Afrophon': Contemporary Art Books from Africa

Parc des Ateliers
Les Forges
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Reading Room


Throughout the summer, the Afrophon’ Reading Room presents a number of contemporary publications as well as rare editions by African publishers that reveal how publishing offers an alternative space for curatorial, editorial, and artistic practice within the African contexts.

The project presents the work of artists’ collectives, independent spaces, and individual producers who question with their output the definition of publishing as interdisciplinary tool that includes fields such as literature, art writing, contemporary art, critical theory and design among other, while expressing the plurality of contexts and voices that are pivotal in the explorations of contemporary African experience itself. The reading room presents a selection of key publications mapping out a wide field of groundbreaking African cultural periodicals from the twentieth century that were published at the height of tricontinental solidarity, nation-building and post-colonial history, including Black Orpheus, Odu, and Peuples Africains. The legacy and significance of these publications is essential in advancing current analytical and interrogative discourses and for better understanding the globalized and central nature of African and Black diasporic cultures today.

"Afrophon’ is a gathering of independent publishers based on the African continent (...) who are coming to LUMA to engage in questions about art publishing" Victor & Simon

Participants
 

 

AFRIKADAA / African Art Book Fair

AFRIKADAA is an interactive French and English language magazine dedicated to Contemporary Art from the African continent and its Diasporas. Created by a collective of artists, AFRIKADAA is an art magazine that brings another perspective to the contemporary art scene by telling the story and the trajectories of artists' communities beyond the borders of the market.

The African Art Book Fair is an art project conceived as an independent publishing fair with a discussion forum that focuses on specific themes related to publications on art, photography, design, experimental music, and activism.
 

Assembly Point

Assembly Point is a new artists’ imprint born from the Independent Publishing Project, coordinated by francis burger (Johannesburg) and Jonah Sack (Cape Town). Initiated in 2011, the Independent Publishing Project is a shifting library of self-published and small-scale publications from south Africa, ranging from the 1950s to the present.

[note: lower case in 'francis burger' and 's' in 'south Africa' is intentional]
 

Dream Press

Dream Press is a woman/queer-run bookbinding and risograph printing studio in Cape Town, South Africa. Since 2021, we have started to fulfill a lifelong dream to be independent publishers, aiming to promote artists’ books, zines and printed matter.
 

Kayfa ta

Kayfa ta, co-founded by artists Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis, is a publishing initiative that uses the popular form of how-to manuals (from Arabic how=kayfa, to=ta) to respond to some of today's perceived needs, be they the development of skills, tools, thoughts, or sensibilities. These books situate themselves in the space between the technical and the reflective, the everyday and the speculative, the instructional and the intuitive, the factual and the fictional.
 

Kulte Editions

Kulte Editions is dedicated to archiving of the thought and forms of a contemporary Arab and African scene. Committed to the research, production and dissemination of multilingual and multi-identity knowledge, the editorial line of the publishing house values graphic aesthetics as much as the content of the works. The collections present artists' books, essays, poetry, monographs, graphic novels and literary works in Arabic, English, and French.
 

Locale

Locale is a Sudanese space for the development of a home-grown creative effort. Locale exhibits, designs and collaborates with Sudanese creative practitioners.
 

Motifs

Motifs is a young publishing house founded by Maya Ouabadi in Algiers. In their publications, they propose contents (literary criticism magazines, feminist journal, printed documents and stories, artist books, notebooks) which by the specificity of their format or their tone do not necessarily find their place in the Algerian literary and journalistic landscape.
 

N.M.E PRESS

Shiri Yakanaka is a project based on the experience of the artist, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, (N.M.E PRESS), a Zimbabwean woman living and working between multiple locations. Mutiti will workshop the publication during the fair, making dummies, exploring formats, building images, editing and exploring sequences. By the end of the fair Mutiti will present a version of the publication as an iteration of this ongoing project. 
 

PRŌTOCOLLUM

PRŌTOCOLLUM is a hybrid publication combining an art journal, an anthology, an exhibition in a book, and a research tool. It documents and exhibits non-Western artistic positions from Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. PRŌTOCOLLUM serves as a source of inspiration and as a reference guide for all who wish to engage with established and emerging contemporary visual art from a non-Western perspective.

PRŌTOCOLLUM is published by DICKERSBACH KUNSTVERLAG, an independent art publishing house founded by Safia Dickersbach from Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, currently based in Berlin, Germany
 

pumflet: art, architecture and stuff

pumflet: art, architecture and stuff was founded in Cape Town in 2016. It exists to publish interventions into the black social imaginary.

 

Radiobougou / Afrotropiques podcast

Radiobougou is a young publishing house of oralities that supports the creation and production of creative documentaries in the Sahel, in podcast format. The house offers a community production tool, aimed at Sahelian youth. These documentaries of a new kind are part of a tradition of "educational talks" and rely on the strength of the radio medium in the Sahel.

Afrotopiques is a podcast of ideas, directed and produced by Marie-Yemta Moussanang, which documents the issues of the present, from the perspective of the South in general and the African worlds in particular.

 

ZAMÂN BOOKS & CURATING

ZAMÂN BOOKS & CURATING is dedicated to the study of Arab, African, and Asian modernities through the lens of transnational and postcolonial art history, actively engaging with diverse communities of scholars, artists, archivists, writers, and other narrators around the world.

From July 4 to 6, LUMA Arles hosted the first edition of Afrophon’, a three-day fair dedicated to contemporary art books and independent publications from Africa. A public program also included in-person talks, events, workshops and specially themed presentations by emerging and established practitioners.

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