Sammy Baloji
B. 1978, Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo
Sammy Baloji studied photography and video at Ecole Superieure des Arts Decoratifs, in Strasbourg, France. He lives in Lubumbashi, the topic of much of his work. Using photography, video, film and collage, Baloji juxtaposes the historical and political traces of multiple pasts in today’s architecture and urbanism to pose questions to other Congolese about the country’s future. His work can be seen as continuing the tradition of Congolese painting as popular history in new media.
Pieter Hugo
B. 1976, Cape Town, South Africa
Pieter Hugo is a self-taught photographer who lives in South Africa and photographs throughout the continent. Typically, his series forces a visual and ethical confrontation between the viewer and marginalized subjects, including albinos and AIDS victims in South Africa, criminal Hyena Men in Nigeria, and honey collectors and recyclers of the West’s technological refuse in Ghana. Through portraits defined by their intense, requited gaze, Hugo explores marginality and power.
Salem Mekuria
B. 1947, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Salem Mekuria is an independent writer, producer, director, and video installation artist. She is the Luella LaMer Professor of Women’s Studies in the Art Department at Wellesley College. Her work focuses on her native Ethiopia and on African and African American women. Most recently, she has used the triptych video installation format for an ongoing exploration of Ethiopia’s histories through landscape to mark the country’s millennial celebration.
Sabelo Mlangeni
B. 1980, Driefontein, South Africa
Sabelo Mlangeni graduated from the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg, where he now lives and works. Mlangeni’s series, which typically grows from long-term immersion in and repeated returns to communities, documents those lives that are forgotten in the fast-moving society of South Africa today. He is particularly interested in tracking the changing relationships, interconnections, and peregrinations between the urban and the rural.
Guy Tillim
B. 1962, Johannesburg, South Africa
Guy Tillim has worked as a freelance photojournalist in South Africa since the last days of apartheid in the mid-1980s. He has photographed child soldiers in Congo, refugees in Angola, and squatters in the highrises of Johannesburg, first for the photocollective Afropix and then for major news agencies. In recent years, Tillim has transformed his practice, returning to many of the locations he photographed as a photojournalist. The images he produces increasingly circulate in art contexts.
IngridMwangiRobertHutter
B. 1970, NairobiLudwigshafen, KenyaGermany
IngridMwangiRobertHutter work in photography, video, installation, and performance. Artist Ingrid Mwangi, the daughter of a Kenyan father and German mother, moved from Nairobi to Germany as a teenager. From the early stages of her career, her experience living on two continents and her African-European heritage shaped her media and performance work, which is principally concerned with identity and social conventions. Robert Hutter completed studies in sculpture and painting in Bonn/Alfter, Germany. Through his multi-media works he examined the broad topic of social justice. In 2002, after working together for several years and marrying, Mwangi and Hutter merged their names and biographies, began working as one artistic identity, and formed the collective IngridMwangiRobertHutter.