Contemporary art is at a peak, and African artists are playing a huge part in that. A new generation is emerging, more experimental, cross-disciplinary, and working with a freedom that feels distinct from what came before. Their African identity is present in their work, but it is not the whole story. What they are building is worth paying attention to. These are five names we think you should know.
Zwelendaba is a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, printmaking, installation, performance, and video. His work sits at the tension between Xhosa cultural tradition and the contemporary forces of capitalism and nationalism, questioning what collective Black identity looks like in a country still working through its own history. Earlier this year he collaborated with Ben Stanwix to create Thaba Nchu, a monumental tapestry reinterpreting archival images, which won the Investec Emerging Artist Award at the Cape Town Art Fair. He is a consistent presence across South African art fairs and his trajectory is one that is undoubtably going upward.
Ogungbe is a Lagos-based artist whose practice combines photography, weaving, and collage. His work is centered around weaving, he physically weaves strips of photographs together, building layered compositions that engage with memory, identity, and community. The resulting works are fragmented and textured, each woven image resembling the perforated edges of a postal stamp. He uses family archives and environments from his hometown Badagry as his primary source material. He has shown at Paris Photo and Felix Art Fair, and his debut solo exhibition Home opened in Lagos to strong reception.
Keïta works almost exclusively in pencil, which sounds like a limitation until you see what he does with it. Born in Abidjan in 1992, he discovered African art history through a university course in Atlanta while studying economics, a detour that redirected everything. His influences run from African statuary to cubism to the Ivorian vohou-vohou movement to jazz, and the work carries all of it. His figures break down into geometric shapes, precise and deliberate, creating a visual language that is entirely his own. His most recent solo Goumbé in Abidjan explored post-colonial national identity through a nearly disappeared cultural movement. Represented by Galerie Cécile Fakhoury across Abidjan, Dakar, and Paris.
Marsil is a Paris-based artist working across painting and textile. Her paintings are immediately striking with bold warm tones, simplified figures, and objects that carry just as much presence as the people holding them. She uses photographs as a starting point, but the paintings never feel like documentation, each one sits somewhere between a memory and something invented. She studied at the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and has developed a visual language that is entirely her own.
Ogunsanya studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London, and it shows in the way she thinks about her paintings as objects rather than images. She designs and builds hand-painted laser-cut wooden frames that hold each work, so the painting and its housing are a single thing, straddling the line between image and sculpture. Her subject matter is emotional and Yoruba-inflected — women in communion, indigo as a color of cosmic significance, the quiet power of female alliance within patriarchal structures. Currently a finalist for the 2026 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, shortlisted from over 5,000 submissions worldwide.
Contemporary art is at a peak, and African artists are playing a huge part in that. A new generation is emerging — more experimental, cross-disciplinary, and working with a freedom that feels distinct from what came before. Their African identity is present in their work, but it is not the whole story. What they are building is worth paying attention to. These are five names we think you should know.
Leandro Mbomio Nsue, often called “The Black Picasso,” was a groundbreaking sculptor from Equatorial Guinea whose work merged Bantu identity with European technique. Trained in Spain and connected to figures like Salvador Dalí, Mbomio used his art to explore themes of power, memory, and African pride.
La Sapologie is more than bold suits and bright colours; it’s a culture where style becomes a living art form. Born from a colonial past, the Sapeurs turned European dress codes into something personal and powerful. From Brazzaville to Kinshasa, they continually reinvent what luxury means, blending designer pieces with local touches. This is a style of pride, resistance, and a reminder that fashion can rewrite history.