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29 August All day
29 August All day
Marking the conclusion of When We See Us, the symposium brings together artists and curators to consider what a century of Black figuration means within our contemporary times.
Curated by Tawanda Appiah, it extends the histories, artistic lineages and conceptual nuances that run through the exhibition. It opens a space for reflection on painting as self-authorship and embodiment, alongside archival memory, ancestral presence and imagined futures. Attending closely to the material and formal qualities of painting, a series of artist talks and curatorial conversations will emphasize how Black artists have shaped and expanded the possibilities of figuration across generations.
Participants: Tawanda Appiah, curator; Ayan Farah, artist; Eric Magassa, artist; Kayo Mpoyi, artist; Heavens Okwuego, guide; Kambui Olujimi, artist; and Joanna Sandell Wright, Director of Liljevalchs.
13.00–13.45 Parallel guided tours in Swedish with Joanna Sandell Wright and in English with Heavens Okwuego
14.00–14:20 Introductions by Joanna Sandell Wright and Tawanda Appiah
14.30–15.00 Artist talk by Kambui Olujimi
15.10–15.40 In-Conversation: Kambui Olujimi and Joanna Sandell Wright
15.40–16.00 Break
16.00–17.00 Artist conversation with Ayan Farah, Eric Magassa and Kayo Mpoyi, moderated by Tawanda Appiah
17.15–18.15 DJ set by Eric Magassa and mingle at café Blå+
Limited capacity. Buy your ticket in advance here to make sure you get a spot.
About the exhibition
When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting has been highlighted and acclaimed internationally as one of the most significant exhibitions in contemporary art. The exhibition features over 148 works from institutional and private lenders located across 16 countries, bringing together artworks from the past 100 years, created by Black artists worldwide. The exhibition places these works in dialogue with Black thinkers, writers, and poets active today. When We See Us is the largest exhibition of Black figuration that is underpinned by joy.
The exhibition is co-curated by the late Koyo Kouoh, appointed Curator of the 61st International Art Exhibition of the 2026 Venice Biennale, and Tandazani Dhlakama, former Zeitz MOCAA Curator and current Curator of Global Africa at Royal Ontario Museum (ROM).
The exhibition is conceived and organized by Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA).
Tawanda Appiah, curator
Tawanda Appiah is a Zimbabwean curator, writer, and researcher based in Malmö, Sweden. His research-centred practice often revisits history to make sense of the contemporary milieu. He is the Artistic Director & Curator at Skånes konstförening, alongside his independent practice. Interested in staging encounters, his work takes itinerant form.
Phot: Ikram Abdulkadir
Ayan Farah, artist
Ayan Farah is a Somali-Swedish artist based in Stockholm and London. Working with painting, textiles, and material-led research, her practice explores landscape as physical, political, and poetic systems. Focusing on land, water and the knowledge embedded in materials as a carrier of memory, she works with locally sourced sediment and natural elements. Through painting, ceramic, embroidery, and installation, her work follows the movement of matter across borders and ecologies, where geology, labour, and colonial histories converge.
Photo: Christofer Wallentin
Eric Magassa, artist
Eric Magassa (b. 1972) is an artist based in Gothenburg, Sweden, whose practice encompasses collage, painting, photography and video – often combined in multifaced, large-scale installations. His distinctive colourful compositions evolve around decolonial narratives, identity, place and belonging. By processing different archives and unfolding visual patterns in frequently neglected spaces, he explores modes of looking and thinking that in many ways disrupt the narrow aesthetics of the canonised white cube.
Photo: Ali Magassa
Kayo Mpoyi, artist
Kayo Mpoyi (b. 1986, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo) is an artist and writer. Her practice encompasses painting, drawing, and literature, and often explores memory, family archives, identity, and belonging. Working in oil and charcoal, Mpoyi frequently returns to photographs from her mother’s photo albums, using them as a point of departure to explore how memories can be broken apart, reshaped, and reassembled through painting.
Photo: Caio Marques de Oliviera
Kambui Olujimi, artist
Kambui Olujimi was born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. His work challenges established modes of thinking that commonly function as “inevitabilities.” By excavating the language and aesthetics of social, historical, and cultural conventions, he brings them out of the world of the implicit. Once given gravity, weight, and shape it becomes possible to reveal their incongruities and their illusory nature. This pursuit takes shape through interdisciplinary bodies of work spanning sculpture, installation, photography, writing, video, and performance.
Photo: Jerome Elliott Brown Jr.
