Inspiring new perspectives and understanding on the continent from Chinese audiences, the exhibition is curated by British Ghanaian writer, curator and broadcaster Ekow Eshun, project-led by co-founder of RMB Latitudes, an art fair in South Africa, and Latitudes Online Lucy MacGarry, and proudly presented by Fotografiska in partnership with Lady Linda Wong-Davies and the KT Wong Foundation. Marvellous Realism is founded on an awareness of how the rich and diverse contemporary art and cultural scenes in Africa remain largely unknown to the Chinese public, in spite of the importance of long-standing economic and political relationships.

Academic, writer and cultural theorist Ashraf Jamal says that the exhibition “functions as a the trigger of sorts, to help us to re-imagine what we understand the world to be, the precarity and partiality of the viewpoint we allow ourselves to maintain, and, over and above this subjectivity, the wondrous mystery all about – in our very own world, and in the world beyond”. He continues: “In short, ‘Marvelous Realism’ asks us to rethink our prejudices regarding Africa, to redefine and understand the very different workings of the imaginations of very different photographers, and, more broadly, to see the vitality of a photographic record…”

The exhibition takes its title from the scholar Kole Omotoso’s usage of the term ‘marvellous realism’ to describe the poetics and politics of African identities shaped by kaleidoscopic histories of local, regional and international cultural influences. Out of which comes a potent belief in overlapping states of seeing and being; the everyday and the extraordinary coalescing as one.

Focusing primarily on sub-Saharan African countries, the group exhibition is transnational in outlook and presents work by both established and emerging artists. It employs the media of photography and film as a means to envisage contemporary African cultural identity as a state of ongoing possibility, in which myth, memory and movement weave together into a rich tapestry of expansively imaginative art works.

As such, the exhibition is subdivided into three sections: ‘Myth’, ‘Memory’ and ‘Movement’. ‘Myth’ brings together work by six artists who, each in their own way, explore notions centred on mythology, myth-making, folklore, spirituality, tradition and science fiction as central tenants of their work. ‘Movement’, the section of which Muholi is a part, alongside four other photographers, boldly articulates new optics on movement, migration and the visualising of Black bodies in space and time. The works provide a wide array of viewpoints on the challenges and opportunities that diasporic movement around the globe brings, both for individuals and the communities they become part of. Lastly, ‘Memory’ looks at the ways contemporary artists from Africa draw on collective memory to play with, challenge and transform notions of identity.

All the featured artists in the exhibition invoke Africa as an innately cosmopolitan condition that is closer in kind to the philosopher Achille Mbembe’s description of the continent as ‘a body in motion born out of overlapping genealogies, at the intersections of multiple encounters with multiple elsewhere.’

The 16 featured artists include:

Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou (Benin), Atong Atem (South Sudan), Justin Dingwall (South Africa), Maïmouna Guerresi (Senegal, Italy), Hassan Hajjaj (Morocco), Ayana V. Jackson (South Africa, USA), Cyrus Kabiru (Kenya), Lebohang Kganye (South Africa), Michael MacGarry (South Africa), Mohau Modisakeng (South Africa), Zanele Muholi (South Africa), Ruby Okoro (Nigeria), David Ozochukwu (Nigeria, Austria), Thania Peterson (South Africa), Micha Serraf (Zimbabwe) and Mary Sibande (South Africa).