Heal by Hair: How Communities, Culture, and Trust Are Redefining Mental Health Across Africa

A Heal by Hair ambassador in a gold beaded headdress and orange and blue wax print wrapper parades in traditional attire during the festival in Siou, Togo

In Siou, a village in Togo’s Kara region, a week before the Évala celebrations, the Heal by Hair Festival revealed a powerful truth: mental health is not only a medical conversation. It is a cultural, social, and collective responsibility. “We speak a great deal about healthcare infrastructure. We speak far less about infrastructures of trust. […]

At MoMA, a New Exhibition Celebrates West Africa’s Modernist Architectural Legacy

Modernist BOAD (West African Development Bank) building in Lomé, Togo, featured in MoMA’s Architects of Liberation exhibition. Photograph by François-Xavier Gbré, 2025.

In 1960, 17 African countries gained independence in what became known as the “Year of Africa.” For many of these newly sovereign nations, political freedom was only the beginning. They were confronted with what an independent African nation actually looked like, a question that stretched beyond governance and infrastructure into the continent’s creative life: art, […]

Inside the Most Compelling African Pavilions at the 2026 Venice Biennale

African pavilions at the 2026 Venice Biennale, the 61st International Art Exhibition

For a long time, Africa’s presence at the Venice Biennale has felt slightly out of place. Even as African artists helped shape contemporary art globally, the continent itself often seemed pushed to the margins, present but not always fully seen, its stories and forms framed through a Western lens or treated as something separate from […]