Decolonisation Isn’t a Trend—It’s a Structural Shift

What Does Decolonisation Really Mean?

Too often, decolonisation is reduced to a PR-friendly term—returning a few artefacts, issuing vague apologies, hosting a one-off exhibition on identity. But genuine decolonisation means restructuring power: deciding whose stories are told, by whom, and for whom. It challenges epistemologies, provenance, funding models, and exhibition logic. This requires curators with deep cultural literacy, contextual understanding, and lived experience—roles African curators are uniquely positioned to fill, not just for African art, but for global reimaginings of how knowledge is created and shared.

Who’s Leading This Shift?

• Koyo Kouoh (Senegal): As the Executive Director of Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town, Kouoh has transformed the museum into a pan-African platform challenging Eurocentric art models, foregrounding artists from across the continent with rigour and care.
• Osei Bonsu (Ghana/UK): A curator at Tate Modern, he plays a critical role in how African art is framed within Western institutions, advocating for long-term investment in African narratives.
• Aindrea Emelife (Nigeria/UK): At the Museum of West African Art in Benin City, she’s shaping the future of restitution dialogue and curating from a distinctly Nigerian lens, grounded in heritage.
• Azu Nwagbogu (Nigeria): Founder of LagosPhoto and the African Artists’ Foundation, Nwagbogu’s curatorial work bridges contemporary visual culture with urgent social commentary.
• Gabi Ngcobo (South Africa): An influential academic and curator, Ngcobo has curated globally—including the 10th Berlin Biennale—and continues to push institutions to reckon with their structural biases.

More Than Representation

This isn’t about checking boxes or increasing visibility. African curators offer methodological challenges to traditional curatorship. Their exhibitions often embrace multiplicity, oral history, spatial hybridity, and ritual aesthetics. By stepping away from white cubes and linear chronologies, they introduce community-centred, affective, and even speculative modes of display. In doing so, they undo the idea of the museum as a fixed authority, replacing it with a space of dialogue and transformation.

Building New Ecosystems

Alongside institutional roles, many African curators are also building new infrastructures for knowledge and access. Initiatives such as RAW Material Company in Dakar (a think tank for art and society), Contemporary And (C&) in Berlin, and Afrikanizm are leading curatorial education, digital publishing, and collector development. These ecosystems are nurturing the next generation of curators while resisting extractive and colonial dynamics still prevalent in global art circuits.

The Stakes Are Global

At a time when museums face increasing calls for accountability, diversity, and restitution, African curators are not optional—they are essential. Their work reveals the gaps, silences, and distortions that have long been normalised. They ask different questions, reframe the canon, and imagine futures that are not centred in the Global North.

African curators are not the future—they are the present. And without them, the museum cannot be decolonised. It can only be redesigned on the same old terms.