It is important that a public work (especially a memorial) does not show just one face, but that it opens up to different readings. It is a plantation in mourning, burned, which reflects the lugubrious and funerary side of the plantation. And it also pays tribute to the resistance of the enslaved by the gesture of burning the plantation and boycotting the regime of oppression. The plantation is where the process of dehumanization occurs. 
Toy Boy has followed the various stages of the country’s post-independence and initiated his artistic practice after the civil war. His work is an expression of life in Luanda, intrinsically linked to the suffering and creativity one feels in the streets. In tune with the city’s artistic movements and circles (such as Elinga Teatro and Fuckin’ Globo), Toy Boy tells us his story with the sincerity and sensitivity that describe him. Dribbling the difficulties in his path and the need for survival, he appropriates a certain pop art, making collages or ready-mades, installations, and using recycled materials such as rust, but, above all, he gives body and voice to the singularities of urban life. In Luanda 2022. 
French ethnologist Jean-Yves Loude returned to the “black city” for a workshop on the figure of Lisbon in literature (you can consult the program here) and insists on counteracting the manipulation of facts that erases the African contribution to the great achievements of the world.
In Lisbon in the Black City (2003) the narrator discovered a city full of signs of this African presence and showed us this privilege as Lisbon residents. 
In Kwanza-Sul, she noticed the various rhythms and grandiosity of a country that cultivates laughter and a short memory to defend itself from the dramas that dehumanize it: slavery, colonialism, domination, small and large powers, opportunism, and ignorance. How dizzying the scheme of history in everyday life is. The generation to which she belongs worried about recovering the lost cultural memory in these violences and others, also with a vivid and intriguing look of the naivety and militancy of independence. I 
For a long time, we treated art as an illustration, the idea that it was a product of its context. But what if we inverted that, since we live in an image civilization, and think of an image as a production, not a product, it produces values, it produces conceptions. And also, when you criticize internally that whiteness classification, we can go through a lot of different questions: who are the people being portrayed? They are, in general, men. 
Lee-Ann Olwage, who admits she struggles with her own mental health issues, also has family members who have suffered or are suffering from Alzheimer's. For this reason, she states that, with her work, she aims to create a space in which the people she photographs can play an active role in creating the images and that, above all, makes them feel like the true “heroines” of their own stories. 
It is said in Mexico that good life stories are passionate. They are happy and painful, they tie and untie blind knots in the throat, like a harsh swallow of cheap tequila.
We set the tone and enter one of the taciturn taverns of the city of Guanajuato - the so-called "cantinas", where personal tales are distilled as the glasses advance. Rough stone walls in the half-light, damp breath. In my head, Chavela Vargas sings "Tú me acostumbraste." It's night and it's raining softly outside.
With a toast, we seal the moment. And we tell a secret life story. 
Two hours with Mia Couto in an engaging conversation that covers various aspects of his interests and career, his affective geographies, the diversity of peoples and their ways of life as inspiration for the stories, the environment, and the development model to be discovered, and how to treat nature not as a "resource". We talked about hard times of violence, and the utopia of Mozambican Independence. Literary subjects do not predominate, although the Mozambican author wishes he had more time to dedicate to writing. Also thinking about how to take the pleasure of reading further and how to help bring out new writers. A writer in the terrain. 
Balanced between various cultures, he has lived for 31 years in a more open and diverse Lisbon, an openness and diversity to which people like Lucky have contributed so much, from building the city to making the city dance.
This is a city of hard times, but also of encounters and possibilities with which he has grown up. In this text, we are led by the memories of Dj Lucky, between various sound tracks of quisange, semba, and afro blues, and multiple tracks on the floor, from Kinshasa to the Graça neighborhood, passing through Luanda, Cova da Moura, and Bairro Alto. 
Stuart Hall’s ironic use of “the west and the rest” is very real in the fixation among South Africans with “us” and “Africa”. It was encouraging that a sense of South Africa’s inextricable connectedness to the rest of the continent surfaced at moments in the FMF struggle. But the curiosity about and interest in African politics, literature, and academic knowledge still hasn’t really taken off, whether among students or established scholars. 
I think we always have the responsibility of looking into the ghosts of these colonial dreams and taking the ideas further. For example, we must rethink what are artwork features and what exactly defines them? Institutions change, in a slow and tedious way, but it happens. If we also think about the thesis and how it is configurated, how free can we be about the aesthetic part of it? Now we can offer “decolonize art studies” as a course. All the reconfigurations are a very long process to be achieved. A very important thing I would like to highlight is that where you are you must do your work and contribution. We should try to influence others with our work, inspiring them and trying to change what we know is wrong. 
My work has always been focused round connection. I’ve always wanted to tell stories that even though you know the audience and the subject might be different I would want the audience to look at the photo, the subjects, and each detail and for them to be able to see something similar.
Most people that look at my most recent project “MIXED” and probably don’t necessarily think of themselves as mixed, however if we really look back at history and ethnicity it’s clear that we are all mixed, we just haven’t identified it . We all came from Africa and our genetic disposition is remarkably similar. The only differences we notice are as a result of our ancestors colonising different parts of our planet. Effectively we’re all mixed as racial purity is a complete myth. 
Today, I think that the field is challenged more than ever by the increased volatility of debates about what nations remember and consequentially forget. Monuments and memorials are being vandalized, torn down, officially removed. They can no longer be seen as simply part of an historical landscape. Much of this can be understood as battles over the historical narratives of monuments and their power, but it is also about tensions around who the nation mourns and who it sees or does not see as having a “grievable life” in Judith Butler’s term. So I see memory activism as a key site for the production of memory scholarship. 
The article by Achille, I think, significantly points out the legitimacy of being limited from obtaining oxygen, by explicitly pointing out that for some parts of the world where healthcare is part of organized neglect, we are faced with more than just the need to physically breathe. There is a prohibition of breathing that is systemic in nature which is part of a larger need for the freedom to breathe (live). For example the violent killings of black civilians by the police in South Africa due to an unchecked implementation of COVID-19 laws and regulations left us questioning the relevance (need) for policing systems embedded in colonial rhetoric. 
The significance of Mexico for this work is still emerging. Much more remains to be seen about just how deeply embedded the Mexican communists were in the radical networks across the Caribbean where black workers were predominant. Of what I have uncovered, the place of Mexico has two important functions in our historical understanding of the period. First, it was a place of refuge for not only radicals like the forced emigre from Republican Spain, but also for black revolutionaries like Jacques Roumain who spent some time there after being released from prison in Haiti and a short stint in Europe. Second, Mexico was the first people of color Communist nucleus in the western hemisphere, and the sense of anti-imperialism and sensitivity to chauvinism in the CPUSA was critical to strengthening the antiracist struggle across the region. 
During the colonial era, the French colonists did not want to share anything with the slaves, including food. As the population grew and grew, the colonizers decided to give the slaves pieces of land called portion de vive which were to be used as a way for them to feed their own families. The producers on this land were so successful that they began to trade what they were growing. 
Certainly, the virtual dimension will take a new importance, also in light of the massive use of digital tools that this new reality brought with itself, but also in relation to the fact that artists might end up not traveling a lot like before…who knows! The art that will change is only in relation to travel and distance. What could definitely change might be the distribution channels, moving more and more into streaming and digital platforms…but I really hope that this won’t happen. The emotion that live art arouses is incomparable. 
The oppressive policies and structural inequities that underlie the conditions of poor and working class people’s lives here and abroad date from the first invasion of native territories, and the last few decades have exacerbated these conditions. What our older films reveal is the similarity of conditions now with what existed 50 years ago. 
In Bisa's artwork , color is a language that speaks about African American evolution from enslavement in the United States to today's ongoing fight for Black liberation Bisa also draws on her Ghanaian heritage by illustrating the vibrancy of Africa's textile and fabric traditions. These artistic methods allow her to examine several themes including family, community, youth and power. 
Today, tens of thousands of girls under the age of 18 were married off. Today, one in three women can expect to experience some form of physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. This needs to change, and it needs to change now. Each of these numbers tells a personal story and each one of these women or girls could have been my friend, my sister, my mother, my daughter, or me. That is what motivates me to create a better world for women and girls, no matter where they may be. Face to face
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Authors, artwork and happenings under observation
