Novo Atlantico
Tansi Makele is a Franco-Congolese filmmaker who grew up in the Paris suburbs and started making short documentaries at 19. His early work was mostly about dance and movement. Since then he has worked across fashion films, fiction, and experimental video. He cites Khalil Joseph, Terrence Malick, and Spike Lee as reference points, along with […]
Understanding Bògòlanfini: The Malian Textile Written in Mud and Cotton
Bògòlanfini, the mud cloth of Mali, is one of Africa’s oldest living textile traditions. Ugonna-Ora Owoh traces its science, symbolism, and migration — from Bamana villages and the Mali Empire to Chris Seydou’s Paris ateliers and Awa Meïté’s contemporary Bamako-based practice.
The Lusaka Youth Are Building Their Own Scene
The third spaces, pop-ups, and pricing decisions behind a generation’s bid for cultural infrastructure.
Woven Stories: 9 African Artists Shaping Contemporary Narratives Through Textiles
Textiles are more than material. They hold stories, histories and languages shaped through time. I think of them
Karibu Nairobi: Stamped and Approved
Sinatra Chumo on reclaiming the postage stamp as a site of cultural critique
Guinea: A Textile Civilization in Four Systems
Guinea: A Textile Civilization in Four Systems By Mariama Camara & Oury Sene King of Kindia, c.1910, with two wives in Basse-Guinée textiles (tie-dye, weaving, embroidery). Courtesy of Duncan Clarke, antique postcard and African textile dealer. Guinea, officially the Republic of Guinea, is rarely understood through its material systems. It is more often described through […]
Material Literacy: The Knowledge in Cloth
Mariama Camara on authorship, ownership, and the distance between admiration and accountability.
Kibonen and the Business of Cultural Authority
How a Cameroonian designer turned a single garment into a cultural and economic system—from New York to Cairo
Inside Central Saint Martins’ Makers Camp: West African Makers in Focus
For two weeks, the conservatory room of Mason & Fifth became an experimental studio of collective making.
Why the Wrapper Remains West Africa’s Undecolonized Garment
The wrapper predates colonial borders and outlives fashion cycles. It is one of the continent’s most enduring systems, and one of the few