C& Magazine #4

<p>You are looking at our fourth print issue. As usual, it’s well-traveled and globally distributed. This time the issue is in both English and French because Bamako is one of its first stops. C& is proud to be this year’s media partner of the 10th Bamako Encounters – African Biennale of Photography. This is its first edition since 2011, after which the political situation in Mali put the renowned photography biennale on hold.</p> <p>But it is not the only important biennale kicking off in the coming weeks. The comparatively young Lubumbashi Biennale in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is presenting its fourth edition. Meanwhile, the Biennale Jogja will be starting up in Indonesia with the theme of “Hacking Conflicts: Indonesia Meets Nigeria.” In anticipation of this print edition, we met with its director, Alia Swastika. “For the third time now, we are working in partnership with another equatorial country. This year’s partner country is Nigeria. With this concept, we are striving not to follow the mainstream… but instead to cultivate closeness with places that share similar histories and, above all, a common spirit.”</p> <p>If Alia Swastika is concerned with finding an axis outside Western dominance, this issue is focused on yet another axis: between the past and the present. On contemporaryand.com, we’ve made a routine of this act of retrospection in our column “Looking Back,” which examines the meeting point between the past and present and the realization that art from African perspectives has been “contemporary” for just as long as art from other scenes with their own manifold histories.</p> <p>This deliberate act of looking back is a recurring motif in this issue’s features, coverage, and interviews. The artist Lebohang Kganye, born in 1990s Johannesburg, re-examines her own family history, dressing up as the lead role of her grandfather. The curator Patrick Mudekereza traveled to Basel, Switzerland to view the work of the Congolese painter Djilatendo, who died in 1960, leaving behind an abstract oeuvre that extends into the present with well-entitled confidence. Our young author Madonna Hernandez takes a closer look at the show “Presente: The Young Lords in New York” giving us a moment to remember a political movement aligned with the Black Panthers. Along similar lines, the theme of this year’s biennale in Bamako, Telling Time, revolves around the notion of a continuous connection from past to present to future. In an interview, the curator Bisi Silva explains why.</p>