Akin Euba is a Nigerian composer, musicologist, and pianist.
Duro Ladipọ (1931–1978) was one of the best known and critically acclaimed Yoruba dramatists who emerged from postcolonial Africa. Writing solely in the Yoruba language, he captivated the symbolic spirit of Yoruba mythologies in his plays, which were later adapted to other media such as photography, television and cinema. His most famous play, Ọba kò so, a dramatization of the traditional Yoruba story of how Ṣango became the Orisha of Thunder, received international acclaim at the first Commonwealth Arts Festival in 1965 and on a European tour, where a Berlin critic, Ulli Beier, compared Ladipọ to Karajan. Ladipo usually acted in his own plays.
Philip Kwame Apagya is a Ghanaian photographer who specialises in colour studio portraits against painted backdrops. He lives and works in Shama, Ghana.
Obiora Udechukwu is a Nigerian painter and poet.
Christopher Uchefuna Okeke, known as Uche Okeke, was a modern Nigerian artist.
Chief Horst Ulrich Beier, commonly known as Ulli Beier, was a German editor, writer and scholar who had a pioneering role in developing literature, drama and poetry in Nigeria, as well as literature, drama and poetry in Papua New Guinea. His second wife, Georgina Beier, born in London, had a similarly instrumental role in stimulating the visual arts during their residencies in both Nigeria and Papua New Guinea.
Twins Seven Seven, born Omoba Taiwo Olaniyi Oyewale-Toyeje Oyelale Osuntoki in Ogidi, Kogi State, Nigeria, was a Nigerian painter, sculptor and musician. He was an itinerant singer and dancer before he began his career as an artist, first attending in 1964 an Mbari Mbayo workshop conducted by Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier in Osogbo, a Yoruba town in south-western Nigeria. Twins Seven Seven went on to become one of the best known artists of the Osogbo School.
Chief Jimoh Buraimoh is a Nigerian painter and artist. Chief Buraimoh is one of the most influential artists to emerge from the 1960s workshops conducted by Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier in Osogbo, Osun State, Nigeria. Since then, he has become one of the best known artists from Osogbo.
Ayo Bankole was a composer and organist from the Yoruba ethnic group in southwest Nigeria.
Rainer Polak is an ethnomusicologist and djembe drummer who has researched in the field of West African celebration music performances and written in the field of ethnomusicology.
Abrie Fourie is a South African born artist. He currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Contemporary African art is commonly understood to be art made by artists in Africa and the African diaspora in the post-independence era. However, there are about as many understandings of contemporary African art as there are curators, scholars and artists working in that field. All three terms of this "wide-reaching non-category [sic]" are problematic in themselves: What exactly is "contemporary", what makes art "African", and when are we talking about art and not any other kind of creative expression? Western scholars and curators have made numerous attempts at defining contemporary African art in the 1990s and early 2000s and proposed a range of categories and genres. They triggered heated debates and controversies especially on the foundations of postcolonial critique. Recent trends indicate a far more relaxed engagement with definitions and identity ascriptions. The global presence and entanglement of Africa and its contemporary artists have become a widely acknowledged fact that still requires and provokes critical reflection, but finds itself beyond the pressure of self-justification.
Chika Okeke-Agulu is an Igbo-Nigerian artist, art historian, art curator, and blogger specializing in African and African Diaspora art history. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
Nandipha Mntambo is a South African artist who has become famous for her sculptures, videos and photographs that focus on human female body and identity by using natural, organic materials.
Ruth Sacks is a South African artist who lives and works in Johannesburg. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the South African Research Chair Initiative (SARChI) for Social Change at Fort Hare University. Sacks holds a PhD (Arts) from the University of the Witwatersrand where she was a fellow at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER). Her third artist book, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under Seas, was launched in 2013. She is a laureate of the HISK in Ghent. She was one of the facilitators of the artist-run project space the Parking Gallery, hosted by the Visual Arts Network of South Africa (VANSA) in Johannesburg.
Johan Thom, is a visual artist who works across video, installation, performance and sculpture. He has been described as one of South Africa’s foremost performance artists.
Amarachi Okafor is a Nigerian artist. Her works of art in the last couple of years have focused on culture, religion, history, gender relations and human sexuality. She has also used her art to comment on topical issues, like the spread of the Ebola virus in Africa. Okafor is part of a group of artists who came from the University of Nigeria, and who are exploring more experimental forms of art.
The Lagos carnival also known as the Fanti or Caretta Carnival of Lagos, is the most prominent in West Africa. The carnival is usually held during the Lagos Black Heritage Festival, a colorful folk festival which holds annually in Lagos. The origins of the carnival dates back to the Lagos colonial period when the Brazilian former slave returnees came back to reside in Lagos in the 19th century. The carnival was re-instated in 2010. The event is usually centered on Lagos Island, filled with troop displays of costumes and various forms of entertainment including music and dancing. The carnival portrays an eclectic mixture of Nigerian, Brazilian and Cuban heritage of the city.
Black Orpheus was a Nigeria-based literary journal founded in 1957 by German expatriate editor and scholar Ulli Beier that has been described as "a powerful catalyst for artistic awakening throughout West Africa". Its name derived from a 1948 essay by Jean-Paul Sartre, "Orphée Noir", published as a preface to Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache, edited by Léopold Sédar Senghor. Beier wrote in an editorial statement about the fact that "it is still possible for a Nigerian child to leave a secondary school with a thorough knowledge of English literature, but without even having heard of Léopold Sédar Senghor or Aimé Césaire", so Black Orpheus became a platform for Francophone as well as Anglophone writers. In 1961, Beier also founded the Mbari Club, a cultural centre for African writers, which was closely connected with Black Orpheus. The magazine ceased publication in 1975.
Emmanuel Eni - Blackman in European kitchen - is a Nigerian painter, sculptor, multimedia and performance artist, poet and philosopher.
