In this public talk, Dr Kim Gurney shares the innovative working principles that independent art spaces in fast-changing cities in Africa have in common as they navigate conditions of uncertainty and accelerated flux.
These key principles are at the heart of her latest book, Panya Routes: Independent art spaces in Africa (2022), produced from research conducted whilst formerly affiliated to UCT’s African Centre for Cities (ACC).
Kim made correlations between curatorial strategies and everyday urban innovations to surface these findings. The featured spaces span five different countries: GoDown Art Centre (Nairobi, Kenya), ANO Institute of Arts & Knowledge (Accra, Ghana), Townhouse Gallery (Cairo, Egypt), Zoma Museum (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), and Nafasi Art Space (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania). They all self-assemble infrastructures of various kinds through refusals and reimaginations, with implications for new modes of institution-building and thinking about city futures.
About the book