AfricAsia: Dissemblance, Otherness, Antinomy—Really?

Une table ronde modérée par Sitor Senghor, directeur artistique de la foire AKAA.

• • Serge Mouangue, artist presented by space Un Gallery
  • King Houndekpinkou, artist presented by Galerie Vallois
  • Aliou Diack, visual artist
  • Ernest Dükü, artist presented by Knust Kunz Gallery 
  • Andy Amadi Okoroafor, Creative Cirector, Curator, Filmmaker, and Publisher

Far from fixed images of cultural opposition, our gathering seeks to question points of resonance, spaces of dialogue, and the intimate pathways that connect these two worlds. West Africa and Asia—and Japan in particular—may at first appear to belong to entirely different universes: distant geographies, distinct histories, and divergent cosmologies. Yet, through the experience of the artists present today, we discover how these worlds can intersect, enrich one another, and reinvent themselves together.

The works of Serge Mouangue, King Houndekpinkou, Aliou Diack, and Ernest Dükü along with the journey of Amadi Okoroafor, bear witness to this encounter. Each, in their own way, engages with Japanese culture—through material, ritual, spirituality, or animism—and brings it into resonance with deeply rooted African heritages. Their practices illuminate unexpected affinities: the relationship to the sacred, attentiveness to invisible forces, the importance of transmission, impermanence, and the vital energy of materials.

Today, therefore, we are not here to speak merely of differences, but of bridges. We aim to explore how art can become a space of sensitive translation, a place where otherness does not mean distance but, rather, a source of creation and connection.

For this journey, let us be guided by the voices and imaginations of the artists, to discover what emerges when two continents regard one another not as strangers, but as mirrors.

In english.