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Thank you SO much everyone who came to the Savings Bank Foundation DNB's grant exhibition 2025 opening last night🥳 I'm honoured to be nominated in this year's cohort alongside the amazing @ihralill & @katarinaflyfly of PURPOSE CORE and @maybeellinor & @zaynearmstrong ✨️🔥🙌🏾 _________ The annual grant exhibition is regarded as one of Norway’s most significant art awards and has been organized by Oslo Kunstforening since 2008, with support from Sparebankstiftelsen DNB. Since its inception, 83 artists have participated, and 21 have received the grant. This year’s grant exhibition brings together artists who, in different ways, explore identity, community, and the visual and social structures of our time. Ellinor Aurora Aasgaard & Zayne Armstrong examine the individual’s role in late capitalism, where self-optimization, technology, and iconography intertwine in a critical and poetic universe through painting, animation, and text. PURPOSE CORE reflects on the nature of collaboration and the role of art through performative and humorous film manifestos that balance sincerity and cliché, with accessibility as a central theme. Rafiki works with memory, diaspora, and cultural belonging, creating large, beaded tapestries that serve both as mourning cloths and as tributes to heritage and resilience. The exhibition is on view now at @oslo_kunstforening and @deichmanbjorvika ✨️

I'm very happy to show "Conversations on Identity Politics",featuring my person @gisellafrancisca at Norway's largest contemporary art exhibition, The Autumn Exhibition @hostutstillingen !🥳🙌🏿💞 unfortunately I couldn't be at the opening in person but my lovely sisters were my eyes and ears😍 See the whole show at @kunstnerneshus if you're in Oslo👌🏾. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #Msrafiki #kunst #africancontemporaryart #høstutstillingen #artphotography #Africanart #kunstnerneshus #africanartist #ankara #Contemporaryafricanart #africanfabric #afriquette #femalephotographer #afrodysee #womanartist #blackartgang #artlovers  #artphotography #artportrait

About last night at the joint opening of @norwegianrain_tmichael_oslo 's new space and my exhibition "The King Herself", curated by T Michael. What a celebration! congrats @tmichael_bergen & @rainman_outta_bergen on this new chapter at @oslobukta 🥳 Thank you everyone who graced us with their presence -- physical or otherwise🙏🏿 I appreciate you all❤🌻 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #Msrafiki #norwegianrain #afroscandinavian #afronorsk #africancontemporaryart #artistlife #artphotography #Africanart #visualsgang #africanartist #femalephotographer #kunstfoto #artphotographer #womanartist #norskkunst

“Everything is everything, what is meant to be will be.” Alone, Together, Like Beads on a String by Rafiki (@ms.rafiki ) is out on PRAKSIS Presents now. In this text, Rafiki reflects on identity and belonging through language, dress and shared histories. Drawing on Central African philosophies and lived experience across geographies, the text considers culture as something relational and in motion, held together through collective meaning-making rather than fixed tradition. Moving between personal narrative and material inquiry, it traces how objects, images and forms carry memory, negotiate heritage and shape ways of seeing. PRAKSIS Presents Issue 13 African Aesthetics, a Diasporan Perspective Guest-edited by My African Aesthetic (Eunice Nanzala Schumacher, Henry Mainsah and Acayo Penina Laker) @eunicenanzalaschumacher @peninala @mainsah Read the issue at /presents – link in bio Featuring contributions by Rafiki (@ms.rafiki ), Tapiwa Matsinde (@atelier55design ), Prof. Mugendi K. M’Rithaa (@mkmugendi ), Karl Ohiri (@karlohiri ) and Riikka Kassinen (@lagosstudioarchives ). @rafikiartinitiatives @ms.rafiki Images courtesy of Rafiki, Andreas Harvik (Valdres folkemuseum) and Runa Halleraker (Hordaland Kunstsenter) Music: Everything Is Everything by Lauryn Hill

SISTE SJANSE! 📣 Denne uka er siste mulighet til å se utstillingen "Skakke folkedrakter" i Oslo, før den vandrer videre. Fem samtidskunstnere utforsker og utfordrer draktskikker, identitet og håndverkstradisjoner i en utstilling om drakter som er langt fra en draktutstilling. 📅 Siste visningsdag: Søndag 22. februar 🕚 Tirsdag–søndag kl. 11–16 📍 Interkulturelt Museum, Tøyenbekken 5 Kunstnere: @ms.rafiki @linwang66 @marja_karlsen @blandhoel Håvard Kranstad «Skakke folkedrakter» er en vandreutstilling fra @nasjonalmuseet , utviklet i samarbeid med en rekke eksterne faglige og kunstneriske rådgivere. 1, 2, 6: Rafiki, Alene sammen, som perler på en snor, 2023 ©Rafiki, Nicole/BONO 3: Håvard Kranstad, Koll-Krone, 2023 4: Christian Blandhoel, Ny folkemusikk, 2023 5: Flettebord i utstillingen 7: Christian Blandhoel, Subnasjonal folkedrakt, 2023 8: Márjá Karlsen, Láigečála, 2023 9: Lin Wang, Bunad Tattoo Shop, 2023

The 2024-26 artists of Atelier Kunstnerforbundet will soon have been part of the programme for 2 years and will move onto new adventures this summer 🌞 Meet them in their studios in this 4-part posting, and look out for their continued journeys! ✨ Meet Rafiki (b.1989) — her interdisciplinary artworks find their starting point between photography and bead work, textiles, waste materials, and objects imbued with memorial capacities. With a process-based practice, Rafiki’s artworks are not ‘final’, and hold healing, remembrance, and cultural analysis as central. Incorporating symbolism and tools from visual storytelling and oral history, she invokes themes such as forced displacement, war, racialized understandings of Blackness and femininity, and burdened colonial traditions to control place and obliterate temporality. 1. Rafiki in her studio at Atelier Kunstnerforbundet. 2. ‘Sitting with Delcat Idengo’ (2025), one of Rafiki’s large beaded tapestries. 3. From the ongoing project Future Forest Kongo: a collective research- and dialogue project on memory and reconciliation towards a public monument consisting of 60,000 trees to be planted by 2030. 4. Documentation of ‘Alone, together, like beads on a string’ – Rafiki’s contribution to the traveling exhibition ‘Skakke Folkedrakter’ (2023-26) initiated by the National Museum. 5. Documentation from Rafiki Art Initiatives’ project ‘Good Mourning’ (2022) in collaboration with the Intercultural Museum. 📷 Images: 1. Bjørn Wad 2. Oslo Kunstforening / Henrik Follesø Egeland 3. Rafiki 4. Hordaland Kunstsenter / R. Halleraker 5. RAI / Gloria Munto 🧿 @ms.rafiki Atelier @kunstnerforbundet @talentnorge @sparebankstiftelsendnb @bendik_bendik_ @kazmisarah_ @balke___ ✏️ Atelier Kunstnerforbundet is an infrastructural, collective studio programme that fosters artistic and cultural production by offering free-of-charge studios for artists, residencies, and solidarity initiatives with, for, and from communities. The programme was established in 2018 inside one of Scandinavia’s oldest artist-run exhibition spaces, and is funded through project support from Talent Norge, DNB Sparebankstiftelsen, BKH, and Fritt Ord.

Home is a 4 letter word too🧡🌴

Wholesome moments from last week's community dinner at atelier @kunstnerforbundet ✨️ We had the joy of co-organizing a visit from @bonaventurendikung in collaboration with @oca_norway . Grateful for this opportunity to bring together a few people from our growing African diasporic art-making & loving community. This couldn't have happened without the hard work & dedication of @roaverin & @journeyofdodo who put this all beautifully together. We appreciate you🙏🏾❤️ Thank you everyone who made it such a memorable time, including @kolosfoodservice who made the delicious food🫶🏾 more soon!

Cold world, warm hearts💙🩵💙

It is our duty to remember🧡🌴

Gentle reminder from the studio: You don't need permission or approval from anyone. Creativity is a gift we all have, one way or another. Art heals. Use it. Be it 👩🏾‍🎨🖼🧡 I set up this small hangout with my sisters as a reminder to pause, cleanse & refill together🧘🏾‍♀️ Many thanks to my precious @joliejemimah @stellavve_ and @ruthjaimelindquist who brought beauty, elegance and softness to my workspace🍊

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