Transnational Convergences in African Digital Art

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Other associated events: Opening reception, Friday, November 14, 7:30 pm Curator lecture, Saturday, November 15, 2:00 pm, Regina Public Library Film Theatre

Despite the economic and political challenges facing the African continent, African artists are creating spaces of transnational exchange in digital art that not only undermine the barriers facing them, but also write Africa on the face of globalization itself. In this vein, indigenous digital artworks might appropriate western-inflected technologies and entertainment forms, but the way these are transformed to serve local needs and issues, provides a counterpoint to such influences.

Given this context, the exhibition challenges the perception that Africa appears to epitomize "the postcolony itself" as "defined by a sense of crisis" spurred on by failing economies and the ravages of war. In short, far from being totally estranged from, or subsumed by, the forces of globalization, there exists African-driven solutions to some of the challenges facing the continent that unfold in a transnational context where art and culture are driven by, and transform or surmount, such barriers to advancement.

Digital artists IngridMwangiRobertHutter, a collective from Kenya and Germany, have created Cryptic, a Traveler's Diary (2007), that questions how journey and intersecting histories affect identity. Berni Searle's Home and Away (2003) from South Africa explores large scale digital photography of her body to interrogate the notion of home and its effects on Black South Africans.

Transnational Convergences in African Digital Art (Installation View), 2009