African and Afro-diasporic archives might be celebrated and reinterpreted as a part of a significant undertaking launching later this 12 months in Lagos, pushed by the British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare.
The Re:assemblages symposium (4-5 November), going down at Alliance Française de Lagos, will deliver collectively artists, students and publishers “to collectively rethink African and Afro-diasporic archives as residing, contested and future-shaping areas,” says a press release.
The symposium is organised by the non-profit Visitor Artists Area Basis (G.A.S.) and Yinka Shonibare Basis, which had been each based by Shonibare in 2019. The Lagos occasion is the second version of Re: assemblages (2025-26), a two-year programme which “reimagines the position of archives in shaping African and international artwork histories”, the organisers add.
The 2-day occasion, a part of Lagos’s artwork week, includes discussions and panels targeted on subjects resembling “The Dwelling Archive: Propositions for collections into the longer term” and “African Curators Matter”.
Sponsors of the symposium embody the Terra Basis for American Artwork and the African Export-Import Financial institution (Afreximbank).
A key a part of the occasion would be the unveiling of The African Arts Libraries Lab (AAL Lab), a brand new community linking arts libraries and publishers in Lagos, Dakar, Marrakesh, Cairo, Nairobi, Cape City, and Limbé in Cameroon.
Naima Hassan, the curator of Re:assemblages, tells The Artwork Newspaper: “This symposium importantly presents the AAL Lab and Associates Community, a laboratory of libraries and archives throughout Africa, with a corresponding international assist community. It brings collectively artists, curators, archivists, students, and publics to reimagine African and Afro-diasporic archives from the mid-twentieth century to the current.
“We ask: how can such archives be animated by efficiency, annotation, and curatorial experimentation? How can they perform as residing techniques, intersecting with exhibitions, biennales, and artwork festivals?”
The Re:assemblages initiative was sparked by the Picton Archive, which is housed on the G.A.S. Basis in Lagos and encompasses the non-public library of the the African artwork scholar John Picton and his spouse Sue, a museum ethnographer. This assortment of historic, archaeological gadgets presents a brand new manner of taking a look at African Modernism, modern artwork, and postcolonial data manufacturing throughout the shifting geopolitical and mental currents of the twentieth century, says the Yinka Shonibare Basis.
