Art News ·
Art News: Top 10 Contemporary African Artists of 2026
By Whitebank Fine Art
In 2026 contemporary African art has been at the centre of the international calendar. The main exhibition of the Venice Biennale, In Minor Keys, was conceived by the Cameroonian curator Koyo Kouoh (1967–2025), the first African woman appointed to direct it, and realised by the team she chose; it runs in the Giardini and the Arsenale until 22 November. Its more than a hundred artists include the Kenyan painter Kaloki Nyamai, whose work is on our cover, and the Ghanaian-British painter Godfried Donkor, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo has its first national pavilion, with Sammy Baloji among nine artists. This autumn Paris, Brussels and Philadelphia have major solo shows, and in London the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair is at Somerset House from 15 to 18 October.
This is our choice of ten artists who defined the year, picked for what they showed and made in 2026 rather than for prices. For the market side, see our round-up of the ten top auction sales by contemporary African artists since 2023.
In Minor Keys in the Giardini on the preview day, 6 May 2026. Photo: Jennifer 8. Lee/WikiPortraits, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
1. Ibrahim Mahama
Few artists have had a bigger year. Ibrahim Mahama, born in Tamale in Ghana in 1987, topped ArtReview's Power 100 in 2025, the first African artist to do so, and in April the city of Kassel gave him the 2026 Arnold Bode Prize, named after the founder of documenta. He is known for the jute sacks, used across Ghana to carry cocoa and charcoal, that he and his collaborators stitch into vast patchworks and drape over buildings; in Venice in 2015 he lined a whole corridor of the Arsenale with them.
Ibrahim Mahama at Art Basel, June 2025. Photo: Bea Phi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
On 22 October he opens The Harvest Season at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, filling the whole of its new building on the place du Palais-Royal until 28 February 2027. The show takes its cue from the art centres he has founded in Tamale since 2019, and nine other artists and collectives show with him, among them the photographer James Barnor.
The Fondation Cartier on the place du Palais-Royal, Paris, March 2026. Photo: Mbzt, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
2. Wangechi Mutu
Wangechi Mutu, born in Nairobi in 1972 and working between Nairobi and New York, has two major works in In Minor Keys. In the Arsenale is SimbiSiren, a bronze water spirit named after the simbi, the freshwater guardians of Kongo belief. In the Central Pavilion in the Giardini, her installation In The End, Where All Began, EdEN centres on MothersMound, a great mound in the form of a pregnant belly and breasts drawn from Makonde plate masks, while Sweeper, a broom of branches and human hair, sweeps red earth and coffee grounds into circles. Her gallery, Victoria Miro, showed new collage paintings of water spirits in Venice over the summer.
The Arsenale on the press preview day, 6 May 2026; Mutu's SimbiSiren is shown in this part of the exhibition. Photo: Jennifer 8. Lee/WikiPortraits, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
3. William Kentridge
William Kentridge, born in Johannesburg in 1955, has shown across Europe this year. The largest exhibition is I am not me, the horse is not mine at Bozar in Brussels, until 7 March 2027: a survey from the early 1980s to now, with site-specific works including a monumental Ubu wall drawing. He is also Bozar's first Grand Invité, with performances, concerts and talks through the season. Earlier in the year Kunsthalle Praha gave him his first major exhibition in the Czech Republic.
William Kentridge in 2025. Photo: Mozamaniac, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Bozar, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Photo: Trougnouf (Benoit Brummer), CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
In London, Goodman Gallery in Cork Street has the premiere of A Nicely Built City (Never Resists Destruction), the twelfth of his Drawings for Projection films, until 7 November. The drawings the film was made from are shown with it, along with six figural sculptures made with the costume designer Greta Goiris.
Fire Walker, by William Kentridge and Gerhard Marx, on Bishopsgate in the City of London, October 2016. Photo: Brokentaco, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
4. Michael Armitage
Michael Armitage, born in Nairobi in 1984, is the subject of The Promise of Change at Palazzo Grassi, the Pinault Collection's museum on the Grand Canal, open since March and until 10 January 2027. It covers ten years of his painting, new work among it, alongside many of the studies behind the pictures. Armitage paints on bark cloth rather than canvas. In Nairobi this spring, the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute, which he founded, showed his work with that of Maria Lassnig and Chelenge Van Rampelberg in an exhibition he curated.
Palazzo Grassi on the Grand Canal, photographed in 2016. Photo: Wolfgang Moroder, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
5. Otobong Nkanga
Otobong Nkanga, born in Kano in Nigeria in 1974 and based in Antwerp, made the work that greets visitors to the main exhibition in the Giardini. For Soft Offerings to Silenced Voices and to All Who Have Turned to Dust she clad the four columns of the Central Pavilion's façade in locally made brick, hung with ceramic pots of plants whose roots and vines are meant to cover the columns by November, with Murano glass forms modelled on a West African pumpkin and twelve ceramic tablets of poems and drawings. A second work, And Still, Here We Are, turns Carlo Scarpa's sculpture garden into a place to sit and pause.
Work by Otobong Nkanga in her exhibition The Encounter That Took a Part of Me at Nottingham Contemporary, 2016. Photo: Clem Rutter, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
6. El Anatsui
El Anatsui, born in Ghana in 1944 and based in Nsukka in Nigeria since the 1970s, began the year with two exhibitions at White Cube in Asia, in Seoul in March and April and in Hong Kong until May. Both showed a new kind of metal hanging, made to be seen from both sides, with no front or back. On 19 December the Philadelphia Museum of Art opens El Anatsui: Prints and Play, more than 90 works across five decades, some printed from cassava graters, market trays and newspaper printing plates; it runs until 2 May 2027. In London his Man's Cloth hangs in the British Museum, and Behind the Red Moon filled the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in 2023 and 2024.
El Anatsui, Man's Cloth, 1998–2001, in the British Museum. Photo: hahnchen, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
7. Gabrielle Goliath
The South African artist Gabrielle Goliath was commissioned to represent South Africa in Venice with Elegy, the project she began in 2015 in which singers hold a single note, one after another, for an hour, each performance in memory of a woman or LGBTQ+ person killed in gender-based or sexual violence. In January the culture minister cancelled the commission, objecting to one part of the work, and after a court challenge failed the national pavilion stayed empty. Elegy was shown independently instead, in the church of Sant'Antonin in Castello from May to July.
Sant'Antonin in Castello, where Elegy was shown in Venice. Photo: Jennifer 8. Lee/WikiPortraits, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
It has now come to London: Elegy opened at Ibraaz on 8 October and runs until 17 January 2027.
A banner for Elegy in Venice, May 2026. Photo: Jennifer 8. Lee/WikiPortraits, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
8. Njideka Akunyili Crosby
Njideka Akunyili Crosby, born in Enugu in Nigeria in 1983 and working in Los Angeles, was commissioned this year for the first official portrait of the Obamas at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. Her large interiors, layered with photo transfers from Nigerian magazines and family pictures, were also in Ideas of Africa at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which closed in July.
Njideka Akunyili Crosby in 2014, interviewed by the Bronx Museum Teen Council. Photo: Bronx Museum Teen Council, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
9. Amoako Boafo
Amoako Boafo, born in Accra in 1984, has his first solo exhibition in Italy, It Doesn't Have to Always Make Sense, at the Museo di Palazzo Grimani in Venice until 22 November, made with Gagosian and hung in the sixteenth-century rooms of the palace. His portraits, often painted with his fingers, are now in museum collections including Tate, which acquired Blank stare in 2025, and a solo show at Mariane Ibrahim in Paris follows this autumn.
Amoako Boafo in his studio, 2020. Photo: Francis Kokoroko, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
10. Julie Mehretu
Julie Mehretu, born in Addis Ababa in 1970 and working in New York, showed new paintings at Marian Goodman in New York in the spring, in Our Days, Like a Shadow (a non-abiding hauntology). K21 in Düsseldorf gave her her first major exhibition in Germany for fifteen years, KAIROS/Hauntological Variations, which includes student works never shown before. She also has three of the ten sales in our auction round-up, led by $10.7 million in November 2023.
Julie Mehretu in 2015. Photo: U.S. Department of State, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
1-54 at Somerset House, 15 to 18 October
The 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair returns to Somerset House for its fourteenth London edition, with public days from Friday 16 to Sunday 18 October. This year it adds a section for modernist artists from Africa and its diaspora, with an exhibition, West Wind, curated by Nancy Dantas, and The Gallery of Everything is showing the work of the Senegalese sculptor Seyni Awa Camara (1945–2026). While you are in London, Kentridge is at Goodman Gallery until 7 November and Goliath's Elegy is at Ibraaz until January.
The Edmond J. Safra Fountain Court at Somerset House, April 2024. Photo: Jim Osley, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Owning work by these artists
Most of these artists sell through a small number of galleries, and for contemporary work the history of a piece matters as much as the image: which gallery first sold it, when, and on what terms. Keep the invoice, the date of purchase and any resale agreement with the work. Our guide to African artists covers the painters, sculptors and photographers we handle, modern and contemporary.
If you own a work by one of these artists and are thinking of selling, send us photographs for a free valuation. There is no obligation to sell, and we act for you rather than for the saleroom.
Cover: paintings by the Kenyan artist Kaloki Nyamai in In Minor Keys, the main exhibition of the 2026 Venice Biennale. Photo: Jennifer 8. Lee/WikiPortraits, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Exhibitions
