António Ole (b.1951 Angola) is a leading figure in the history of artistic developments in Angola and one of the most active on the international contemporary art scene among Portuguese-speaking African artists. His rich and diversified visual universe is bound in the vivid intersection of direct observation, historical memory, far-reaching references and pressing contemporary issues such as poverty, inequity, migration, corruption and unsustainable development. His immediate cultural and natural surroundings are continuous sources of inspiration. Throughout his work, the artist often pays tribute to the simple beauty and spontaneous creativity thriving among the Angolan population, which are noticeable in all aspects of people’s daily lives. His multimedia inventiveness ranges from cinema, video and photography to drawings, collage, painting, sculpture and monumental installation.

Benigno’s work is mostly a metaphorical representation of personal experiences and various characteristics that make up the human experience, such as interpersonal relationships, fear, death, loneliness, memory, love and dreams.

"My work revolves around an exploration of identity, more specifically, the intersections of Blackness and womanhood. I am interested in the ways in which this physical identity can serve as a positive force of connection and closeness, while also examining its imposed relationship to otherness."

Helena Uambembe is an Angolan-South African artist whose work interrogates the dyadic relationship between the political (world politics) and the domestic (personal politics). Drawing from personal and familial history, Uambembe maps the ideological and intimate space created by the historical and colonial links between Angolan, Southern African and global history. Born in South Africa in 1994, her Angolan parents fled the Angolan civil war back in 1975 and settled in the embattled Pomfret with other families of the 32 Battalion. This complex family history (itself a disruption of current accepted narratives of postcolonial Africa), the 32 Battalion, Pomfret and her Angolan heritage are dominant themes in her multi-disciplinary approach.

Born in 1974, Choumali is a visual artist/photographer based in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. She works mainly on conceptual portraits, mixed media, and documentary photography. In the series Alba'hian meaning ' the first light of day' in the Agni language of the Akan group in Cote d'Ivoire - the artist meditates on the cityscape during the time and processes of dawn. Works depicting specific individuals encountered on these morning walks, contemplate the core of the human being, capturing their État d'esprit (state of mind). Through her textile interventions and collage, subjects move larger than life through silent cities; faces blurred by motion or by fabric, their figures and gestures remain legible and become universal.

Born in 1979 in Luanda (Angola), Kiluanji Kia Henda is a Multidisciplinary artist that uses humor and visual storytelling to examine Angola’s colonial history and propose new possibilities for the future. His work has been presented at the Venice Biennale, Bienal de São Paolo, and Gwangju Biennial, and his photo series Rusty Mirage (The City Skyline) (2013) was acquired by the Tate Modern in 2019. Working in photography, video, installation, and performance, Kia Henda connects Angola’s struggle for liberation and pursuit of a postcolonial identity to global histories of slavery and colonization. He employs humor to mediate heavy subjects like oppression, war, and poverty, and he repurposes public spaces charged with historical significance to reshape collective memory.

Born in 1976, Mónica de Miranda is a Portuguese artist, living and working in Lisbon, Portugal. Mónica is an artist and researcher. Born in Porto (Portugal) from Angolan parents, she actually describes herself as an artist working in the diaspora. Her work is based on themes of urban archaeology and personal geographies. Across her investigations on the Afro-Portuguese world, Mónica de Miranda’s works creates a space for debate on the historical relation between Portugal and its former colonies, informed by the artist’s own experience. De Miranda draws addresses bodies, ideas, and emotions, hinting at the fact that most of those in the path of the empire did not have the power to change history.

Osvaldo Ferreira (b. 1980, Angola) explores themes associated with the everyday life of Angolan society, evidencing an intergenerational continuity/discontinuity with regard to social experiences. His work, primarily constituted of paintings, often integrates chromatic and material elements that refer to the African textile tradition of exuberant colors. With this, he aims to emphasize the presence of Africa’s cultural and social heritage – a continent that, through colonization and globalization, witnessed successive processes of appropriation and cultural manipulation, triggering involuntary miscegenation and the imposition of a system that degenerates the continent’s identity.

René Tavares (b.1983, São Tomé e Príncipe) translates into painting and drawing, through strokes, lines, and spots, a personal synthesis of his own identity - always "unfinished" and in construction - positioning himself in constant movement between past and present references. In works such as "No Boundaries to Love (Cotton People Reloaded)," René Tavares reflects on the African diaspora and on different forms of miscegenation that have taken place. At the same time, he reflects on his creative process as an artist in tune with rhythms of miscegenation that overlap times and places, diluting the borders between domains.

Throughout his colourful multimedia practice, Yinka Shonibare considers issues of postcolonialism and globalism and often references the distinctive batik cloth common in Nigeria. The African Library is a commemoration of the fight for independence in previous European colonies across the African continent and celebrates the achievements made by Africans since liberation. It consists of an installation of thousands of books covered in the artist’s signature Dutch wax printed cotton textile. As excerpts of the broader library, The African Library Collections focus on contributors from specific disciplines; namely: Musicians, Actors, Sports People, Activists, Business Leaders, Female Political Leaders, Designers, Teachers and Scholars, Filmmakers and Theatre Practitioners. The collections are constituted of approximately 200 books and are presented on a bookshelf with a bespoke card catalogue box.

Ymane Chabi-Gara is a French painter born in 1986 in Paris. She lives and works in Montreuil. Isolation, solitude, the body in relation to the world, and to the condition of being social are the main subjects of Ymane Chabi-Gara’s paintings. They represent individuals, alone or in small groups, in universes and situations that mirror their interiority. Domestic spaces and industrial wastelands serve as a support for the narrative, guided by formal and colored impressions. At first, a very detailed drawing determines the structure of the composition. Then the experience of painting for its own sake, opens sensitive and pictorial possibilities. The body, always at the center of her preoccupations, serves as a point of convergence towards which all experience tends and finds meaning. The body of others but also, recently, her own body. This staging of herself touches both the singularity of the intimate and the solitude as an archaic and universal feeling.

Esther Mahlangu is part of the Ndebele community in the Gauteng region, located north of Pretoria. The Ndebele, unlike many other tribes in South Africa, have managed to preserve their centuries’ old ancestral traditions. Despite being a patriarchal society, artistic heritage is handed down from mother to daughter; as a young woman reaches puberty she withdraws from male society for three months and is taught the ceremonial patterns of Ndebele beadwork— in the nineteenth century this tradition was extended to decorative wall paintings, also executed exclusively by the Ndebele women. Esther Mahlangu is an important proponent of this tradition. She draws freehand, without first measuring or sketching, using luminous and high-contrast vinyl paints that lend extraordinary vigor to her murals. While at a glance purely abstract, her compositions are built upon a highly inventive system of signs and symbols. Mahlangu is the first Ndebele artist to transpose wall paintings onto canvases and to take the conventions of her artwork into the larger arena.