Third Space Art Foundation

YOUR PERSPECTIVE, YOUR EXPERIENCE. AAVF 2026 THROUGH YOUR EYES. Did you photograph the African Art in Venice Forum 2026? Some of the most meaningful images are often the ones taken by the people who experienced the conversations with us. The unexpected angles, fleeting moments, encounters, and details we may have missed. If you captured photos or videos during this year’s Forum, we’d love to see them. Please send your files in the highest resolution possible via WeTransfer (or any file-sharing platform), together with the credit name you’d like us to use. Selected images may be featured across our social media, website, and future promotional materials, always with full credit. Help us tell the story of this edition through the many perspectives that made it possible. [email protected] Photo credit: @lordkubolsstudio

1922 Revisited: Live Arts Program Presented by @thirdspaceartfoundation In collaboration with @ecc_italy and @aavf Program Curator: @janinesytsma Curatorial Producer: @lehuntnouveau Program partners: @fca_ghana @NEWMEDIA @uarkart @uark.arthistory @ccalagos @theafricacenter Venice Biennale | May 5–9 Thursday, May 7 Kayeyei: Archive embodied Victoria-Idongesit Udondian with Bernard Akoi-Jackson and the debut of Edikan Lo Verde Kayeyei: Archive embodied is a durational performance in which bodies become living repositories of history, labor, and global circulation. Performers continuously layer secondhand garments onto themselves, inspecting, tagging, and wearing each piece as if cataloguing an archive. As the layers accumulate, movement becomes restricted, identities obscured, and the body strained under the weight of material histories embedded in the clothes. 📷: @francescabottazzin_ph Follow for more reflections on 1922 Revisited and announcements about future programs Additional information on the foundation and programs → #1922Revisited #VeniceBiennale @vickolors @benjoonam

1922 Revisited: Live Arts Program Presented by @thirdspaceartfoundation In collaboration with @aavf and @ecc_italy Program Curator: @janinesytsma Curatorial Producer: @lehuntnouveau Program partners: @fca_ghana @NEWMEDIA @uarkart @uark.arthistory @ccalagos @theafricacenter Venice Biennale | May 5–9 Wednesday, May 6 ESCAPE THE BOXES Zora Snake and Wilfried Nakeu Zora Snake and Wilfried Nakeu draw on the subversive narrative of to propose a performative trio involving a visual artist, a choreographer, and audience participation within a transformed space, where silence awakens the stories obscured by the hierarchical display of artworks. The performative act reimagines a reclaiming of original memories that have been stripped of their authentic function. For the artists this becomes a way to recontextualize the sacredness of works connected to the living, in relation to perspectives of repair and healing from the “fragments of history.” 📷: @lordkubolsstudio Follow for more reflections on 1922 Revisited and announcements about future programs Additional information on the foundation and programs → #1922revisited #VeniceBiennale @zorasnake @wilfriednakeu

1922 Revisited: Live Arts Program Presented by @thirdspaceartfoundation In collaboration with @aavf and @ecc_italy Program Curator: @janinesytsma Curatorial Producer: @lehuntnouveau Program partners: @fca_ghana @NEWMEDIA @uarkart @uark.arthistory @ccalagos @theafricacenter Venice Biennale | May 5–9 Wednesday, May 6 The Dash Wura-Natasha Ogunji and ruby onyinyechi amanze The Dash is a performance of two runners who race in slow motion for exactly one hour. The performance may be staged within an interior or exterior space: the fixed space of a room; an open plaza; tight city corridors; or from a start line to the finish. The spectators play an important role in this staged competition. As vocal timekeepers, they collectively signal the start time, the half-way mark, and crossing of the finish line. In their embodiment of restraint and reverberation, collectivity and calm, the performers incorporate facial expressions, hand signals and other gestures as critical choreography and necessary glitch. This movement-language references and riffs from the archive and research of the African sculptures of the 1922 Venice Biennale; track and field competitions; and the languages of drawing shared by amanze and Ogunji. The title of the performance–with its multiple meanings–offers an additional layer of poetic possibility to this endeavor. A dash is a quick run, a punctuation mark, and in Nigeria, a gift, or a bribe. Turning to the grammatical dash, the race could be conceptualized as break or interruption. Inviting separation from the usual rushing of time, the performance might also be read as the belaboured writing of a long run-on sentence. 📷: @francescabottazzin_ph Follow @thirdspaceartfoundation for more reflections on 1922 Revisited and announcements about future programs Additional information on the foundation and programs → #1922revisited #venicebiennale @wuraogunji @ruby_onyinyechi_draws

1922 Revisited: Live Arts Program Presented by @thirdspaceartfoundation In collaboration with @aavf and @ecc_italy Program Curator: @janinesytsma Curatorial Producer: @lehuntnouveau Program partners: @fca_ghana @NEWMEDIA @uarkart @uark.arthistory @ccalagos @theafricacenter Venice Biennale | May 5–9 Wednesday, May 6 Screening and Panel Discussion Waves of Ash: Navigating Liminal Waters and the Unfinished Archive Tsige Tafesse moderates a conversation with Tsedaye Makonnen and Jermay Michael Gabriel Cappellin on Waves of Ash. Together they consider burning as both destruction and transformation, and what it means to reread transmitted history through a critical gaze across layered memory and forced crossings. 📷: @francescabottazzin_ph @lordkubolsstudio Follow @thirdspaceartfoundation for more reflections on 1922 Revisited and announcements about future programs Additional information on the foundation and programs → #1922revisited #venicebiennale

1922 Revisited: Live Arts Program Presented by @thirdspaceartfoundation In collaboration with @aavf and @ecc_italy Program Curator: @janinesytsma Curatorial Producer: @lehuntnouveau Program partners: @fca_ghana @NEWMEDIA @uarkart @uark.arthistory @ccalagos @theafricacenter Venice Biennale | May 5–9 Tuesday, May 5 Openings and Meanderings: Supplications for More Accessible Futures Bernard-Akoi Jackson in the stead of Jelili Atiku 📷: @francescabottazzin_ph @lordkubolsstudio Follow @thirdspaceartfoundation for more reflections on 1922 Revisited and announcements about future programs Additional information on the foundation and programs → #1922revisited #venicebiennale @benjoonam @blaxtarlines @janinesytsma

A few shots from the illuminating panel, Traditions Today: Performing and Processing Toward a Holistic History at the African Art in Venice Forum on Tuesday! @aavf @ebuhlanti_republik @homannla @amapleleafonthewind @wuraogunji @ruby_onyinyechi_draws @benjoonam Evoking In Minor Keys’s considerations of “procession,” what does it mean to make and innovate so-called “traditional” art practices, like West African urban masquerades, in a contemporary environment? How do performance artists allow us to empathize and embody experiences of epistemic repair? Considered together, masquerade and performance art practices offer us paths for seeing how “classical” and “contemporary” art are not separate realms but can be considered part of a continuously evolving field. Presented by African Art Dialogues with the National Museum of African Art Smithsonian Moderator:Khanyisile Mbongwa, Curator of Art in the Public Realm at Amos Rex - curatorial theorist, sociologist, and Sangoma (ancestral-indigenous healer), (South Africa) In conversation with: Hervé Youmbi, New African Masquerades artist/curator (Cameroon) *Amanda Maples, Lisa Homann, and Jordan Fenton (New African Masquerades curators) (USA) David Sanou and Chief Ekpenyong Bassey Nsa (New African Masquerades artists) * (Burkina Faso and Nigeria) Wura-Natasha Ogunji, artist (US-Nigeria; 1922 Revisited: Live Arts Program Participant) ruby onyinyechi amanze, artist (Nigeria-US; 1922 Revisited: Live Arts Program Participant) Bernard Akoi-Jackson, artist, writer (Ghana; 1922 Revisited: Live Arts Program Participant) Photo credit: @lordkubolsstudio

1922 Revisited: Live Arts Program unfolds across Venice as a series of live performances, a screening, and a panel discussion staged at Hotel Monaco, the European Cultural Centre’s Marinaressa Gardens, and other sites throughout the city. Next: Victoria-Idongesit Udondian’s Kayeyei: Archive Embodied Kayeyei: Archive embodied is a durational performance in which bodies become living repositories of history, labor, and global circulation. Performers continuously layer secondhand garments onto themselves, inspecting, tagging, and wearing each piece as if cataloguing an archive. As the layers accumulate, movement becomes restricted, identities obscured, and the body strained under the weight of material histories embedded in the clothes. Drawing from the global secondhand clothing trade and its afterlives in places like Kantamanto Market in Accra, the performance foregrounds the invisible labor, migration, and environmental burden carried by these garments. Over time, the archive exceeds the body’s capacity to contain it, collapsing into the surrounding space as garments are shed, forming sculptural residues. The work reflects on the impossibility of fully holding or representing these histories, positioning the body as both carrier and site of breakdown within global systems of circulation. @ecc_italy @ccalagos @fca_ghana @NEWMEDIA @aavf @uarkart @theafricacenter Brief Context: ‘Kayayei’(she who carries the burden) are the women head porters in the market, many of whom have migrated from northern Ghana in search of work in the south. The scale of the secondhand clothing trade bears heavily, literally and figuratively, on their bodies. In Hausa, kaya means load, luggage, or burden, where the word kayayei’is derived from. Follow for more performance announcements Venice Biennale | May 5–9 Full program including new “at a glance” section →

Bernard Akoi-Jackson’s Openings and meanderings: supplications for more accessible futures is presented in the stead of Jelili Atiku’s Eyes No Dey Forget Wetin Heart See. Atiku's work features a mystical figure embodying the earth’s energy, embarking on a ‘Luminous Pilgrimage,’ a deliberate, trance-like journey that weaves through urban landscapes, integrating Orisha rituals with psychogeography and dérive. This immersive experience invites the audience to embody their true selves, confront societal expectations, and tap into the magic within and around them. Through this ritualistic dérive, participants are encouraged to surrender to the city’s rhythms, sensing the emotional resonance of spaces, and allowing the environment to shape their inner landscapes. The performance promotes self-discovery, transformation, and profound connection, addressing cultural identity fragmentation, reclamation, and restitution. Drawing from African art and epistemologies, Eyes No Dey Forget Wetin Heart See reframes the gaze, reimagines narratives, and reclaims silenced voices. It’s an act of historical reclamation, seeking to liberate African art from colonial contexts. By embracing radical and mystical presence, the performance transcends the ordinary, tapping into the mysterious, and finding meaning in the unseen. The Luminous Pilgrimage is a site of resistance, where participants confront dominant narratives, and reclaim their stories. It’s a journey into the heart of the unknown, where the raw essence of being is revealed, and profound connections are forged. @ecc_italy @aavforum @theafricacenter @fca_ghana @ccalagos @NEWMEDIA @uarkart @blaxtarlines

The African Art in Venice Forum is underway! 📷: @lordkubolsstudio @boluikuemonisan

Third Space Art Foundation is also proud to collaborate with the European Cultural Centre, hosting several of the 1922: Live Arts Program performances in the ECC Giardini Marinaressa! The European Cultural Centre (ECC), founded in 2002 by Dutch artist René Rietmeyer, has developed into a dynamic platform dedicated to fostering cultural exchange on a global scale. Bringing together a diverse network of practitioners, thinkers, and institutions, ECC is grounded in a commitment to engaging the urgent questions shaping our contemporary world. @ecc_italy

1922 Revisited: Live Arts Program unfolds across Venice as a series of live performances, a screening, and a panel discussion staged at Hotel Monaco, the European Cultural Centre’s Marinaressa Gardens, and other sites throughout the city. Next: Bernard Akoi-Jackson’s Untitled: Flaggings IN MEMORIAM in the BLUES on some CUES and when WAX ain’t so LOST (a sketchy score for some processional gestures and an eventual celebratory discussion) The work unfolds as a series of performative interventions manifest as processional gestures, fictive liturgical invocations, leading eventually to a day of collective re-membering (a gathering). These actions hinge tangentially on observations made from the contemporary public sphere, but are also somehow inspired by visual, textual, and gestural vocabularies culled from a variety of sources. Some of the registers may be recognized as codified vestiges from antiquity, whilst others also emerge spontaneously from present experience(s). The entire experience comprises the employment of strategies of communal/participatory activation of shared public and private spaces. The interventions present over three seasons or sessions: a libation-[al] season involves the pseudo-ritual preparation and cleansing of sites identified and designated for the hoisting of flags and standards; a habit-[ual] season refers to the actual hoisting of flags and indigo-dyed standards at the designated sites; an agyina[-al] season where a collective remembering is acknowledged through discussion and the invocation of an almost eucharistic finale. @ecc_italy @ccalagos @NEWMEDIA @aavf @uarkart @fca_ghana @theafricacenter @blaxtarlines