A new exhibition at Louvre Abu Dhabi is exploring a thousand years of African history through the lens of the continent’s royalty.
Kings and Queens of Africa: Forms and Figures of Power opened to the public on Wednesday and will be running until May 25. The exhibition has been organised in collaboration with Musee du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, and features loans from several notable African institutions.
It brings together more than 350 historical artefacts and contemporary artworks, which collectively show the diversity of the Sub-Saharan Africa. The exhibition delves into the rich traditions and mythologies of the region, while also showing how their stories continue to inspire and inform artists from Africa and its diaspora. In that way, it dismantles monolithic conceptions of the continent, to instead show how Africa has been a birthplace to several ancient kingdoms, empires and states, each with their own unique set of customs and beliefs.
“I wanted to show the history of Africa. I wanted to go against the preconceived idea Africa has no history because she has no writings,” the exhibition’s curator, Helene Joubert, head curator of the African Heritage Unit at Musee du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, says. “Sub-Saharan Africa was mainly oral in the past, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a history. And these objects are a witness to that.”
The exhibition predominantly looks at unpacking African history between the 11th and the 21st centuries. Expressing such an expansive timespan coherently can be curatorially challenging, but Joubert says she sought to make it digestible by segmenting the collection into themes.
It opens by establishing Africa’s ancient place in the global gold trade, showing how the precious metal was abundant in the continent and attracted international interest. Several interesting artefacts are presented in this opening space, including a 13th century circular ornament that was found in the tomb of a prince in Senegal. The ornament was worn on the chest, and features concentric designs, which give it a hypnotic quality.
The following room features a multimedia element that shows centuries-worth of efforts in understanding and mapping Africa. It delineates external perceptions of the continent, from early Arab depictions to more recent Western maps. As such, the exhibition’s opening spaces establish trade and cartographic histories of Africa, cleverly setting a springboard from which to step into the continent and see it from within.
The space that follows features one of the oldest pieces in the exhibition – a wooden statue from the Bandiagara region. The figure features a tribal chief, with male and female characteristics, whose raised arm places him as a mediator between the heavens and the earth. The figure signals the beginning of a path through the gallery space that is flanked by statues of several royal personalities, including a 14th century copper figure of a Yoruba king, as well as a head of a royal ancestor from the kingdom of Benin.
The works in this space represent the diversity of the Sub-Saharan continent with its range of depictions, which span from more realistic characteristics to ones that verge on the fantastical.
The figures are sharply juxtaposed by a contemporary artwork, which also responds to the theme at hand. Mali, a Treasure by Malian artist Abdoulaye Konate is a sprawling drape of embroidered cotton and synthetic threads that touch upon the history of the country. It includes a portrait of Mansa Musa, who ruled the region in the 14th century. The ruler is perhaps best known for his pilgrimage to Makkah, where he travelled with a boisterous entourage and with an incredible supply of gold.
From this point onwards, the exhibition begins to present a range of regal objects from across the Sub-Saharan regions, including thrones and headdresses to textiles and weaponry. It contrasts these historical artifacts with works by contemporary artists, who also delve into the histories of the continent’s royalty. For instance, Behanzin Aboard the Segond by Romeo Mivekannin, an artist from Cote d’Ivoire, features a portrait of Behanzin depicted with acrylic washes on unstretched canvas. The king of Abomey, a region in modern-day Benin, was renowned for his fierce resistance against French colonialism. However, Behanzin was eventually defeated and exiled to Martinique, before dying in Algeria in 1906. Mivekannin’s portrait shows the king aboard the cruiser that took him to Martinique.
Other contemporary works draw from the mythologies that came out of Africa, while challenging colonial perceptions. In her Take Me to the Water series, US artist Ayana Jackson subverts colonial-era imagery of Africa. In one work, Sea Lion, the artist presents herself as Queen Elizabeth I, drawing attention to the fact that her empire was a dominant maritime force during the Atlantic slave trade. Jackson’s work challenges historical attempts to force constructed identities that revolved race and gender by depicting herself, a black woman, in the queen’s place.
Celestial Thrones by Cameroonian artist Herve Youmbi, meanwhile, features three carved seats decorated with colourful beads. The thrones are suspended above mirrored surfaces and reveal African proverbs, statements of power and sound leadership.
Congolese artist Eddy Kamuanga llunga’s Forget the Past and You Lose Both Eyes, on the other hand, shows a different aspect of power. The painting reflects on the trade that has shaped the destinies of Africa and its kingdoms. Its figures, seemingly weary and despondent, are etched with patterns that bring to mind circuit boards and microchips. The work draws attention to the mining of coltan prevalent in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The metallic ore is indispensable in the production of tantalum capacitors, used in mobile phones and other electronic devices. Yet, whereas the resource should be a point of wealth and prosperity for the Congolese is instead a symbol of exploitation.
El Hadji Malick Ndiaye, curator of the Theodore Monod Museum of African Art, who supported Joubert in curating the exhibition, says the contemporary art segment shows how “African culture is dynamic and vibrant”.
“These artists are the ambassador of all Africa,” he says. “They talk about the world, they talk about their country. They talk about many problems that we face. Most of them, they're telling stories about kings and queens who really existed in the past. Some of them tell stories about the allegory of power.”
The exhibiting artists have also another common element, namely in the way they challenge monolithic depictions of Africa. “They are against a certain iconography how we use in the past to see African people,” Ndiaye says. “Those artists change the point of view. They help us criticise history and criticise archive. They offer subtle ways to learn about African culture.”
A symposium is also being held on the side lines of Kings and Queens of Africa to unpack these very issues. Joubert, Ndiaye, as well as Cindy Olohou, an art critic who helped in the exhibition’s curation, are taking part in the talks, which aims to offer insights about the exhibited works, and to show the continuing legacy of Africa’s kings and queens.
Kings and Queens of Africa: Forms and Figures of Power is running at Louvre Abu Dhabi until May 25
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2 Tadej Pocagar (SLO) UAE Team Emirates 0:01:03
3 Alexey Lutsenko (KAZ) Astana 0:01:30
4 David Gaudu (FRA) Groupama-FDJ
5 Rafal Majka (POL) Bora-Hansgrohe
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General Classification after Stage 3:
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2 Tadej Pocagar (SLO) UAE Team Emirates 0:01:07
3 Alexey Lutsenko (KAZ) Astana 0:01:35
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Crystal Palace 0 Manchester City 2
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Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Stars: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Lesley Manville
Rating: 4/5
Arrogate's winning run
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2. Allowance Optional Claiming, Santa Anita Park, June 24, 2016
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7. Dubai World Cup, Meydan Racecourse, March 25, 2017
Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week
The biog
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Education: Bachelors degree in English Literature with Social work from UAE University
As a child: Kept sweets on the window sill for workers, set aside money to pay for education of needy families
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Dr Ayham Ammora, scientist and business executive
Ali Azeem, business leader
Tony Booth, professor of education
Lord Browne, former BP chief executive
Dr Mohamed El-Erian, economist
Professor Wyn Evans, astrophysicist
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Lord Smith, former Cabinet minister
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
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Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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Install an air filter in your home.
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Some of Darwish's last words
"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008
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Closing the loophole on sugary drinks
As The National reported last year, non-fizzy sugared drinks were not covered when the original tax was introduced in 2017. Sports drinks sold in supermarkets were found to contain, on average, 20 grams of sugar per 500ml bottle.
The non-fizzy drink AriZona Iced Tea contains 65 grams of sugar – about 16 teaspoons – per 680ml can. The average can costs about Dh6, which would rise to Dh9.
Drinks such as Starbucks Bottled Mocha Frappuccino contain 31g of sugar in 270ml, while Nescafe Mocha in a can contains 15.6g of sugar in a 240ml can.
Flavoured water, long-life fruit juice concentrates, pre-packaged sweetened coffee drinks fall under the ‘sweetened drink’ category
Not taxed:
Freshly squeezed fruit juices, ground coffee beans, tea leaves and pre-prepared flavoured milkshakes do not come under the ‘sweetened drink’ band.
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
