of brass and percussion. Fela surrounded himself with a variety of musicians by creating multiple bands : Africa 70 and Egypt 80, and created symphonic pieces that were more and more complex. 

This exhibition follows the musician's musical evolution and illuminates the origins and developments of Afrobeat.

Philharmonie de Paris

221 avenue Jean-Jaurès 75019 Paris, France. 

https://philharmoniedeparis.fr/fr/activite/exposition/24616-fela-anikulapo-kuti

Faith Ringgold - Black is beautiful 

From the fights for civil rights to those of Black Lives Matter, Faith Ringgold is a significant character in a devoted and feminist American art. Her work connects the rich legacy of the Harlem Renaissance with contemporary black American artists.

The exhibition is the first to group a significant collection of Faith Ringgold's paintings in France. It continues the retrospective of her work that the New Museum will hold in early 2022  and was planned in collaboration with the New York institution.

Musée national Picasso-Paris

5 rue de Thorigny, 75003 Paris, France

https://www.museepicassoparis.fr/fr/visite-de-lexposition-faith-ringgold-black-beautiful

Souls grown deep like the rivers :

black artists from the American south 

This exhibition, organized by the Royal Academy of Arts, London in collaboration with Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Atlanta gathers sculpture, paintings, reliefs, drawings, and quilts of Black artists from the American south.

They’ve developed over generations a distinctive artistic legacy and produced artworks that depict America's painful past, working almost entirely independently from established norms.

Artists include Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Ronald Lockett, Joe Minter, Hawkins Bolden, Bessie Harvey, Charles Williams, Mary T. Smith and many others. 

Royal Academy of Arts 

Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD, United Kingdom

https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/souls-grown-deep

Carrie Mae Weems - Reflections for now 

Carrie Mae Weems receives praise for her work that questions how race, gender, and class are portrayed while also examining identity, power, desire, and social justice. This exhibition, which extends over more than three decades, gathers pictures, films, and installations. It is the broadest display of the artist's multidisciplinary work.

From the video installation The Shape of Things (2021), which examines the history of violence in the United States, to the legendary Kitchen Table Series (1990), the show reflects the performative and cinematic nature of her oeuvre.

Barbican Centre

Silk Street, London

EC2Y 8DS

https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2023/series/carrie-mae-weems-public-programme

 

 

Ending this Sunday, Quiet refusal is a collaborative exhibit of Blacks To The Future, a diverse group of artists, intellectuals, activists, and writers working on hybrid narratives. 

Sybil Coovi Handemagnon, Kyo Kim, Fallon Mayanja, Nicolas Pirus, and Mawena Yehouessi are bringing their techniques into conversation for the first time through a collaborative exhibit. Along with the exhibition, B(S)TTF also offers a cinema and ciné-clubs program that uses a variety of moving image works to reveal the violence of colonial archives.

Beursschouwburg

20 - 28 Rue Auguste Orts, 1000 Brussels

https://www.beursschouwburg.be/fr/events/quiet-refusal/

Tschabalala Self 

This fall, CC Strombeek presents the first solo exhibition in Belgium by American artist Tschabalala Self (b. 1990, Harlem, lives and works in New York).

Self creates a distinctive style by combining printmaking and painting to look into concepts related to the Black body.

She crosses various artistic and craft traditions as she creates representations of mostly female bodies out of a combination of stitched, printed, and painted materials. Self's work aims to advance her critical investigation into selfhood and human happiness through its formal and conceptual aspects.

Cultuurcentrum Strombeek 

Gemeenteplein 1, 1853 Grimbergen

https://www.ccstrombeek.be/expo/tschabalala-self

This article was written by Chloé Kina.