Artist and filmmaker Kudzanai Chiurai (b. 1981, Zimbabwe) produced The Triangular Commerce series of works on paper while on residency at WhiteSpaceBlackBox in Switzerland. Chiurai is currently on exhibition at Tate Modern as a part of A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography curated by Osei Bonsu.

In these drawings he draws inspiration from Hegel’s philosophical text entitled Theses on Africa which explores Hegel’s neat systematization of slavery and the expansion of capitalism, and contemplates the subsequent impact on present day Zimbabwe. Through rethinking the current cultural and political realities facing southern Africa, Chiurai confronts the production of power and the post-colonial system which still systemically dictate education-systems and existing cultural codes. 

Chiurai’s work is held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; BHP Billiton, London; Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson; Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami; Pigozzi Collection, Geneva; Walther Collection, New York; and Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town. 

Notable exhibitions include Genesis [Je n’isi isi] - We Live in Silence, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Stuttgart (2020); Ubuntu, a Lucid Dream, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2020); and Regarding the Ease of Others, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town (2017). 

Dennis’s work is held at private and public collections including the Brainlab Cultural Foundation, Germany; A4 Arts Foundation, South Africa; UNISA, South Africa; Scheryn Art Collection, South Africa; and the Barloworld Corporate Collection, South Africa. 

Notable shows include FANTASTIC, Palais de Tokyo, France (2021); This is Not Africa, Unlearn What You Have Learned, ARoS Aarhus, Denmark (2021); the Young Congo Biennale (2019); In the Open or in Stealth, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain (2018); and  the 9th Berlin Biennale (2016). The artist will be part of the 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale later this year.

Leonardo Drew is a New York-based artist and his work is held in public collections around the world, including Tate, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; and Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD.

Drew’s mid-career survey, Existed, premiered at the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston in 2009 and travelled to the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, and the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Solo museum exhibitions have been held at the Zuckerman Museum of Art at Kennesaw State University (2022); Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson (2020); North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh (2020); and de Young Museum, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, California (2017). 2023 saw Drew produce new site-specific installations at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. 

Remy Jungerman (1959, Suriname) explores the intersection of pattern and symbolism in Surinamese Maroon culture, the larger African diaspora, and 20th-century Modernism. The artist’s career survey titled Remy Jungerman: Behind the Forest was held at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 2021. In 2019 he represented the Netherlands at the 58th Venice Biennale. 

Jungerman places fragments of Maroon textiles and other materials found in the African diaspora—the kaolin clay used in several religious traditions or the nails featured in Nkisi Nkondi power sculpture—in direct contact with materials and imagery drawn from more “established” art traditions. Jungerman, therefore, presents a peripheral vision that both enriches and informs our perspective on art history.

Zimbabwean painter Misheck Masamvu (b. 1980, Zimbabwe) is widely regarded as one of the leading figures of the Harare painting school. Trained in Germany, Masamvu continues to live and work in Zimbabwe which provides rich inspiration for his gestural painting. 

Hue and Cry (2022) and Entangled (2023) form part of Masamvu’s latest body of work where he combines striking colour with a distinct expressionist style to create tumultuous landscapes, representing the confessional vulnerability at the heart of his practice. These works see the artist lean towards abstraction through frenetic mark-making, allowing the paint to convey his fears, anxieties and dreams. The irregular, erratic swipes of paint and chaotic compositions mimic the artist’s desire to let emotions manifest without being expressed through recognisable forms.

Cassi Namoda (b. 1988, Mozambique) is known for her strong colour palette and narrative approach. Her hybrid narratives are at once wondrous and poignant, everyday and fantastical, archival and current. Cassi Namoda’s work transfigures the cultural mythologies and historical narratives of life in post-colonial Africa, particularly those of the artist’s familial home of Mozambique. 

The new suite of paintings including Costa Do Sol (2023) are an embodiment of the transcendence of time, using familial and vivid colours to express the bondage of time to emotional psyche and memory. The works are centred around the Portuguese expression of ‘Saudade’ which can be translated to "a longing".

Namoda’s work is held in public collections including Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; MACAAL, Marrakesh; and The Studio Museum; New York. 

Notable solo exhibitions include Life has become a foreign language, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town; To Live Long is To See Much, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg (2020); Little is Enough for Those with Love/Mimi Nakupenda, The Royal Academy of Arts, London (2019); and Bar Texas, 1971, Library Street Collective, Detroit (2017). Group shows include ECHO. Wrapped in Memory, MoMu, Antwerp; When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town (2022 - 2023); American Women, La Patinoire Royale-Galerie Valérie Bach (2020). 

The African Library Collection by Yinka Shonibare is one of the final available single collections of the artist’s popular Library Installation - of which The British Library Installation is on view in the permanent collection at TATE Modern. The Libraries consist of multiple books covered in the ‘Dutch wax print’ typical of the artist’s practice. The spines of many of these books are printed with the names of notable figures from the African Continent, from various categories including political figures, designers and here filmmakers. The work is arranged on rows of shelving and accompanied by a bespoke card catalog box. The collection commemorates the fight for independence in the European colonies across the African continent and the figures from difficult cultural fields who contributed to the independence period through their notable work.