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Little has been published about African women artists to date. This is due to a Western hegemony over the construction of histories and discourses, but also to discrimination against women across national borders. This publication attempts to fill some of the gaps and explore the patterns underlying these dynamics. It brings together research on the practices and lives of women from different African countries, from modernist artists to independence activists to contemporary voices.
These proceedings emerge from the symposium "Reclaim: Narratives of African Women Artists," organised by AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions in partnership with the Ecole du Louvre as part of the Africa2020 Season. They are a contribution to the revalorisation of the role of African women artists in cultural history, but also to broader reflections on the mechanisms of knowledge production both in Africa and in the West.
About the author
AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research & Exhibitions is a non-profit organization founded in 2014 that works to make women artists of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries visible by producing and sharing free bilingual (French/English) content about their work on its website. AWARE represents a diversity of voices with texts written by around 500 researchers, curators, art critics, and feminist activists from all over the world. To widely disseminate research on women artists, AWARE also organizes symposia, round tables, and seminars in collaboration with institutions, universities, museums, and other independent structures internationally, and edits its own publications. AWARE is located at the Villa Vassilieff (in Paris'15th district), where artist Marie Vassilieff set up her studio in the 1910s. In this strongly symbolic place, AWARE has created a research centre entirely devoted to women artists and feminist art, and hosts events, talks and school workshops.
