New Acquisitions: The Ségou Collection (I’ve Known Rivers)

The Niger River echoes the Mississippi in a call and answer resonating across the Atlantic Ocean.

The Ségou Art collection the Ten North Group acquired in 2022 comprises works by African artist finalists for the Ségou Art Fair selection on the banks of the mythical African Niger River.

I've Known Rivers, under whose title we present this exhibition from the collection, is an homage to the poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes, first published in The Crisis in June 1921, but most importantly, for the 57th anniversary of his reading it at the First World Festival of Black Arts in Dakar, Senegal, in 1966.

The exhibition is a cartography of how continental African artists create in-situ modes of intervention in response to issues that beset their continent by providing counter-narratives of radical autonomy beyond the rehashed tacit necessity of the place of art in society.

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