Foam 3h: Foam X African Artists’ Foundation
19 May - 27 August 2017

Foam welcomes the African Artists’ Foundation for a collaborative presentation of young African talent at Foam 3h.

The African Artists’ Foundation (AAF) is a non-profit organisation based in Nigeria, dedicated to the promotion and development of contemporary African art. Together, Foam and the AAF present the work of three young photographers from Kenya and Nigeria: Mũchiri Njenga (1985), Osborne Macharia (1986) and Kadara Enyeasi (1994). Their works present fantastical worlds in which past, present, future, fact and fiction converge. Their stylized versions of reality render ambiguous what it is we are looking at: utopia, dystopia or real life?

Foam will be screening Kichwateli (2011) (Swahili for TV-head), a short film by Mũchiri Njenga set in a post-apocalyptic African slum. A young boy with a television for a head wanders the streets of an anonymous city, simultaneously broadcasting and recording information as he goes. The film comments on an inter-generational exchange of cultural traditions and a transhumanist belief in (bio)technological advancement and robotics.

Osborne Macharia creates monumental portraits of members from invented Kenyan tribes. Through highly stylised Afro-futuristic imagery, Macharia reformulates real events in the history of Kenya, such as British colonial rule and the Mau Mau rebellion.

Originally trained as an architect, Kadara Enyeasi is interested in the relation between space and (human) form. His collages constitute a playful variation on the principles of western Modernists such as Le Corbusier, while also referencing the graphics of African textile design.

Collaborate
Foam X AAF is the second of three collaborations taking place in Foam 3h during 2017, involving photography platforms in Mexico City (Mexico), Lagos (Nigeria) and Yogyakarta (Indonesia) that each operate in a specific local art scene. The initiative offers Foam the opportunity to present young talent from different cultural contexts and to research new developments in local photography discourses worldwide.

This exhibition is made possible with support from the Gieskes-Strijbis Fund, the Van Bijlevelt Foundation and Kleurgamma.

The Collaborate! programme is made possible with the support of Fonds21, the Mondriaan Fund and the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.