The 10 Must-See African Contemporary Art Exhibitions in September 2025 (West)
The most anticipated African Contemporary Art Exhibitions in September 2025. Our Europe and West guide highlights the must-see exhibitions of this new season. This rentrée is marked by a palpable sense of positivism, expressed through softness, vibrant colors, and an abundance of themes rooted in humanity, lineage, and spirituality. A quest for the transcendent emerges in response to a market often seen as neutral. Let us explore together the unmissable exhibitions of African and international contemporary art opening this September across the West.
Bienvenue dans mon Instabilité, Merveille KELEKELE KELEKELE, Galerie du Jour Agnès b, until 26 October 2025
For his first solo exhibition in France, Merveille KELEKELE KELEKELE takes the viewer on a journey through his emotional instability: an intimate space where his sensations collide, populated by strange creatures and symbols drawn from his own life. The chimeras and emotional monsters that he cannot tame, he instead paints onto frescoes—half childlike and innocent, half monstrous—offering us the tale of his existence, his thoughts, and moments of solitude. On view at Galerie du Jour.
On entre OK, on sort KO, Kura SHOMALI, Galerie Angalia until 27 September 2025
Festivities resume at Galerie Angalia after the summer break with “On entre OK, on sort KO” by Kuro SHOMALI. Born in Kananga in 1979, Kura Shomali blends humor, irony, and a sharp eye on Congolese life. A graduate of Kinshasa and Strasbourg, he works on Canson paper with ink, gouache, felt-tip pens, or charcoal, using splashes and projections that evoke the disorder and vitality of Kinshasa. In this exhibition, he “shomalises” the works of masters such as Santu Mokofeng, Jean Depara, or Matisse, reinterpreting both iconic pieces and everyday snapshots with his unique, colorful, and generous line. The title, Basi na Biso, pays tribute to the legendary Congolese rumba orchestra Tout Puissant OK Jazz, celebrating memory, movement, and the vibrancy of popular creativity.
Carambolage, Salifou LINDOU, AFIKARIS until 1 November 2025
Monumental. AFIKARIS presents the fourth solo exhibition of Salifou LINDOU, retracing twenty-five years of creation. From his emblematic works of the early 2000s to his most recent pieces, the exhibition reveals the evolution of a unique visual language—shaped by formal experimentation, recurring motifs, and a multidisciplinary approach in constant reinvention.
The City : Metaphor, Archive and Projection, Michael TSEGAYE, Addis GEZEHAGN, Mamadou CISSÉ, Galerie Christophe Person, from 7 September 2025
In this group conversation at Galerie Christophe Person, the city is explored as a field of experimentation, encounter, and anonymity. The works of Michael TSEGAYE, Addis GEZEHAGN, Mamadou CISSÉ, and other artists question urban memory, architectural transformations, and social dynamics. Gezehagn documents Addis Ababa in black-and-white photography and textured collages, navigating between disappearing neighborhoods and emerging constructions, while Cissé transports us into utopian, colorful cities where architecture and collective life intertwine. The city becomes a space of storytelling, reflection, and projection, where personal histories, collective legacies, and visions of the future converge. Between observation, social critique, and utopia, these artists present the city as a living place—constantly shifting and rich in invisible encounters.
Les Marques du Divin, Martin ABEGA, Gondwana Marseille until 31 October 2025
Gondwana African Art Gallery makes debuts at its new space with the first solo exhibition of Martin ABEGA, a Cameroonian photographer and multidisciplinary artist. Through his lens, Abega transforms African masks and sculptures into a contemporary language where wood, scarification, and ritual motifs become light and living matter. The mask becomes a face, the skin becomes text, and the body emerges as a vessel of the sacred. The exhibition explores the link between ancestral memory and contemporary creation. Abega questions spirituality, cultural reappropriation, and the transmission of knowledge. His images reveal the invisible power of African rites and symbols while inscribing them within a modern, universal narrative. Each work is a sensitive journey between the visible and the invisible, the past and the present—where art becomes a space of dialogue, introspection, and poetic strength. Through his vision, Martin Abega celebrates the richness of African cultures and their ability to inspire, challenge, and move us today.
“I am in constant reflection on the evolution of spirituality and the aesthetics of beauty. Every story, every action that touches me becomes a source of inspiration that I integrate into my creations.” Martin ABEGA
Géométrie - S , Galerie 38 Geneva, from du 17 September 2025
A highlight of the season, GÉOMÉTRIE - S at Galerie 38 in Geneva celebrates geometric abstraction as a universal language in constant evolution. Inheriting the pioneering experiments of Vasarely and the GRAV group in 1950s–60s Europe, it continues to inspire a new generation of artists, from the Maghreb to Latin America. The exhibition showcases multiple geometries—optical, meditative, playful—that shift perception and transform space into a sensory experience. More than a historical movement, geometry here emerges as a living energy, a shared field of forms and singular visions.
Featured artists: Guido Baldessari, Carl Krasebrg, Gerhard Hotter, Maxime Lutun, Vincenzo Marsiglia, Ghizlane Agzenaï, Younes Khourassani, and Eli Jimenez Le Parc
Ligne(s) de Vie, Slimen EL KAMEL, Mariane Ibrahim, until 11 October 2025
Ligne(s) de Vie, Slimen EL KAMEL, Mariane IBRAHIM
Painting on black-primed canvases with myriads of multicolored dots that invite gentle reverie, Slimen EL KAMEL is to be seen at Mariane Ibrahim this season. Drawing on Tunisian oral traditions, the artist creates narrative paintings composed of thousands of luminous points emerging from dark canvases. Between memory, emotion, and color, his semi-abstract universe blends magical realism, Mediterranean mosaics, and echoes of the Italian Primitives. With Ligne(s) de vie, Elkamel offers a meditation on transformation, memory, and our connection to the natural world.
Now What ? Or What Else ?, Nina Chanel ABNEY, Perrotin, until 11 October 2025
Now What ? Or What Else ?, Nina Chanel ABNEY, Perrotin
Her monumental mural, Marabou closed exhibition Femmes this spring and this fall, we rediscover Nina Chanel ABNEY in her solo show at Perrotin in Paris. The New York–based artist continues to explore the blurred zones between humor and horror, the intimate and the collective. With Now What? Or What Else?, she stages a daily life that is at once familiar and unsettling: cluttered beds, picnics under a toxic sky, beaches lined with oil platforms. There is no dramatic explosion here, only a quiet tension—the persistence of a world despite everything, met with general indifference. Her paintings do not scream; they linger, they observe, they endure.
United State, Southern Guild Los Angeles, from 13 September 2025
United State brings together over 25 African and American artists at Southern Guild Los Angeles (September 13 – November 1, 2025). Sculptures, paintings, textiles, photography, and design enter into dialogue to assert the urgent need for plurality at a time when ideas of freedom and diversity are under threat. The exhibition acts as a manifesto: a call to build a shared humanity. Between traditions and speculative visions, United State weaves narratives where memory, identity, and environment intersect. From Zanele Muholi to Bonolo Kavula, from Simphiwe Ndzube to Porky Hefer, the artists evoke the intimate and the collective, history and mythology, opening pathways toward new forms of coexistence.
Featured artists: Kamyar Bineshtarigh, Belinda Blignaut, Patrick Bongoy, Tonia Calderon, Tofer Chin, Cheick Diallo, Andile Dyalvane, Jesse Ede, Madoda Fani, Jozua Gerrard, Katherine Glenday, Porky Hefer, Alexandra Karakashian, Bonolo Kavula, Terence Maluleke, Manyaku Mashilo, Chuma Maweni, Rich Mnisi, Nandipha Mntambo, Zanele Muholi, Brett Murray, Simphiwe Ndzube, Mmangaliso Nzuza, Oluseye, Zizipho Poswa, Usha Seejarim, Ferrari Sheppard, Chiffon Thomas, and Stanislaw Trzebinski.
So Pretty, Wura-Natasha OGUNJI, Magnin-A, from 18 September 2025
Iconic. The first solo exhibition of Wura-Natasha Ogunji in France. MAGNIN-A Gallery presents So Pretty, a journey into the sensitive and vibrant universe of the Nigerian-American artist. Around thirty works on tracing paper, enhanced with embroidered threads, explore the movements of body and mind through a choreography of lines and colors. In her recent pieces, Ogunji expands her palette of materials—magazines, tracing paper, gesso, and laterite—to create denser compositions, where masks, fragmented silhouettes, and disrupted landscapes replace the lightness of earlier works. Behind the title So Pretty, a deliberate trompe-l’œil, lies a reflection on aesthetic norms and the invisible tensions they conceal. Between delicacy and intensity, this exhibition reveals a cartography of intimate and universal emotions, where every mark carries the force of the unexpected and the vitality of the act of creation.
Promesses et Gloire, Omar BA, Templon New York, from 3 September 2025
Three years after Droit de sol, droit de rêver, Omar BA returns to Templon Gallery in New York. Dividing his time between Dakar and New York, the artist presents thirty new works born from his observation of the connections between African communities and Afro-descendants in North America. His painting, combining acrylic, oil, ink, and Bic pen, moves away from chimera-like imagery toward a direct realism: suspended, intense portraits carrying a transatlantic collective memory.
Rather than emphasizing fractures, Omar Ba reveals proximities, invisible fraternities, and conveys a message of unity and hope. This exhibition marks a decisive moment in the career of a major figure on the international contemporary art scene.
