A subversão do imaginário colonial na arte digital africana contemporânea

Imagem: Nkiru Oparah Photograph: Nkiru Oparah (The Guardian)

Pesquisas no google, revistas antigas, imagens etnográficas: é este o material de muitos artistas africanos que usam a internet como plataforma de eleição. Os seus trabalhos, que operam através de colagem, manipulação digital, sobreposições, questionam e subvertem o imaginário colonial, afirmando novas identidades. O jornal britânico The Guardian analisa a arte emergente e aponta alguns artistas que se destacam.

The use of internet and social media for news consumption and social activism has risen, with many organisations uses digital space as a place to rally and unite, but what about artists? How have they been changing the narrative?

The information age has disassembled what we thought we knew about Africa. It’s offered up alternative stories and visual representations, from Vine dispatches of Ebola-stricken regions, to African “fabbers” building open-source machines from e-waste, to online video collectives in Nigeria.

While the African digital arena expands at a dizzying pace, African digital collagists have taken to the past, using ethnographic images often found online to recreate and remix images of Africa, creating new and often critical narratives.

Websites such as the Nigerian Nostalgia Project have become a popular online resources for collagists to find historical materials photographs, videos, sound clips and graphic art.

O texto completo em Africa remix: the artists subverting colonial imagery