The Ettore Fico Museum schedules the Afrika Now exhibition from Thursday 8 March to Sunday 30 June 2024 with five solo exhibitions by important artists of African and Guadeloupean origin already represented in Europe by important international galleries: Bouvy Enkobo, Victor Fotso Nyie, Elladj Lincy Deloumeaux , Salifou Lindou and James Mishio.

The five exhibitions aim to offer an overview and a focus on the new generations who develop research, especially in the figurative, pictorial and sculptural fields. All the unpublished works are presented for the first time in a museum in Italy and most of them were created specifically for this appointment. Five monographic volumes will be edited for the occasion and enclosed in a single box set even if their existence will be autonomous and independent from the others. The invited artists have the human figure and in particular the portrait as the dominant theme and poetics in their works. They are often self-portraits in which the artist plays different characters, becoming an actor and protagonist of the work, but also a paradigm of a reality that can be extended to the entire black community, whether they live in Africa, Europe or other countries. The works are all large format, as if to assert an even stronger presence, socially and politically, and propose real life according to the artist's personal poetics, intimately linked to the reality experienced in his daily life.

Political problems, family ties, social presences, common affections and stories are illustrated with a peculiar pictorial trait and an aesthetic autonomy which, despite starting from stylistic features now consolidated internationally, are unmistakably linked to the Great Continent and to the black reality. The pictorial works and the sculptural ones are full of material, even the most sublime such as gold, in patina, or silver, often evoked with tinfoil and sheet metal. Energetic and material strokes develop and overlap on the works to give even more strength to the stroke and the sign to reiterate how the artist's gesture and presence are an integral part of the work, a sort of extension of thought through the posture of the body , the gestures of the arm and, finally, the strength of the hand that uses the brush and spatula as a prosthesis of creative dynamism.