Exhibition - “The True Size of Africa: Transcontinental Perspectives” at Völklinger Hütte

Arébénor Basséne, Another Sahelian Paradise : Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow #1, 2024. Acrylic, natural pigment, ink and graphite on canvas, 750x200CM [Détail]. Photo: Morel Donou. Courtesy the artist and Selebe Yoon.

Selebe Yoon is pleased to announce the participation of Arébénor Basséne and Sandra Seghir in the collective exhibition “The True Size of Africa: Transcontinental Perspectives” at Völklinger Hütte, in Völklinger, Germany. The exhibition will be on view from 9 November 2024 to 17 August 2025.

“Here rests in God my dear n***, Chim Bebe, deceased 1912 at the age of 26 years.” This epitaph on the gravestone of a man born in the West African colony of Togo at the old cemetery in Saarlouis illustrates just how close Africa is to Germany, also here in Saarland.

Although North Africa already served as the breadbasket to the Roman Empire and numerous independent kingdoms subsequently emerged, the size of the African continent as a whole has been systematically underrepresented on world maps since the time of Mercator. To this day, its geographical scale and global historical significance have been underestimated, despite its prehistoric role as the cradle of humanity.

Besides all this THE TRUE SIZE OF AFRICA also refers to the mostly forced migration of Africans across the globe, with far-reaching consequences to this day.

Exactly 140 years ago, in November 1884, the Berlin Conference was opened, which divided up Africa among the colonial powers without any African participation: Reason enough to take a different look in 2024 at this huge continent and the people who come from it. THE TRUE SIZE OF AFRICA tests approaches that identify traditions of thought, prejudices and stereotypes and enable new perspectives - by means of cultural history and contemporary art, through constant changes of perspective and artistic polyphony.