The Gallery as Living Space: How African Art Institutions Are Reinventing Themselves
A new generation of African galleries is rejecting the white cube and building spaces that belong to their communities.
The gallery is also a restaurant, a bookshop, a performance space, and, on the first Sunday of every month, a church. This is not a compromise. It is a philosophy.
The space is called The Compound, and it occupies a converted warehouse in Accra's industrial district. Its founder, Nana Adwoa Asante, spent ten years working in galleries in London and New York before returning to Ghana with a conviction that the Western gallery model — the white cube, the hushed reverence, the art as object of contemplation — was fundamentally wrong for Africa.
'Art in Africa has always been embedded in life,' she says. 'It's not separate from the market, the ceremony, the community. The gallery as a separate space for art is a colonial import. We're trying to undo that.'
The Compound is one of a growing number of African art spaces that are experimenting with what a gallery can be. In Lagos, the Nike Art Gallery has long operated as a cultural center as much as a commercial gallery. In Nairobi, the Kuona Trust provides studio space, residencies, and community programming alongside its exhibition program. In Dakar, the Biennale has always been as much a city-wide festival as an art event.