Folake Idowu, known as Folake, is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Switzerland. As a self-taught contemporary artist of Nigerian origin, her Yoruba heritage as well as her experiences of living and working in Europe have influenced her distinct style.
Aza’s art narrates the story of every day life in Africa, the meeting of the modern and the traditional worlds, the excitement and energy that lives and is celebrated by the people despite the many challenges that we face. Humanity persevering or rather thriving, despite hardship, strife and trauma.
Born in 1966 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Olga Yaméogo settled in France in the 1980s and now lives in Toulouse. As a self-taught artist, she initially worked privately, in order to free herself, to express her identity, and to “create herself”. Now a practicing art therapist, her art has become a true vehicle for introspection, as well as a medium for interrogating the dual cultures that have shaped her, between Burkina Faso where she grew up and France where she now lives as an adult. She eventually extricated herself from these questions of self-identity to produce a more universalistic art, dealing with the expression of emotions, migration and the body. She conceives her works in such a way that each and every one of us can identify with the content of her canvases.
Maggy Dago is a photographer and feminist activist from Ivory Coast, living in France since the age of 16.
Sheila Nakitende is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice focuses on womanhood experiences that include nurturing, preserving our aesthetics, material culture and methodological history
Patti Endo’s drawings are intimate, shameless, exploratory and sensual, allowing the viewer to look inside themselves, to reconsider the stereotypes of those around them, to remind us of the brevity of youth, beauty and life itself, to challenge modes of perceptions of reality, and to question where in fact our very identity lies and how it is constructed.
Odile Uwera, a self-taught illustrator and writer born in Kigali in 1996, explores the navigation of individual identity in relation to collective identity.
Natacha Muziramakenga, known as Miziguruka, is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist who has been working for fifteen years as a poet, performer, actress, director, curator and translator. Her recurring themes include resilience, the female body, feminine freedoms, memory and transmission.
Graduated from Brunel University, London, with a MA in Documentary Practice in 2014, photographer and documentary filmmaker Cynthia Butare seeks to deconstruct monolithic perceptions of negritude. Settled in Rwanda since 2014, she has devoted herself fully to documentary photography since 2020.
Born in 1999, artist Teta Micheline, aka Teta Chel, graduated from Nyundo School of Art in 2019, and explores various artistic media such as painting, poetry and tattooing. Through semi-abstract compositions, she tackles taboo subjects such as mental health and sexuality.
Willys Kezi is a visual artist born in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2008, she graduated in Plastic Arts and Painting from the Kinshasa Academy of Fine Arts.
Her work is an exploration of the power of visual form, joyful chromatic improvisation and the triumphant beauty of female bodies. Through her drawings on paper bags, as well as her larger-scale works, the artist questions the clichés conveyed about women by social networks. Hashtags, luxury brands, jewelry and sexualized bodies collide like statements about consumerism and imposed standards.
Sheila Bayley (b. 1986) is a self-taught Kenyan contemporary artist, based in Nairobi. Her style is easily recognisable for its vibrant patterns, distinct black lines, and conceptual figurative forms. With a bachelor’s degree in psychology, she explores the balance between nature-nurture, and how it determines human behavior.
All of Dr Gindi’s figures arise from a primordial pile of wax or clay then survive the purgatory of the kiln to contain multiple dualisms. They are each mental and physical, hard and soft, sorrowful and celebratory. They have accepted their fate, embraced that the universe is complicated. For Dr Gindi, the crux of the human condition can be found at this crossroads and the embattled quest to break through this great barrier to realize our greater spiritual potential.
Mauricette Djengue is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist from Cotonou in Benin.
Anastasie Langu Lawinner is a professional Congolese artist photographer
Amy Celestina Ndione is a Senegalese visual artist who graduated from the National School of Arts in Dakar. She blends painting, collage of recycled materials and sewing as a touch of femininity, to create a singular universe inspired by reality.
Theresah Ankomah’s work explores the intricacies of weaving and the complexities of ‘craft’ in relation to trade. She examines how underpinning issues of geopolitics, gender and capitalism resonate in the everyday usage of materials and objects.
Agnes Waruguru’s work ranges from painting, drawing, printmaking, needlework and installation
The materiality of objects in space is at the core of her explorations, which are intimately rooted in personal identity politics, often referencing women’s practices and traditional cultural identifiers.
Her work makes use of repetitive, iterative acts of creation and mark making – crocheting, knitting, sewing, and embroidery – whose nature marks the passing of time.
Nadia Wamunyu's blue haired figures reflect deeply on our humanity and vulnerability. Born out of a desire to paint a bolder and self-confident image of herself, Nadia's art is also a reference to the "Black Lives Matter" movement against racial injustice, in that it exaggerates the stereotypes around black women’s bodies.
Mavis Tauzeni constantly reflects on the mutable relationship between a woman, her potential and her actual in daily life and through the life cycle. With quiet confidence and gentle poetry, Tauzeni asserts the right of the new generation of women in Zimbabwe to claim a place in their society on their own terms.
Lea Shabat was born in Morocco, raised her children in Canada and lives now in Israel.
Lea's passion has always been painting and her themes are of nature, ecology and social justice.
She is a passionate advocate of human rights and womens’ rights in particular.
Boitumelo Diseko is seized by environmental psychology, i.e. the interplay between human beings and their environment, and how it imprints itself on history and art. She draws inspiration from faith, history, societal events, as well as empathy.
Philiswa Lila explores the physical, mental and spiritual spaces held close by her personal experiences. She portrays the pages of an empty family photo album, thereby attending to recollection, interpreting the symbolic narrative of remembrance, and piecing together memories.
Nkuly Sibeko inherited the talent of her father, late Peter Sibekoof Soweto school of art. Nkuly nevertheless had to fight against gender stereotypes and assert her own style of painting. She creates colorful phantasy figures on canvas, and uses magazine clippings to evoke her dreams of a better world for the young generation.
Kidist Hailu Degaffe explores her existence through self-portraits, reflecting on her status as a woman, an artist, and a migrant.
Kidist’s “endurance art” implies that all human beings possess the intrinsic power of resilience, however grim the obstacles they have or will face.
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