Creative Connect

J.K. Bruce-Vanderpuije was born in 1899 in James Town, British Accra, and would go on to become one of the most significant photographers in Ghanaian history, a figure whose seventy-year career helped forge an authentic visual narrative of Africa entirely outside the colonial gaze. His early education at the Accra Royal School, the Gold Coast’s first formal educational institution established in 1672, sparked a lifelong passion for photography that he would later develop under the mentorship of J.A.C. Holmes before establishing himself as a name to reckon with at the Accra Town Council. Working across government commissions, corporate advertising, nation-shaping historical events, and intimate depictions of everyday life, Bruce-Vanderpuije built a body of work that captured the full cultural breadth of a society on the cusp of independence. Among the small cohort of Ghanaian photographers who rose to prominence in the pre-independence era, he stood apart for the range, depth and sheer volume of his output, a collection that today comprises around 50,000 works. His images did not simply document a nation; they helped define how that nation saw and understood itself, offering a counter-archive to the distorted representations produced by colonial photography. In 1922, he established Deo Gratias studio in Accra, an institution that remains standing today under the custodianship of his granddaughter, Kate Tamakloe. His legacy is a reminder that the act of image-making can be a profound act of cultural sovereignty. J.K. Bruce-Vanderpuije will be represented by @efiegallery at @artdubai Editorial coverage of the special edition of Art Dubai by @artdubai and J.K. Bruce-Vanderpuije #PanAfrican #AfricanArt #Community #CreativeConnect #AfricanArtist

Hassan Mannana is a Moroccan conceptual artist and self-defined anthropologist whose practice sits at a rich and unusual crossroads between traditional craft, the sciences of the body, and the sensory world of materials. Born in 1986 and based in Taroudant, Mannana draws on the visual and tactile languages of Moroccan artistic heritage, working with copper, leather, and wood, while pushing these materials into deeply contemporary territory. His practice is anchored in a sustained inquiry into anatomy, biology, morphology, and physiology, treating the human body not merely as subject matter but as a living metaphor for the tensions and contradictions of modern existence. There is something quietly radical in Mannana’s approach by fusing traditional Moroccan craftsmanship with conceptual frameworks borrowed from the sciences; he refuses the artificial divide between the artisanal and the intellectual, the ancestral and the avant-garde. His works engage multiple senses simultaneously, incorporating olfactory and tactile dimensions that invite the viewer into an embodied encounter rather than a purely visual one. This commitment to the body as both medium and message places his practice in direct conversation with broader questions about how we inhabit, understand, and represent human experience across cultures. Mannana’s work ultimately asks what it means to study the surface of things: skin, material, tradition, and what lies beneath. @hassanmannana will be represented by @venisecadregallery at @artdubai Editorial coverage of the special edition of Art Dubai by @artdubai and @hassanmannana #PanAfrican #AfricanArt #Community #CreativeConnect #AfricanArtist

Aïda Muluneh is a photographer whose stark, stylized portraiture moves fluidly between fact and fiction, excavating the complex realities of postcolonial Africa through a bold and unmistakable visual language. Her subjects, women adorned in face paint and theatrical garments, stand against graphic, high-contrast backdrops, embodying the rituals of daily life while simultaneously performing and interrogating constructions of gender and identity in Addis Ababa. Muluneh’s own biography is inseparable from her practice. Born in Ethiopia, she lived across Yemen, England, Cyprus, and Canada before settling in the United States, a trajectory of movement that deeply informs her sensitivity to belonging, cultural memory, and the politics of representation. Her earlier career as a photojournalist sharpened her eye for truth-telling, grounding her fine-art practice in documentary instincts even as her imagery pushes into the realm of the allegorical and the surreal. Muluneh’s work has entered the permanent collections of some of the world’s most significant institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the National Gallery of Victoria. In 2010, she founded Addis Foto Fest, the first international photography festival in Ethiopia, a landmark act of cultural investment that has since expanded the visibility of African image-making on the global stage. @aidamuluneh will be represented by @efiegallery at @artdubai Editorial coverage of the special edition of Art Dubai by @artdubai and @aidamuluneh #PanAfrican #AfricanArt #Community #CreativeConnect #AfricanArtist

Abdoulaye Konaté is a textile artist whose vibrant, layered compositions transform cloth into a language of memory, resistance, and collective meaning. Working with strips of colored cotton rooted in Malian craft traditions, Konaté creates abstract works that move fluidly between the ancestral and the contemporary, honoring the deep cultural histories embedded in West African textile-making while turning them toward some of the most pressing conversations of our time. His practice has engaged themes as wide-ranging as globalization, climate change, and the AIDS epidemic, demonstrating how fabric can hold and transmit the weight of both local heritage and global crisis. Konaté studied painting at the Institut National des Arts in Bamako, where he continues to live and work, and later at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, Cuba, a cross-continental education that speaks to the kind of South-South exchange that has shaped his expansive worldview. His work has been exhibited across New York, Lagos, London, Paris, and Casablanca, earning him a truly international presence while remaining deeply anchored in the cultural soil of Mali. Recognized as an Officer of the National Order of Mali and a Chevalier of the French Order of Arts and Letters, Konaté is one of the most decorated and celebrated figures in contemporary African art. In his hands, textile is never merely decorative; it is documentary, political, and profoundly human. Abdoulaye Konaté will be represented by @efiegallery at @artdubai Editorial coverage of the special edition of Art Dubai by @artdubai and @Abdoulaye Konaté #PanAfrican #AfricanArt #Community #CreativeConnect #AfricanArtist

Across borders and creative traditions, Art Dubai gathered the art world in powerful ways. From Saudi Arabia to Ghana, These ten artists represent artworks that contribute to a united conversation about bodies, memory, and the circulation of meaning across regions. Different practices, shared urgencies with artists bringing together sculpture, photography, textile, ceramics, and installation to ask how culture moves, what it carries, and what it leaves behind. This is our Art Dubai reflection, a Creative Connect curated encounter with the artists and works that moved us most. Follow the art: @creativeconnectbw 🌍✨ #PanAfrican #AfricanArt #Community #CreativeConnect #AfricanArtist

Cherkaoui works with the Arabic letter as a sculptural and rhythmic element, shifting between scale, from monumental forms to dense, intricate clusters. Through repetition, contrast, and controlled movement, his compositions create dynamic visual fields where letters begin to dissolve into abstraction. In this process, meaning is no longer fixed, and the letter becomes a space for experimentation, presence, and disappearance. “Cherkaoui has completely freed himself from all norms… He invites us to a true celebration of the invisible.” — Abderrahman Benhamza Editorial coverage of Reframing Visibility by @larbicherkaoui #PanAfrican #AfricanArt #Community #CreativeConnect #AfricanArtist

Larbi Cherkaoui, born in 1972 in Marrakech, is a Moroccan visual artist whose practice has been dedicated to the exploration of the Arabic letter for over three decades. Working with patience and precision, he approaches art-making as a meditative and almost spiritual act, with his works held in major public and private collections across North Africa and beyond. Editorial coverage of Reframing Visibility by @larbicherkaoui #PanAfrican #AfricanArt #Community #CreativeConnect #AfricanArtist

L’Atelier 21 presents Une expérience-limite de la lettre, a solo exhibition by Larbi Cherkaoui. The exhibition explores the Arabic letter as both form and gesture, pushing its visual and conceptual boundaries through a deeply experimental approach. Editorial coverage of Reframing Visibility by @galerielatelier21 #PanAfrican #AfricanArt #Community #CreativeConnect #AfricanArtist

Diran’s work is defined by minimal compositions, saturated color, and carefully styled portraiture that balances softness with structure. In SEEING IN BLUE, the color blue becomes a central visual and emotional language, guiding the viewer through themes of spirituality, intimacy, and quiet introspection. His images create a contemplative space where stillness carries meaning, and where seeing becomes an act of feeling. “Blue becomes more than a color; it becomes a language of emotional depth and spirituality.” — Band of Vices Editorial coverage of Reframing Visibility by @oye_diran #PanAfrican #AfricanArt #Community #CreativeConnect #AfricanArtist

Oyè Diran is a Lagos-born, New York-based photographer and director whose practice spans conceptual fashion and fine art photography. Shaped by his upbringing between Lagos and New York, his work draws from Yoruba heritage, vintage family imagery, and cultural memory to construct portraits that center Black identity, femininity, and presence. Editorial coverage of Reframing Visibility by @oye_diran #PanAfrican #AfricanArt #Community #CreativeConnect #AfricanArtis

Band of Vices presents Seeing in Blue, a solo exhibition by Oyè Diran that brings together a series of photographs shaped by intimacy, stillness, and emotional depth. The gallery highlights artists who use visual language to move beyond representation, inviting viewers into spaces where feeling and perception are closely intertwined. Editorial coverage of Reframing Visibility by @bandofvices #PanAfrican #AfricanArt #Community #CreativeConnect #AfricanArtist

Mandy Johnston is a Cape Town–based artist whose work covers sculpture, installation, photography, and printmaking. A graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand, her work has been widely exhibited and recognized in major South African awards, exploring themes of memory, absence, and transformation. Johnston uses unconventional materials to explore fragility and loss. Her work focuses on what remains and what fades, capturing traces of human presence. Through this, she creates quiet, reflective spaces. “I am interested in what is left behind, the subtle traces that speak to presence, absence, and the passing of time.” – Mandy Johnston Editorial coverage of Reframing Visibility by @mandy.johnston.art #PanAfrican #AfricanArt #Community #CreativeConnect #AfricanArtist