Critics and culture writers have described the diverse nature of the African diasporic art experience. Here is a list of art books that you can read on the wide range and diverse perspectives, histories, and themes that the African art experience in the diaspora offers.
The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions
In this book, Adam Kuper, a former anthropology professor at the London School of Economics, examines the history of the representation of foreign and prehistoric peoples in Western anthropological museums while posing valid concerns about the purpose and future of such collections.
Mickalene Thomas
With contributions from one of the most prominent artists of 21st-century contemporary art, Mickalene Thomas, and written by Kellie Jones and Roxane Gay, this is the first comprehensive monograph dedicated to the artist. This book includes Thomas’ powerful 200-colour images of Black women from 2000 to 2021 and it is celebrating Black women and their identity, individuality and beauty and sexuality, and beauty and body types. With influences ranging from nineteenth-century painting to popular culture, Thomas’s art articulates a complex and empowering vision of aspiration and self-image through gender and race.
El Anatsui: The Reinvention of Sculpture
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Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu co-authored this monograph of Ghanaian-born artist, El Anatsui. Anatsui is described as “the exemplary African artist that had attained global visibility, but whose work had not been subjected to the sort of sustained critical examination and analysis it deserved” by Okeke Agulu. This book focuses on Anatsui’s entire body of work, from his early ceramics to his experimentation with wood and his celebrated metal bottle cap works. It also presents an unparalleled critical account of the artist and his practice starting with how decolonization and a modern African worldview influenced his artistic vision.
Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club
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Edited by Kimberli Gant and Ndubuisi Ezeluomba, this is the first book to feature Jacob Lawrence’s Nigeria series. The Lawrence’s Nigeria series includes eight tempera paintings of Lagos and Ibadan marketplaces, a culmination of an eight-month stay in Nigeria, and were exhibited in a New York gallery in 1965. The book highlights the influence of African Modernism on the work of Black American artist Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000). The richly illustrated book also highlights Africa’s place as a global center of modernist art and culture.
