The Mask Does Not Arrive Quietly
At the Festival des Masques in Porto-Novo, music, movement and the reaction of the crowd are part of what photographer Kelvin Selasie Quist remembers most. Over two days in July, he photographed the masquerades moving through the festival, the people gathered around them and the moments in between. “I was drawn to the energy, colors, […]
What Dakar Built
Adama Paris has spent a quarter of a century taking Dakar Fashion Week out of rooms. The Medina show runs on a street closed for the night. It is free, there is no list, and residents watch from doorways and from the ledges of their own roofs while models pass close enough to touch. There […]
What the BBC’s Documentary Left Out About the Nigerian Civil War
On 1 June 2026, the BBC released a documentary on the Nigerian civil war titled Surviving Biafra: Voices from the Nigerian Civil War, an exploration of the 30-month war fought from July 1967 to January 1970, following the declaration of independence by the secessionist state of Biafra in the eastern part of Nigeria. This secession […]
Adirẹ and the Wrapper-Wearers
My relationship to adirẹ is perhaps an unusual one; it begins not with indigo, but with cassava. In 2024, I returned to Nigeria for a two-month residency with the G.A.S. Foundation to study cassava’s role and cultural significance in the country. It was the longest I had spent in the country since leaving at five […]
If This Then That: Sculpture — John Chamberlain → Gonçalo Mabunda
If you understand why John Chamberlain’s crushed cars matter, you’ll recognize what Gonçalo Mabunda built from the weapons of a war. IF YOU LIKE JOHN CHAMBERLAIN John Chamberlain transformed crushed automobiles into sculpture, showing that industrial scrap could carry the same expressive force as bronze or marble. Rather than erase the material’s past, he preserved […]
The Africa Azzedine Alaïa Carried
Azzedine Alaïa left Tunis as a young man and built his life in Paris, but the leaving was never really finished. “Azzedine Alaïa and Africa,” Olivier Saillard’s exhibition at the couturier’s foundation in the Marais, takes that unfinished departure as its subject. There are around fifty pieces, most of them from the collections Alaïa made […]
Bairro 6 de Maio
On a cold morning on the outskirts of Amadora, northwest of Lisbon, the ground gives way to rubble. Women roast corn on improvised grills, and residents sit in their doorways with morna playing low, the slow Cape Verdean music the islands call the sound of the soul. A handful of houses still stand among the […]
Meriem Berrada Took Morocco to Venice for the First Time
For about a decade and a half, Meriem Berrada has been at the forefront of building sustainable art and cultural ecosystems across Africa and the Arab world and their diasporas, with a focus on the intersections between art and craft in contemporary storytelling, as well as an interest in photography. She has founded, launched, and […]
Love Has Become Bad Manners
Hasna and Ryan kept giving themselves away, a shoulder leaning in, a collar fixed with a care no collar has ever needed, their bodies doing what bodies do before pride gets involved. Nobody in the room minded that the two of them wanted each other; the discomfort was that the wanting kept showing on their […]
If This. Then That: World Cup Edition — Dressing the Team — Loewe → Ibrahim Fernandez
If you understand why Loewe’s suit for Spain matters, you’ll recognize what Ibrahim Fernandez did for Côte d’Ivoire. IF YOU LIKE LOEWE Loewe is the LVMH-owned Spanish house, and it signed a four-year deal to dress Spain’s national teams off the pitch. The wardrobe, designed under creative directors Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, runs to […]