Yinka Olatunbosun
Art X Lagos has announced the launch of a special project called ‘Art Across Borders.’ It is a short film series that highlights impactful figures in the African art scene. Created to showcase artistic voices across the continent, the series aims at inspiring and celebrating the emergence of new initiatives within Africa’s burgeoning creative ecosystem.
The first season of Art Across Borders, filmed with the support of Afreximbank, features four exciting artists within the African contemporary art scene namely Hassan Hajjaj (Morocco), Mary Sibande (South Africa), Boniface Maina (Kenya), and Nengi Omuku (Nigeria).
Hassan Hajjaj creates layered artworks blending together traditional elements from his North African culture with pop references from the Western world. His works are greatly influenced by his encounters with popular figures from the global sport and art scenes throughout his career.
In 2011, Hajjaj launched ‘Riad Yiad,’ an artist residency and events space in Marrakech, aimed at bringing together a diverse community of art enthusiasts to celebrate culture. Today, the project is instrumental to the dynamism of Morocco’s creative scene. His second project was launched in Jajjah earlier this year. Hajjaj’s works are part of some of the world’s most important collections such as Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL), the Brooklyn Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and The British Museum.
In her work, Mary Sibande explores the concepts of family and heritage. In her interpretation of her own family’s history, she radically challenges the black exploitative narrative inherited from South Africa’s apartheid era. Her stunning photographs and sculptures provide vibrant metaphors of black women’s power, deconstructing the traditional stereotypes associated with them.
Since 2016, she has actively supported ActionAid South Africa and the Young Urban Women Programme’s fundraising campaigns to foster the development of art education programs targeting young girls from the township communities.
Over the years, Sibande represented South Africa at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011), and received numerous awards including the prestigious Smithsonian National Museum of African Arts Award, and the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in the Visual Arts category.
Inspired by the mundane encounters of his daily life, Boniface Maina projects a highly personal style on his mysterious surrealist canvases. In 2013, the Nairobi-based artist co-founded Brush Tu Collective, a collaborative studio space aimed at fostering collaborations within the Kenyan artistic scene.
His works have been presented in Transitions at Nairobi Gallery (2017), and in Waiting, Watching and Wishing at Circle Art Gallery (2020), another solo exhibition held in the Kenyan capital. Maina has also participated in group shows in Johannesburg, Paris, Dubai and Venice.
Through an extremely versatile and organic body of work, Nengi Omuku explores her relationship with the body as the sensitive key to regain ownership over her identity, emotions and power.
The African in diaspora obtained both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Slade School of Fine Art in the United Kingdom. In 2018, she was commissioned by the Arts Council England to paint a mural within an intensive care psychiatric facility in London. Realising the positive impact of her art on the patients’ wellbeing, she later founded The Art of Healing (TAOH), an organisation aimed at using art as therapy.
Her works are in both private and public international collections including the HSBC Art Collection, the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection and the Dawn Art Collection.
