In Lagos & Accra, an Underground Queer Ballroom Scene Thrives Again
When Timileyin Olaide Kayode started Pride in Lagos in 2021, he didn’t anticipate how big it would become. He only knew there was a need for queer Nigerians to have a visible, collective space to exist and celebrate themselves. Five years later, it has grown into a major Owambe ball and the very reason a […]
The Brutal History of African Architecture
A cylindrical tower and a stepped concrete pyramid impose themselves on the skylines of Nairobi and Abidjan. Built in the years after independence, both were enlisted to project progress and permanence, giving physical shape to the ambitions of newly sovereign nations. Half a century on, one still hosts the political life of a capital. The […]
Before Arthur Ashe Was a Stadium, He Was a Problem for Apartheid
Every late August in New York, Arthur Ashe becomes a place. More than 23,000 people fill the stadium carrying his name. Players walk through its tunnels, and commentators use the name as geography: Night session at Ashe. Meet me outside Ashe. Fifty-three years ago, another country was trying to keep Arthur Ashe out. South Africa […]
Building Around Broken Systems
When Godwin Okoruwa, founder and creative director of GDWN, started his gender-fluid label amidst the pandemic in 2020, he had it firmly at the back of his mind that he had to build purely from his instinct. There was no elaborate market analysis or established blueprint for how the brand would grow. His already decade-long […]
City Codes: Dakar Is Not a Trend
Dakar is forever being discovered as an emerging creative capital, yet its fashion week dates to 2002 and its first world festival of Black arts to 1966. Treating the city as a trend rather than a working system carries a real cost.
The Record Is the Asset
“Get the right person in the room and they can tell you exactly where a record lives.” Adaobi Orajiaku is describing Nigeria’s National Gallery of Art. Its documentation department maintains printed and handwritten catalogues recording how each work entered the national collection. Orajiaku’s company, Atsur, has spent the past two years working with the Gallery […]
Architecture as an Atlas of Resonance
It begins in memory: the filtered light of a courtyard, the coolness of a shaded passage, the threshold between public and private. It begins, too, in the physical intelligence of making: the hand drawing a line, shaping a model, testing a material, and turning an intuition into something tangible. Born in Fez, Morocco, the French-Moroccan […]
If This. Then That: Chairs – Pierre Jeanneret → Jomo Tariku
If you understand why Pierre Jeanneret’s Chandigarh chair commands the saleroom, you’ll recognize what Jomo Tariku’s Nyala was built to change. IF YOU LIKE PIERRE JEANNERET Civic equipment that became a saleroom fixture. Teak and hand-woven cane, compass legs, Chandigarh, c. 1955. Batch-made, discarded, rediscovered. The appeal is modernism with a paper trail: the […]
In Côte d’Ivoire, a New Generation Learns to Read the Waves
Along the Ivorian coastline, the ocean has never been a playground. It feeds families, holds spirits and commands a caution passed down through generations. For most of the country’s history, almost nobody looked at those waves and imagined riding them. The Rising Dawn, a feature documentary by Ivorian filmmakers Nadi Saddy and Nuits Balnéaires, is […]
Akin Faminu on Style, Taste and the Things He Returns To
Akin Faminu can spend one evening watching a 1999 Dolce & Gabbana show and another reading an anatomy textbook from cover to cover. The medical doctor and fashion creator has built a public life around style, but his tastes extend well beyond clothes. For this edition of Word of Mouth, Faminu talks about the designers […]