In the heart of Paris this fall, a constellation of voices will gather for a communion of art, memory, and reinvention. From October 24 to 26, 2025, the tenth edition of Also Known As Africa (AKAA)—an ever-evolving celebration of African and diasporic creativity—will unfold with a newly invigorated spirit, shepherded by visionary Artistic Director Sitor Senghor.
Galleries and Artists from Around the World Unite
Catheris Mondombo, “Table chargee,” Courtesy Angalia Galerie.
Terence Ntsako Maluleke, “Nozipho,” courtesy BKhz.
This year’s iteration turns the page with fiery intention. Diverse, participating galleries such as Locus Projects (South Africa), Primo Marella Gallery (Italy), The Norm (France), Space One (Japan), Movart Gallery (Portugal), BKhz Gallery (South Africa), and LIS10 Gallery (China) serve as channels—transmitting reverence, revolt, and rebirth across time and geography.
“This year’s iteration turns the page with fiery intention,”
A perceptive and masterful selection committee including Mamadou-Abou Sarr of Chicago, Eve Therond of New York, and Andy Amadi Okoroafor of France and Nigeria, have uplifted Senghor’s artistic curation with vitality and urgency.
From sculptors reworking inherited codes, to photographers stitching modern mythologies into light, to designers who treat garments as glyphs—this edition of AKAA is a pilgrimage with premier artists like Terry Aidoo, Gavin Goodman, Kouka Ntadi, Seyni Awa Camara, Lianza, and Stéphane Edith Conradie.
A Cultural Haven Unfolds at Carreau du Temple
King Houndekpinkou, “La Veuve Sanguine Bercee D ans Un Lit d’Epines,” 2025, Credit photo King Houndekpinkou, Courtesy Galerie Vallois.
The fair’s home, Carreau du Temple, transforms into a sanctum of multiplicity, where ancestral memory collides with avant-garde invention. “Cradle of civilization, Africa has been a land of revelations since the dawn of time,” said Senghor. “Because yes, Africa is the future.”
Over the past decade, AKAA has emerged as a compass for contemporary cultural consciousness. The creative output of Africa and its global lineage is a divine, vivacious movement, and we look forward to the next decade of AKAA, daring us not only to look but to truly see.
“Cradle of civilization, Africa has been a land of revelations since the dawn of time,”
Sitor Senghor
Riley Holloway, “Love on display,” Courtesy Backslash gallery.
Terry Aidoo, “Kabila table coffee,” courtesy Festival DiverCity.
“Cradle of civilization, Africa has, since the dawn of time, been a land of revelations.” From the prehistoric valleys of Tassili n’Ajjer to the canyons of Ennedi, this text evokes Africa as the birthplace of art, where humanity’s first gestures transformed stone, blood, and ash into sacred color. These early markings were not decorative but spiritual—acts meant “to say, to invoke, to transmit.” The elements—earth, air, fire, and water—combined in this primordial alchemy, giving rise to matter as the “fifth element,” a vital essence that modern artists would later reclaim but which, in African tradition, was always primary.
Africa, it reminds us, “has given the world a gaze, a voice, a memory.” Its artists, from ancient times to today, are “intercessors between the visible and the invisible, the dead and the living, the origin and the future.” Quoting poet-president Léopold Sédar Senghor, the text recalls that “the African artist does not create to please, but to pay homage to mystery.” Every mask, sculpture, or dance is thus an expression of the “vibrant, generous, and universal Black soul.”
Today, Africa’s creative pulse is felt globally—across art, music, fashion, and cuisine. “Often imitated, sometimes distorted, too often pillaged, but never erased,” Africa endures and evolves, not as nostalgia but as “a creative drive.”
Within this spirit of renewal, the tenth edition of AKAA – Also Known As Africa celebrates unity through material and meaning. As Artistic Director Sitor Senghor notes, its title embodies “this dual belonging, this dialogue between worlds.” Echoing his uncle Léopold Sédar Senghor’s words—“I am of the race of those who are oppressed… I take root in two lands”—AKAA 2025 becomes both homage and horizon: a celebration of “the union of worlds, of forms, of peoples—through matter that unites, reveals, and liberates.”
Serge Mouangue, “Hanekaze,” photo by Anthony Bernier, Courtesy space Un.
