The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory And Hell Revisited By Contemporary African Artists

A combination of new commissions and recently produced works of art come together in this first exhibition to demonstrate the ongoing global relevance of the themes addressed in Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century epic poem, The Divine Comedy. This dramatic installation, exhibited in the entrance pavilion and on all three subfloors of the museum, showcases the height of artistic production today. Forty of the best known and emerging artists from 18 African nations and the African diaspora working in media as diverse as video projection, installation, painting, sculpture, textiles, printmaking, photography, and collage explore diverse issues of politics, heritage, history, identity, faith, and form. In so doing, they reveal that one person’s vision of heaven, purgatory, or hell might not match another’s.

Co-organizers: National Museum of African Art, Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, and Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt

guest curator: Simon Njami

The world that emerges from the canvas is also a world upside down where the destiny of Africa is reivented the roots that generate historical traumas in the recasting of religions and in the outline of an illuminated march. The forms of oppression are of a solemn nature, the protagonists of the genocides carry the bodies. The time freed from injustices creates a suspended space where the creatures leave for the final exile.