November 2011
27 posts
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“Looking at africa through the eyes of contemporary art, photography, architecture and design is perhaps the most appropriate way of approaching this vast, powerful continent, so creatively rich and diverse that today it is still one of western modernity’s greatest sources of inspiration.”
—Stephen Burks
“Africans and people of African descent have invented a bunch of things. This is normal. There is no need to celebrate the phenomenon as something AMAZING and only at particular times of the year.”
—Gbontwi Anyetei
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“In this country [England], writers write to entertain, they raise questions of individual existence…but for a Nigerian writer in my position you can’t go into that. Literature has to be combative. You cannot have art for art’s sake. This art must do something to transform the lives of a community, of a nation. And for that reason, literature has a different purpose altogether in that sort of society…The stories that I tell must have a different sort of purpose from the artist in the Western world…and art, in that instance, becomes so meaningful both to the artist and to the consumers of that art, because you do not just depend on them to read your books, you even have to live a life that they can emulate.”
—Ken Saro-Wiwa (via fyeahafrica)
