Questions over the role and place of visual art are more pressing but, locally at least, approaches to production, partnerships and dialogue point a way forward that is characterised by conversation and openness.

as challenging the lessons of a culture where questions come delicately or risk withering in the orbit of those blunt social-change murals. The 2018 exhibition ‘Beyond the Wall’, for example, was an iconoclastic irst solo show by artist member Amani Abeid, highlighting the formal rigour and humane tenacity that characterises some of the most resonant art of Nafasi’s irst generation. Amongst a newer emerging generation, however, a penchant for vulnerable, personal work which is distilled from urban perspectives is exempli ied in Lazaro Samuel’s work, whose 60-piece display at the inaugural Stellenbosch Triennial in South Africa in spring this year examined, in one-second increments, a minute of life on the margins (Reviews AM435). It is for Nafasi and its inaugural year as an Academy that I ind myself ranging the museum grounds on a rainy a ernoon October. The Academy’s graduation exhibition, which took place at the National Museum on 19 November, is the irst exhibition of new art at the museum in years and the closing event of a weekend of culture guided by conversations around space and ritual under the theme ‘Art of Gathering’. Physical restrictions relating to Covid-19 have resulted in galleries and arts practitioners moving further into theoretical and scholarly modes of working, and Nafasi has rapidly adapted to the unfolding situation, shi ing from actor to facilitator in order to meet the diversity and expertise needed in this growing artistic network. The three-day event, titled ‘Tukutane Dar’ (Let’s Meet in Dar), is an expansion of the series of forum-like events, ‘Tukutane Nafasi’, that the art centre hosted in the immediate a ermath of the citywide closure of cultural spaces in April and May. Memory of the sweeping nature of those closures, coupled with the general effects of a tremulous year, mean that, for the moment, culture in Dar es Salaam is effectively two months old, novel and fragile, incautious and out of step with the world. In this con ined, urgent atmosphere, outwards-facing assessments of global status have for a time been put on hold.

The pandemic approached Africa with projections of wholesale devastation by international commentators. The continent’s de iance of these projections is generally characterised as a form of denial, but in fact is something wholly different: a collective rejection of narratives that present the continent as being steeped in abjection. Flowing from this resistance are the rumblings of new imaginings, with many African nations offering open borders to each other and a reciprocal cutting of restrictions – in spite of the nations’ differing approaches to the pandemic. ‘Tukutane Dar’ is set to be Nafasi’s irst event this year with overseas guests, with a list of visitors that includes Vitshois Mwilambwe Bondo, Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga (both from DRC), Julia Taonga Kaseka (Zambia) and Lauren Tate Baeza (US), who was recently appointed as curator of African Art at The High Museum in Atlanta. Issues around the responsibilities and politics of physical access to the arts are likely to dominate many of the conversations, as is the sense of a reckoning for a sector that is founded on international exchange. Questions over the role and place of visual art are more pressing but, locally at least, approaches to production, partnerships and dialogue point a way forward that is characterised by conversation and openness. The arts weekend ‘Tukutane Dar’, ‘The Art of Gathering’ has the apt tagline: ‘in what ways and in what spaces does art bring people together … and how?’, while ‘Altered States’, an exhibition at Nafasi featuring Abeid, Mohamed Raza, Samuel and Valerie Amani examining our suddenly adjusted relationship with the world, is still, in intent and character, best described by an interactive display reading ‘would you rather be i een feet tall or ive inches high’. It seems that for a time no longer ielding, confronting or hosting agendas of worth or legitimacy, our parkless city has recovered an instinct for play. Jesse Gerard Mpango is visual arts programme manager at Nafasi Art Space.

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George Lilanga’s shetani igures, National Museum recent election posters pasted over educational murals in the city

Art Monthly no. 442, December 2020 – January 2021