Following the unification of various Soninke tribes, in around 300 CE the Empire of Ghana took shape north west of what is now the country, traversing current-day Mauritania, Senegal and Mali. Dubbed the Gold Coast, European colonisers arrived in the region that forms modern Ghana from 1600 – and the transfer to the British occurred…
Born in 1945 in the Tōkai region of Japan, Sadao Hasegawa is best known for his radical contributions to homoerotic art. His creations stand out for their meticulous intricacy, fantastical backdrops, and the skilful fusion of components from diverse artistic traditions, including Japanese, Balinese, Thai, Tibetan Buddhist, African, and Indian influences. While Hasegawa’s main focus…
The Gutai Art Association, also known as Gutai, emerged in 1954 in Ashiya, Japan, helmed by painter, curator, educator and businessman, Jirō Yoshihara. This avant-garde group mainly consisted of young artists from the Hanshin region. Today, Gutai is internationally recognised as one of the most prominent 20th-century art collectives, having produced a string of dynamic…
Born in 1935 in the Japanese city of Hirosaki, a highly influential figure in the post World War II Japanese avant-garde, Shūji Terayama is a bonafide multi-hyphenate. A versatile and prolific artist who earned notoriety in various fields, including poetry, theatre, writing, photography and filmmaking, Terayama was a true cultural innovator. During his short but…
Pope.L is an American artist whose work in performance art and interventionist public art has established him as one of the most influential artists of his generation. Pope. L’s work challenges society’s closest-held preconceptions of gender, consumption, social class and race. Although Pope.L has worked across many mediums, he is best known for his performance…
Studio Z emerged as an avant-garde art collective in the 1970s, a time when artistic expression outside the confines of the conventional, straight, white male mainstream often went unrecognised. Studio Z was founded by David Hammons, Senga Nengudi, Maren Hassinger and Houston Conwill, who welcomed the inclusion of numerous other artists. The collective first came…
Mariko Mori is widely recognised as one of the most important artists to have emerged from Japan over the past five decades. Her artistic approach, which stems from the idea of interconnectedness, explores various phenomena of life, such as the existence of the universe, death, reality, spirituality and technology. Her early works were heavily influenced…
Today a career in photography is considered a respectable and fairly ordinary vocation in India but the profession only emerged in the nation close to the end of the 19th century, comprising exclusively of male practitioners for some fifty years. Homai Vyarawalla, India’s first woman photojournalist, is best known for documenting the country’s transition from…