Vitra Design Museum unmasks the new face of African design

Vitra Design Museum's latest exhibition presents Africa as a super-connected hub of modern design 'Caribbean Sun' by Cyrus Kabiru, 2012 © Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images
Vitra Design Museum's latest exhibition presents Africa as a super-connected hub of modern design 'Caribbean Sun' by Cyrus Kabiru, 2012
(Image credit: © Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images)

There are 650 million registered mobile phones in Africa. That’s more than in Europe or the US. Though its hard to know how many, a good percentage of these phones will have access to the Internet. And it is this idea of a super-connected continent that is at the centre of the Vitra Design Museum’s new exhibition ‘Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design’.

The museum spent two years visiting and talking to 70 designers, artists, researchers, architects, gallerists and curators in Africa’s creative and entrepreneurial polestars - cities such as Lagos, Dakar, Cape Town, Cairo and Nairobi.  And ‘Making Africa’ identifies a new generation of African designers, artists, architects and cultural entrepreneurs - 120 of them feature in the exhibition - who see little value in European-model distinctions between design and fine art or between creative disciplines. As 'digital natives' (an unfortunate choice of words perhaps), they offer a global audience an alternative to Africa’s bad news narrative. By redefining design's relationship to modernism, they are making Africa a new hub of design innovation and experimentation, particularly in their use materials.

The exhibition takes in the eyewear sculptures of Kenyan artist Cyrus Kabiru, the furniture of Malian designer Cheick Diallo, the photography of Mozambican Mário Macilau and the Nigerian J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere. Also featuring is the architecture of Francis Kéré, Kunlé Adeyemi and the African-born, British-based David Adjaye.

‘Making Africa’ draws parallels to the work of photographers such as Seydoy Keïta and Malick Sidibé and the South Africa-based Drum magazine during the 1960s, as well as the first wave of postcolonial architecture.

After its stretch at the Vitra Design Museum, the exhibition will move on to the Guggenheim in Bilbao this autumn. It is accompanied by a 352-page book, the first comprehensive overview, so Vitra insists, of African contemporary design.

Gonçalo Mabunda's part-sculpture, part-design throne piece - a chair made out of weapons such as guns and pistols

The work on show identifies a new generation of African designers, artists, architects and cultural entrereneurs who blur the boundaries between disciplines, as in Gonçalo Mabunda's part-sculpture, part-design throne pieces, Jürgen Hans

(Image credit: © Vitra Design Museum)

'Mame' from the series 'Studio of Vanities' by Omar Victor Diop,2013 - a woman wearing panited clothes to match the background of blue patterned tiles

'Mame' from the series 'Studio of Vanities' by Omar Victor Diop,2013, 2014, Courtesy Magnin-A Gallery, Paris

(Image credit: © Victor Omar Diop)

'Nuit de Noël (Happy Club)' by Malick Sidibé, 1963 - a black and white photo of a man and woman dancing barefoot

The creatives on show - swiftly becoming known as Africa's "digital natives" - offer a welcome alternative to Africa's bad news narrative 'Nuit de Noël (Happy Club)' by Malick Sidibé, 1963,  Courtesy Magnin-A Gallery, Paris

(Image credit: © Malick Sidibé, Courtesy CAAC)

'Where there's gold: mining way station', 2014 - a sculpture depicting a mining way station

The exhibition looks how the 120 artists use materials to redefine the face of African modernism across the globe. Nigerian-born, Brooklyn-based Vigilism explores just that in pieces such as 'Where there's gold: mining way station', 2014 , Vigilism

(Image credit: © Olalekan Jeyifous)

Chai House (architects unknown), Nairobi - a grey and red structure shaped like a spaceship

Also taken into account is the first wave of postcolonial architecture across the continent, offering stimulating parallels to the pieces on show Chai House (architects unknown), Nairobi, ca. 1970

(Image credit: © Iwan Baan)

'Onile Gogoro Or Akaba' by J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere, 1975 - a photo of afro hair plaited into a structural shape

'Onile Gogoro Or Akaba' by J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere, 1975, Paris

(Image credit: © Ojeikere Estate Courtesy CAAC Courtesy Magnin-A Gallery)

'Alito, The Guy with Style'  from the 'Moments of Transition' series by Mário Macilau, 2013 -a photo of a man standing in front of floral wallpaper wearing a striped shirt, braces and bow tie.

'Alito, The Guy with Style'  from the 'Moments of Transition' series by by Mário Macilau, 2013, London

(Image credit: © Mário Macilau, courtesy Ed Cross Fine Art Ltd)

Rendering of Skhayascraper by Justin Plunkett, 2013

Rendering of Skhayascraper by Justin Plunkett, 2013, Kapstadt/ Cape Town

(Image credit: © Justin Plunkett, Courtesy The Cabinet)

ADDRESS

Vitra Design Museum, Charles-Eames-Str. 2, D-79576 Weil am Rhein

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