África.es: Seven African looks on seven Spanish cities

How do the current most prominent African photographers see a Spanish city when they first arrive in it? What do they look at? What catches their attention and how do they decide to explain it through their images? The exhibition África.es answers these questions; it is an exhibition that brings forward Casa África's celebrations for Africa Day (25th May), which opened yesterday.

África.es shows the result of this project from the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development (AECID) and Casa África, as part of the Arte inVisible programme which for years has been developed by the Department of Cultural Cooperation and Promotion of Cultural and Scientific Relations Department of the AECID. The project consisted of asking seven leading African photographers their view of seven different Spanish urban spaces and this led Mamadou Gomis (Senegal), Patrick Wokmeni (Cameroon), Nii Obodai (Ghana), Arturo Bibang (Equatorial Guinea), Emeka Okereke ( Nigeria), Zanele Muholi (South Africa) and Mohamed Konaté (Mali) to Bilbao, Madrid, Sevilla, Valladolid, Valencia, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Barcelona, ​​cities that were assigned to them and they portrayed for a week.

All those chosen for África.es are emerging artists with a defined relevant path in the creative scene in their countries of origin. The intention is not to carry out descriptive photographic reports of the cities, but turn them into a place where the artist receives the influence of different aspects of it and captures them according to their artistic sensibility, vision and aesthetic approaches. Thus, in some cases we may find explicit references to the city and its inhabitants and, in others, symbolic or conceptual works with a more plastic language.

The institution's headquarters in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria hosts this show until the 2nd August. It will be open from Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 6.30 pm and will have free entry. África.es is made up of fifty photographs that fill two of the exhibition halls of the public diplomacy's consortium belonging to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Government of the Canary Islands and the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.