The Bamako Encounters – African Biennale of Photography has announced the curatorial team and theme for its 13th edition, scheduled to take place from 20 November 2021 to 20 January 2022. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung will return as artistic director, working with a team comprising: Akinbode Akinbiyi, artist and independent curator; Meriem Berrada, artistic director of Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL) in Marrakech; Tandazani Dhlakama, assistant curator at Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town; and Liz Ikiriko, artist and assistant curator at Art Gallery York University in Toronto.
This edition will be held under the title ‘Maa ka Maaya ka ca a yere kono: On Multiplicity, Difference, Becoming, and Heritage’; it seeks to celebrate a multiplicity of voices and narratives to counter the universalist, homogenising discourse of a globalised world. The programme will invite artists, curators, scholars, activists, and ‘people of all walks of life’ to ‘reflect collectively on these multiplicities of being and differences, on expanding beyond the notion of a single being, and on embracing compound, layered and fragmented identities as much as layered, complex, non-linear understandings of space(s) and time(s).’ The phrase ‘Maa ka Maaya ka ca a yere kono’, which translates to ‘The persons of the person are multiple in the person’, is drawn from a 1972 statement by Malian writer and historian Amadou Hampâté Bâ.
The exhibition will also include works selected from an open call to artists from the African world, amateur and professional photographers and video artists, alone or in groups, without age or nationality limit.
