Art, photography from Africa and its diaspora: an eBook
Elisa Pierandrei’s collection of articles and interviews depicts a continent on the move —
PAINTING, PHOTOGRAPHY, DRAWING. FROM AFRICA AND ITS DIASPORA, by Elisa Pierandrei. Kindle edition, 100 pp. € 9.99
This new eBook by the Italian journalist Elisa Pierandrei guides the reader along the stories of 15 contemporary artists who are either African or of African descent, broadly defined to include those with a sense of belonging to the continent. They include, among others, Helina Metaferia, Banele Khoza, Lunga Ntila, Benjamin Deguenon, Massinissa Selmani, as well as the old masters Ibrahim El-Salahi and Mohammed Melehi.
It took several years — and just as many visits to art galleries, artists’ studios, and regional and international art and book fairs —to bring together all the stories and images that make this new publication, which is in English language.
“Painting, photography, drawing. From Africa and its Diaspora” is Elisa Pierandrei’s second eBook of a three-part ongoing series of print and digital editions. The first eBook she wrote in her native Italian language, is titled “Urban Cairo. La Primavera araba dei graffiti” (InformAnt | eBook Quotidinai, first edition of 2012, with a revised and expanded edition published in 2014).
The stories of the 15 artists featured in this eBook are sometimes told in the form of magazine articles; others are told through interviews and editorials, complete with images of the artworks. Sometimes just a tiny fraction of the artworks constitutes the main topic of the conversation that intervened between the author and the artist.
The articles and interviews that make the chapters of this eBook have been previously published by the same author in various art magazines and news websites, namely Contemporary And, Art Radar, The New Arab, Your Middle East, Middle East Eye. The sole exceptions are the interview to Giana De Dier and the article featuring the work of Benjamin Deguenon that the author, Elisa Pierandrei, wrote and edited for this eBook.
The artists featured in “Painting, photography, drawing. From Africa and its Diaspora” are representative of a new generation of professional practitioners often described as demonstrating creative resilience in our challenging times. Overall, their contributions raise awareness about the complexity of the art world and bring the reader on a brief but fascinating walk through the field of African visual arts and in general culture.
This new eBook includes an appendix listing private art galleries and public and private cultural centres put together to reflect the contemporary approach to art practices established across the African continent.
Cultural consultant and arts writer Russel Hlongwane affirmed in the foreword: “It is a book that pays equal attention to aesthetics, process, medium, and the artist as a human in the world (and not only an artist from ‘Africa’)”.
You can purchase the eBook “Painting, photography, drawing. From Africa and its Diaspora” (Self Publisher, 2022) from Kindle and Rakuten Kobo online stores.
(English press release)
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