Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago (MoCP) is pleased to announce Testaments to the Beautyful Ones, an exhibition that brings together eight photographers, two multimedia artists, and six writers to bear witness and pay tribute to the unflinching insistences on life on the African continent. The exhibition opens January 21 and runs through May 16, 2027.

The exhibition takes as its point of departure the tensions animating an intergenerational dialogue about the promises of African self-determination between Ayi Kwei Armah’s 1968 novel The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born and a series of photographic transfer-based paintings by Njideka Akunyili Crosby (b. 1983, Nigeria) titled The Beautyful Ones. Anchored by a colored inks-and-watercolor drawing of the cover of Armah’s novel by Cauleen Smith (b. 1967, United States) and three works by Akunyili Crosby, the exhibition foregrounds how communities continue to hold spaces of quiet possibility for themselves within the constraints of everyday living.

Photographs by Tatenda Chidora (b. 1988, Zimbabwe), Fatoumata Diabaté (b. 1980, Mali), Yagazie Emezi (b. 1989, Nigeria), Zana Masombuka (b. 1995, South Africa), Hashim Nasr (b. 1990, Sudan), Jean-Louis N’cho (b. 1994, Côte d’Ivoire), Sackitey Tesa (b. 1995, Ghana), and Sarah Waiswa (b. 1980, Uganda) are presented in clusters, staging conversations about pressing concerns such as gender and sexuality; spirituality; war and displacement; self-representation; and people’s relationships to the natural world, to museum spaces, to the Covid pandemic, to waste and found objects, and to dreams. Newly commissioned texts in response to the clusters by Kweku Abimbola (b. 1997, The Gambia), TJ Benson (b. 1991, Nigeria), Safia Elhillo (b. 1990, United States), Tsitsi Jaji (b. 1976, Zimbabwe), Cheswayo Mphanza (b. 1993, Zambia), and Ladan Osman (b. Somalia) further testify to these renewed manifestations of the “beautyful ones,” which Armah explains, as a misspelling of the praise name for the ancient Egyptian god Osiris that he saw painted on a minibus taxi to Accra, is paradoxically “a sorrowful reminder of our human vulnerability to division, fragmentation, and degeneration, and at the same time a symbol of our equally human capacity for unity, cooperative action, and creative regeneration.”

“Intended neither as a gesture of flattening explication of African realities nor as a claim to representativeness, Testaments to the Beautyful Ones honors the complexities of the rich textures of making life on the continent,” said curator Yuan-Chih (Sreddy) Yen. “The artists and writers gathered in [this exhibition] all ask us to dwell in this paradox.”

Taken together then, the visual and written works in Testaments to the Beautyful Ones index the reverberations of social life and living in Africa today, on their own terms, in spite of it all.

EXHIBITION PROGRAMS

Programs are free and open to students, faculty, and the general public.

Opening Reception

Thu, Jan 28, 2027, 5–7 PM

MoCP, 600 S Michigan Avenue

Short Film Screening

Thu, Feb 11, 2027, 6–8 PM

Ferguson Auditorium, 600 S Michigan Avenue

TJ Benson presents Hemba, a poetry performance

Fri, Mar 19, 2027, 1–2 PM

MoCP, 600 S Michigan Avenue

Lecture in Photography: Yagazie Emezie

Thu, Apr 1, 2027, 6–7 PM

Ferguson Auditorium, 600 S Michigan Avenue

ABOUT YUAN-CHIH (SREDDY) YEN

Born in Taipei, educated between Pretoria and Johannesburg, and now based in Chicago, Yuan-Chih (Sreddy) Yen is a cultural worker committed to the study of African literary and photographic practices. Their PhD dissertation-in-progress considers how contemporary African writers and photographers draw on animism as a strategy to pose different questions about what it means to be human. Always thinking at the intersections of postcolonial, queer, and black studies, their work more broadly is driven by questions about what it means to relate ethically across identity categories.

ABOUT MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY (MoCP)

Founded in 1976, Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago (MoCP) is a premier college art museum dedicated to photography. As an accredited art museum with the American Alliance of Museums, MoCP is a renowned photography-specific institution whose mission is to generate ideas and provoke dialogue through groundbreaking exhibitions, innovative programs, and experiential events to cultivate a deeper understanding of the artistic, cultural, and political roles of photography in our world today.

Image: Tatenda Chidora, Zulu Mother and Child, 2023