“…The struggle of black people inevitably appear in an intensely cultural form because the social formation in which their distinct political traditions are now manifest has constructed the arena of politics on ground overshadowed by centuries of metropolitan capitalist development, thereby denying them recognition as legitimate politics. Blacks conduct a class struggle in and through race. The BC of race and class cannot be empirically separated, the class character of black struggles is not a result of the fact that blacks are predominantly proletarian, thought this is true…”- (Frank Talk Staff Writers in ‘Azania Salutes Tosh’ – circa 1981)
front cover:
Tosh by Steve Gordon
back cover:
Kippie by Basil Breakey
The Distance Between Yesterday and Tomorrow by Favour Ritaro (Arak Collection, 2025)
The Distance Between Yesterday and Tomorrow was curated by Favour Ritario in 2021. The publication explored the notions of African identity through the works of contemporary East African artists including Sungi Mlengeya, Tahir Carl Karmali, Lemek Tompoika, Eria Nsubuga Sane, Agnes Waruguru, Migadde Adrian, and Aloka Trevor. Favour Ritaro is a Nigerian curator whose research and curatorial work is focused on personal and cultural identities. She was the first ARAK Collection 2021 Curatorial Residency Fellowship Recipient. Exploring themes of memory, migration, place, and gender, the publication aims to dialogue with present-day events and past happenings in hopes of imagining alternative realities in the future. Working with various media, each artist in this book dialogues with the complexities of the African identity, and challenges the preconceived notion of what it means to be African. The book examines the multiple understanding of what it means to be African within historical and political context.