For Maceo, this attentiveness to the world first emerged through the photo novel before expanding into sculpture and installation. Trained at the Arts Décoratifs, he draws from his immediate surroundings to shape his work. Following a solo exhibition at the Museum of Mineralogy in 2025, where he questioned the status of the mineral world, he extends this dialogue with nature by turning his attention to the garden. Tree bark becomes faces, subtly revealing figures of surveillance; branches are trapped within glass or wire mesh; bird wings bring shutter stops to life. Playing with scale and illusion, his sculptures destabilise familiar points of reference.
While the artist constantly explores and questions materiality as we know it, craftsmanship remains central to his practice.

Casting, silicone, and the assemblage of humble materials such as stones, bark, and feathers give rise to hybrid forms.

In doing so, he reflects on the passage of time and seeks to preserve the living within a form of permanence. Natural elements, once collected and cast, retain a latent vitality, as though suspended in time.

For Emmanuel Awuni, who was born in Ghana and moved to the UK, where he completed his master’s at the Royal Academy schools; his attentiveness to reality takes the form of a slow immersion in his immediate environment. Rather than seeking to dominate what surrounds him, he attempts to attune himself to the flows that move through the world: the oral traditions of his childhood, the movement of rivers, the flight of birds, and natural rhythms. He momentarily steps away from the pace imposed by contemporary society in order to slow down, a slowing down he also asks of the viewer.

His painting demands time. It does not reveal itself immediately, but gradually unfolds through a meditative experience. Although his canvases may initially appear non-figurative, they slowly disclose silhouettes or fragments of landscapes to those willing to pause and truly look.

Deeply rooted in rhythm and orality, his work draws equally from present forms and childhood memories to construct a vibrant and timeless abstraction. Guided by instinctive gestures, Awuni seeks to translate musicality into painting. Every colour becomes a note, a pulse.

A nearly spiritual dimension runs through the works of both artists. The idea of healing emerges not explicitly, but as a process: that of renewing one’s relationship to oneself, to others, and to the world. Both artists reject direct narration in favour of open forms through which the viewer is invited to experience a story, one in which nature itself becomes the storyteller.

To observe the living world with precision, to capture the rhythm of water and the forms of nature in order to redirect and reinscribe them elsewhere: a metamorphosis takes place.

Source: MAGNIN-A Gallery

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La présence de l’eau reflète deux perspectives différentes dans leurs oeuvres. Dans le travail documentaire de Baudouin Mouanda, l’eau apparaît comme une force naturelle incontrôlable, révélatrice de la vulnérabilité humaine face aux catastrophes climatiques qui frappent régulièrement son pays. Ses photographies témoignent des conséquences des inondations sur les personnes et leur environnement.

Dans les peintures de Wilfried Mbida, l’eau investit les espaces domestiques de manière silencieuse. Présente au cœur des intérieurs, elle coexiste naturellement avec les figures représentées et devient un élément de réparation, de purification et de fertilité. L’artiste convoque ainsi une dimension spirituelle de l’eau.

Tantôt naturelle, tantôt spirituelle, l’eau s’infiltre dans les espaces d’habitation pour finir par coexister avec les individus. L’exposition propose une réflexion sensible sur la manière dont l’eau façonne à la fois les territoires physiques et les mondes intérieurs.

Source: Galerie PERSON Bruxelles

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Bam has two connected series of sculptures, the Ifas and Abstract Vessels. She creates the Ifas by embracing wet clay against her body to form vessels that collapse, crack and fold. She is interested in how physically connecting with the raw material also makes her feel more spiritually connected with the earth.

Inspired by textiles and language, the Abstract Vessels are covered with pattern and colour. Bam pierces the surface of the vessels by hand, revealing the glaze inside. The act of rolling out the clay, puncturing and studding the surface with pattern, painting with glazes, and then firing combines all the elements – earth, air, fire and water.

Bam views clay as the most primal material, made of raw earth and water, processed by hands, and the fire of the kiln. She connects this to the concept of the primal feminine, the idea that there is an instinctive source of creation and wildness in all beings.

At the SLG, Bam will also debut a new film produced in Osun-Oshogbo, a sacred site of the Yoruba fertility goddess Osun. The film tracks the river’s path and human impact on the landscape.

ABOUT RANTI BAM
Ranti Bam lives and works in Paris. Bam has exhibited internationally including Anima, at James Cohan, New York (2024), Hard/Soft: Textiles and Ceramics in Contemporary Art, Museum of Applied Arts, Austria, (2023), and Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool (2023). In June 2026, Bam will unveil her permanent public artwork for ‘Climate Clock’ curated by Alice Sharp, Invisible Dust for Oulu26 Finland, European Capital of Culture. Ranti Bam was invited to be the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia by Koyo Kouoh.

Source: South London Gallery

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For someone rooted in ancestral rites and divinatory ceremonies specific to the Bamiléké region where he was born, the world is governed by a constant dialogue between opposing yet complementary principles. On one side, totemic figures of patriarchal power stand as organizers of a social and political life governed by immutable laws; on the other, maternal figures embodying matriarchal strength shape an intimate and familial sphere defined by care and protection. This distribution of roles, which some might view as conservative, should instead be understood as a form of harmony that does not exclude forms of emancipation. Portraiture thus affirms, in an almost anthropological sense, the structuring of a world whose principles and forms of wisdom seem timeless.

Hako Hankson celebrates a world of heroes and heroines whose roles span centuries. Alongside tribal chiefs— intercessors between the world of the living and that of the ancestors, recognizable by their masks sometimes adorned with feathers—appear female figures, at times cradling a child, acting as intercessors between generations, identifiable by their rich adornments and finely detailed headdresses, crafted by the artist using Posca markers. These figures are inseparable from birds which, for the painter and the community to which he belongs, symbolize intermediaries between the world of the living and the beyond, much like ritual statuettes and masks. For this series, Hankson also draws on the iconography of masks from Papua New Guinea, which recall those of his native Cameroon, as rituals and symbols share deep anthropological constants. Are human beings not shaped by the same desires and imaginaries, despite their differences?

Yet it would be reductive to assign this work a purely ethnographic dimension. On the contrary, it is constantly nourished by a dialogue with an art history that is, by nature, universal, and with its Moroccan context of production, which one might describe as fraternal. A kinship of spirit connects these portraits to Picasso’s Cubist painting, itself informed by the fascinated discovery of what was once termed “primitivist” art. Totemic masks and sacred statuary here recover their full visual force. But it is above all with urban art—particularly graffiti, with its immediacy of execution—that Hankson’s work resonates. While the often monochrome backgrounds are carefully worked, drawing remains the catalysing force of the canvas. First sketched in broad strokes, with a controlled inclination toward caricature or satire, drawing forms the structural backbone of each portrait.

It also appears within the canvas through a series of small marker-drawn vignettes depicting scenes of everyday life. Musicians, gatherings of elders, passersby at leisure: a shared frontality shapes these images, often accompanied by phrases reminiscent of graffiti or by letterforms borrowing from hieroglyphs or calligraphy. A desire to narrate life in all its inexhaustible diversity becomes apparent. A discerning eye will notice here a motorcycle taxi—whose drivers are known as “bendskins” in Cameroon—elsewhere a cart that seems almost fused with the donkey pulling it, bearing the letters “MARR”, evoking the city of Marrakech. Finally, an intergenerational dialogue emerges with a recognized figure of contemporary art, whose name is inscribed across several canvases: Abdelkrim Ouazzani. Hankson discreetly echoes his hybrid, anthropomorphic creatures—his skeletal fish or wheel-birds—as a gesture of affinity toward an art that is spontaneous, free, and playful; much like Picasso, who said he spent a lifetime learning to draw like a child.

Source: L’Atelier21

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‘Glowing Phalanges’ emerges from Umar’s experience of growing up between two Islamic traditions: Sufism in Sudan, where his family originates and Wahhabism in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, where he was raised. While both are branches of Islam, their approaches to devotional practice differ significantly. Sufi traditions embrace the use of prayer beads and amulets, whereas Wahhabism forbids such objects, instead favouring the counting of prayers on the phalanges of the right hand. According to Umar’s education, the phalanges will glow on Judgement Day as a sign of devotion, giving rise to the exhibition’s title.

Previous iterations of the project have been exhibited at Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Germany (2025–26); OSL Contemporary, Norway (2024); Bergen Kunsthall, Norway (2023–24); Kunstnernes Hus, Norway (2023). Umar’s work was included in Venice Biennale (2024) and Toronto Biennale (2024). Umar was awarded the Baloise Prize at Art Basel, Basel (2024).

Source: GalleriesNow

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This special exhibition develops the RWS’s expansion of the boundaries of contemporary watercolour practice, and reflects Fadugba’s own investment in the materiality of her work. Rather than treating watercolour as a fixed set of materials, the show considers it as a set of behaviours: flow, absorption, resistance, and reflection.

The Chemistry of Water continues Fadugba’s wider practice – from Lagos and beyond – where water has been as much a subject as a condition; something that guides both how her figures move and how her materials behave. Acrylics are thinned and layered to act like watercolours, creating transparency and movement. Burnt surfaces alter the way pigment is absorbed. Beads interrupt and redirect its flow. Resist techniques hold space against it.

The exhibition will be accompanied by live programming throughout the duration of the exhibition, layering interdisciplinary voices to activate the works. It also takes place alongside Fadugba’s showcase at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition 2026, running from 16 June – 23 August 2026.

About the Artist

Modupeola Fadugba (b. 1985, Togo. Lives and works in Ibadan, Nigeria) is a multimedia artist known for her work in painting, drawing, and socially engaged installations. With a multidisciplinary background in engineering, economics, and education, Fadugba’s art explores intersections of cultural identity, social justice, game theory, and the socio-political dynamics of Nigeria within the global economy.

Fadugba’s achievements include the prestigious Grand Prize at the Norval Sovereign African Art Prize (2025), El Anatsui’s Outstanding Production Prize (2014), and an Emmy Award (2022) for her documentary Dreams from the Deep End. She is also a recipient of the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2020), a member of the Tutu Fellowship Class of 2024, and a winner of the Grand Prize at the Dakar Biennale (2016). The artist has featured in group exhibitions at Powerhouse Arts, Brooklyn; the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London; Gallery 1957, Accra & London; Afriques Capitales in Lille (2017); and The Ford Foundation and African Artists Foundation, Lagos. Her works are held in significant public and private collections including the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Museum am Rothenbaum Kulturen und Künste der Welt (MARRK), Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Tiroche Collection, and Sindika Dokolo Foundation.

Source: The Royal Watercolour Society

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Highlights include recent photographic works by South African artist Zana Masombuka, which focus on the important meditative process of Ndebele beading. Combining the mediums of photography and sculpture, she creates fascinating photographs surrounded by an intricate beaded frame. In this series, Akhulumile Amabhudango: Scenes from Dreams – ‘Journeys with Kosabo’ Masombuka pays homage to her late grandfather as she journeys with him in her dreams, exploring themes of kingship, ascension and ancestral guidance. The beaded form and pattern of each work draw from culturally significant objects within her community, such as ‘iiRholwane zabo Baba’ (neck rings worn by Ndebele patriarchs) and ‘is‘Khumba seNgwe’ (Leopard skin). Masombuka’s intriguing body of work will be subject of a second solo exhibition at October Gallery opening on 4th September, 2026.

LR Vandy is represented by striking sculptural works, including Decoder, 2023, a major artwork from her signature Hull series. Vandy has an aptitude for elegantly revealing hidden histories; her works continually reference the multi-layered history and heritage of the African diaspora. Her practice is based on the transformation of found objects, metal components and rope into a variety of artworks in which she explores the complex entanglements of trade, power and gender. LR Vandy’s first solo museum exhibition, Rise, introduces a significant new body of work and is currently open to the public at the Weston Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, UK, until 13th September 2026. Her work The Swim, has been commissioned by V&A East Museum, London for their inaugural exhibition The Music is Black: A British Story, which opens 18th April, 2026.

Internationally renowned artist Sokari Douglas Camp primarily works in galvanised sheet steel. Her work often explores themes of trade, power and colonialism within an African and Caribbean context. The presentation includes Bird of Paradise, 2025, a vibrant female figure modelling yellow and red garments with a bright display of flowers. Her sculptures frequently evoke the substantial frames of formidable African matriarchs. Despite Douglas Camp’s weighty subject matter, her works retain a playfulness and agility that reflects her impressive skills as a sculptor. Douglas Camp comments upon how people of diverse ethnicities, social positions and occupations effected the emergence of distinctive sartorial cultures across the Atlantic world by imbuing material fabrics and modes of dress with new meanings. Her solo exhibition, Fashion and Fortune opens at October Gallery on 21st May and continues to 27th June, 2026. Douglas Camp’s work is also exhibited in The Music is Black: A British Story, the first exhibition to be held at the V&A East Museum, London.

Other sculptural works include remarkable large-scale ‘portraits‘ of the African diaspora by Alexis Peskine, which are rendered, in precise detail, by hammering nails of different gauges, with pinpoint accuracy into wood. On show is an impressive work titled Ikechukwu, created in 2021 during his residency in Florence. The ground for this striking work, a copper leaf nail ‘portrait’, comprises locally sourced earth pigment from the river Arno. Peskine often reflects on his own multicultural heritage by making his pieces in a variety of places. The rich profusion of overlain colours and materials builds to create a complex visual narrative charged with the echoes of centuries of exploitation.

Recent paintings byacclaimed artist Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga are also presented. Displacing the Living, 2025, is a striking work that portrays two female figures dressed in ‘African’ cloths imported from abroad, with one figure holding flowers that intertwine past and present realities of those living in the DRC today. Depicted with painterly prowess, the microchipped skin of Kamuanga’s figures suggest his ongoing concern about the continuing exploitation of both ‘men and minerals’ in his native Democratic Republic of Congo. Kamuanga pays tribute to the strength of local communities, endowing his larger-than-life figures with a poignant, contemplative stillness, while situating heritage as a terrain of resilience and survival.

Other highlights on show are striking ceramic vessels by Xanthe Somers whose work is informed by post-colonial contexts, with reference to Zimbabwe, her country of birth. Somers’ intricate artworks are hand-coiled in traditional fashion before being disturbed by having their surfaces punctured, woven or enhanced with meticulously painted details. By knowingly combining excessive ornamentation with veiled political commentary, Somers draws attention to women’s work, exploitation of cheap labour and the impact of eco-racist practices throughout the Global South. Xanthe Somers will exhibit new works at October Gallery this July along with paintings by Yacout Hamdouch and photographs by James Barnor.

Djibril Dramé exhibits bold photographic works from his series Ndewendeul, which he commenced in 2010, as an exploration of the spiritual values of the Baye Fall Sufi brotherhood—an unorthodox yet powerful community within the larger Islamic world. While the project is rooted in his close relationship with his Sufi “brothers” and “sisters,” it also extends beyond them, inviting the presence of the “other” and opening a broader dialogue about community, identity, and belonging. In 2014, Dramé developed the first major iteration of the series by setting up a portable studio in Dakar, Senegal. This allowed him to capture intimate moments of sharing and joyful celebration during traditional Eid festivities. Dramé’s arresting images reverberate with the dramatic styles of individuals dressed in the vibrantly coloured patchwork fabrics characteristic of the Baye Fall brotherhood, whom he often portrays against patterned, industrial PVC canvases.

Source: October Gallery

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A major figure in the Senegalese art scene, Souleymane Keïta developed a unique pictorial style from the late 1970s onwards, characterized by great formal freedom and constant exploration of color, rhythm, and matter. Breaking away from the stylistic conventions of his time, Souleymane Keïta constructed a deeply personal language at the crossroads of abstraction and figuration. The artist drew constant inspiration from the riches of nature and his personal history.

The presentation at Art Basel will highlight a formative period in his career during the 1980s to 2000s. Souleymane Keïta explored several avenues and mediums during an intense phase of visual experimentation. The works from these decades bear witness to the gradual establishment of the formal and conceptual principles that would permanently structure his practice. They reveal a moment of open research, essential to understanding the emergence of his style and the coherence of his journey from Senegal to New York via Paris and Mali.

This selection accompanies a pivotal moment in the international recognition of Souleymane Keïta’s work. On this occasion, the Cécile Fakhoury Gallery is continuing the in-depth work carried out in collaboration with the artist’s family, aiming to permanently establish his work in the major narratives of modernity and contemporary art history.

Source: Galerie Cécile Fakhoury

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The trade fair program
In addition to the exhibitors’ artworks, Africa Basel offers a diverse supporting program featuring talks, performances, special projects, and parties. Discover exciting new perspectives, meet artists in person, and immerse yourself in a vibrant atmosphere brimming with creative inspiration.

SPECIAL PROJECT Art World Passport
The Art World Passport is a participatory art project by Richard Mudariki in collaboration with Africa Basel. During Africa Basel Week 2026, the project transforms the language of passports, visas, stamps, and official documents into a poetic reflection on mobility, identity, belonging, access, and cultural citizenship within the global art world.

SPECIAL PROJECT THE Red Carpet
With The Red Carpet, Africa Basel presents a participatory installation by Youssef Ouchra in collaboration with the KE’CH Collective from Marrakesh. Inspired by political processions, fashion shows, and ceremonial appearances, the project transforms the red carpet into a space for self-reflection.

In reference to the Islamic concept of as-sirāt—the narrow bridge that every soul must cross at the moment of judgment—the red carpet becomes a symbolic transition: between performance and vulnerability, public appearance and inner reflection. The result is a work that combines performance, installation, and social critique.

The publicly accessible installation is located at the entrance to Africa Basel at Klybeck 610, Gärtnerstrasse 2, 4057 Basel, Switzerland.

SPECIAL PROJECT Beat Apartheid
Beat Apartheid presents a selection of posters on music and resistance from the collection of the Basel Afrika Bibliographien. The exhibition focuses on concert, solidarity, and protest posters from the 1970s to the 1990s that visually and musically accompanied the struggle against apartheid.

On view at Bar Derrière, the exhibition brings political graphics, the history of sound, and the culture of remembrance into an informal urban space. The posters tell stories of international networks of solidarity, of artists as voices of resistance, and of music as a unifying force in the struggle for freedom and justice.

Hours: Open during the regular hours of Bar Derrière.

Source: Africa Basel

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The title operates simultaneously as “revisiting” and “visitation”, drawing on ideas of haunting and spectral presence associated with texts such as Avery F. Gordon’s Ghostly Matters. In this vein Pillay thinks of haunting as being troubled by something that needs to be reckoned with. It’s a lingering condition that demands a revisiting of reference material used in previous artworks; of photographs from both what Pillay calls “small” family archives, and from “big” archives, among them those of the National Archives in the United Kingdom, which have been an ongoing reference point in her practice, notably in her 2023 commission, Idyll, at the Chisenhale Gallery. She refers to these British archives as “the centre of knowledge for any place that has been colonised.” Adding: “if you want to learn more about your [identity], go to where it is kept.”

In addition to colonial framing, she notes that apartheid-era racial categorisation obscured the deep entanglements between communities in South Africa, and suggests that her practice attempts to reveal these submerged continuities through archival excavation and, in her final output as an artist, painterly renewal.

The works in Revisitations expand Pillay’s interest in both the instability of the photographs she uses as her source material and the possibility of paint as a conduit of compassion: a way to make things more comfortable for the sitters, to revisit and reimagine each precarious imprint and the details they contain through thin layers of paint tirelessly worked over through solvents, washes and erasure. For Pillay, the associations attached to each image shift as variably as the original photographs themselves. In The Shallows, a group of figures stand partially submerged in water, a tidal rock pool, some wearing white robes that could be swimsuits or baptism gowns. Some figures hold weapons. The context is deliberately uncertain, and her choice of image underscores an attraction to those that remain unresolved or partially unknowable. The photograph belonged to her paternal grandmother and was likely taken in Durban, yet the answers surrounding what was actually happening remain unsatisfying to the artist. Instead, her intention becomes to methodically soothe the emotional conditions of her subjects, whoever and wherever they are.

In Tributaries, a bank of willow trees line the Msunduzi or “Dusi” River in KwaZulu-Natal, rendered in a violet hue associated with the stamps photographers once used to mark packaging and studio photographs. Here, the river draws on memories of the impossible condition imposed within histories of indenture: the Hindu belief that once one crossed the ocean, one had erased one’s place in society and could never truly return home. Over generations, displaced communities established new relationships to rivers and water as sites of ritual, mourning and continuity. In this painting, Pillay meditates on this through layered drips, erasure and accumulations of paint that capture both the river and the dense vegetation lining its banks.

Ensemble I depicts studio portraits of a group of “Malay” brides, Pillay diverts attention away from the racism of the original caption, likely produced for a colonial travel guide to South Africa, and instead revels in small details: a dog partially hidden beneath one bride’s dress, the tension held within the brides’ hands, and re-rendering a pastoral European-style painted backdrop that appears to melt forward into the composition. These features become a series of components in comprehending what official archives have excluded. Again, her surfaces are built through washes, erasure and solvent manipulation rather than thick application. Pillay describes this constant adding and erasure as a form of excavation, allowing details to emerge gradually from the painted surface.

The word Pillay repeatedly returns to in describing this body of work is “portmanteau” – a word formed through the blending of others, carrying multiple meanings simultaneously. In this sense, the paintings themselves become visual portmanteaus: conduits and bridges through which unstable histories, images and emotions are layered together. Blending and reworking each changeable moment, the works attempt to address the lingering feeling that accompanies haunting, the beginning of a thought that insists on being revisited. Despite their engagement with grief and loss, Pillay describes these paintings as fundamentally optimistic: less concerned with nostalgia than with the persistent spectral traces that continue to shape her contemporary identity and memory.

Artist Bio
Ravelle Pillay (b.1993, Durban, South Africa) is a painter who considers the legacies of colonialism and migration, and how they haunt and reverberate in the present. She draws from found and family photographs, ephemera and oral history, as well as the material degradation of photographic images over time to consider the ways we construct our identities and the ways we remember.

Pillay’s first institutional show, Idyll, opened at Chisenhale Gallery, London in 2023. This followed a residency at Gasworks London at the end of 2022.

Solo shows include Tide and Seed, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg. (2022), The Weight of a Nail, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town (2024) and Sanctum (the light and the shade), Goodman Gallery, New York (2025).

Select group exhibitions include Silence Calling from One Continent to Another, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg (2021), (Un)Natural : Constructed Environments at the Nasher Museum of Art (2023-2024), Soulscapes at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London (2024) and Standing in the Gap, Goodman Gallery, London (2024).

Pillay was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in London, to create a body of work as part of the programme for Artists First: Contemporary Perspectives on Portraiture which opened in September 2025.

Pillay received a degree in Fine Art from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2015 and was the first prize recipient of the 2022 African Art Galleries Association’s Emerging Painting Invitational.

She lives and works in London.

Source: Goodman Gallery

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