“…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
Worldmaking within Politics of Sight and Space by Sarah Abdu Bushra (Arak Collection, 2025)
Worldmaking within Politics of Sight and Space was curated by Sarah Abdu Bushra in 2020. Sarah was the inaugural fellow for the ARAK Collection Curatorial Residency fellowship. She is an Ethiopian curator of visual and performing arts exhibitions. Anchored through the contested definition and experiences of locality – as it informs the spatial as well as material narratives of artworks present within the ARAK collection, this exhibition attempts to trace the life of selected artworks from their spaces of creation and showcase the less documented modes of practices that birthed them. Through the work of outlining the arts ecosystem of three East African countries (Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda) and their diaspora, the exhibition focuses on what is particular about this triangular nexus, as it relates to the way artists produce work, the way they build/inhabit a studio, to how they form their networks.