Colours of Africa

Design Indaba has partnered with Google to showcase some of our continent’s best creatives. BY JENNIFER CAMPBELL

Kenya: Spirit of Violet by Anyango Mpinga

Design Indaba and Google Arts and Culture have joined forces to launch ‘Colours of Africa’, an online project that showcases 60 specially curated artworks produced by our very own African creatives. Sixty creatives were invited to contribute a piece of work that captures the colour and essence of their home country.

A RANGE OF CREATIVITY

The creatives for the project were selected by Ravi Naidoo, Design

Indaba’s founder. He chose creatives from a broad scope of disciplines, including architecture, illustration, painting, ceramics, writing, engineering, performing arts and visual communications. The work of these creatives has been converted into images, videos, texts and illustrations to showcase the best of African craft, industrial design, fashion, film, jewellery, music and more. Some featured artists include

Algerian photographer Ramzy Bensaadi, Egyptian fashion designer

Bisrat Negassi, Congolese filmmaker Archange Kiyindou ‘Yamakasi’ and

Sierra Leonean visual artist Ngadi Smart.

AN ACCESSIBLE LENS

Each artwork is showcased online as part of the first artistic undertaking of this scale. Viewers are invited to discover Africa’s stories as told by her creative community. As part of the viewing experience, one can spin

a kaleidoscope to explore the works in a randomised way – the virtual journey moves through the palette of Africa as each country is captured by a local artist. The design concept and interface for the digital exhibition was brought to life with the help of former Design Indaba conference speaker Noel Pretorius and his creative partner Elin Sjöberg who worked with the Google Arts & Culture Lab. The exhibition is the first of its kind and serves as an important – and highly accessible – resource.

Burundi: Arm jewellery by Margaux Wong

Tunisia: Colours of the Invisible by Selim Harbi

Malawi: Colours of my Nation by Eva Chikabadwa OUR CONTINENT’S WORK

In addition to ‘Colours of Africa’, the initiative has also launched over 4 000 images and videos, as well as 20 curated exhibits from Design Indaba’s archive. These include award-winning initiatives like Sheltersuit, Arch for Arch and Emerging Creatives, which are now extensively profiled online for the very first time. New pieces by some of Africa’s most important contemporary creatives are now displayed. These include Fozia Ismail, who was a featured creative on Serpentine Gallery’s Creative Exchange programme; Mayada Adil El Sayed, who represented Sudanese women at the Generation Equality Forum, and Lady Skollie, the winner of the 10th FNB art prize.

AFRICA’S BEAUTY

For Google’s managing director Nitin Gajria, the initiative allows viewers to experience a whole new world. “This project answers the vital call for all to notice and embrace African art in all its wonder,” he says. “By empowering and amplifying African voices to tell the unique stories of their cultures through their creativity, we hope to provide muchneeded exposure, cultivate a newfound curiosity, and open a window onto the vast beauty that exists in the continent.”

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