The exhibition “Dig Where You Stand” will be on view through October 9, 2022, is important to the African Artists Foundation’s fall program and is the main exhibition in a traveling series that takes place in a few art spaces.
The announced venues are “Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art” in Tamale, Ghana, “The African Artists’ Foundation” in Lagos, “White Cube” in Lusanga, “Palais de Lomé” in Togo and “Hangar Centre” in Lisbon.
The exhibition, “Dig Where You Stand” explores the regenerative capacity of art locally and in its diasporas, offering an alternative model of engagement with issues of decolonization, compensation, and restitution, both in the art world and in the broader economy of the African continent.
Developing the reformative capacity of art across the region, with a focus on movement, relocation, and displacement, the exhibition shifts the decolonial vision of the museum world to an explicit approach, passing on a pool of tools in each location to initiate regenerative monetary cycles.
Artists and nearby communities investigate the economies of frontier frameworks that have generally underestimated weak communities and find new philosophies in the art world that alter its value frameworks and restore employment for exploited communities on the African continent.
Highlighting works by Ibrahim Mahama, Renzo Martens and the Congolese Plantation Workers Art Circle, among others, the exhibition curated by Nigerian artist Azu Nwagbogu, “Dig Where You Stand” intends to advance contemporary African creation by working with cultural exchange and bringing communities established thoughts in freedom from the ongoing cycles of economic extraction.