Each of the works exhibited in Witness exudes the atmosphere of its particular place and moment, and at the same time, retraces a path towards an accessible but still distant African origin. Though these artists are distinct in their connection to Africa—either as a place of birth or a space of cultural significance—their creative visions are aligned in the unapologetic work of historical and cultural excavation and repair.

Piero Atchugarry Gallery is pleased to announce Witness, the gallery’s first group exhibition exclusively featuring five contemporary African and African Diaspora artists navigating the saturation of globalization from a postcolonial perspective. Serving as a crucial platform for visibility in Miami, the exhibition includes works by Ângela Ferreira (b.1958), Lungiswa Gqunta (b.1990), Daàpò Réo (b. 1971), Tariku Shiferaw (b.1983), and Chris Soal (b.1994). Guided by the curatorial expertise of Natasha Becker, the newly appointed inaugural Curator of African art at The Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, Piero Atchugarry Gallery unveils new and earlier works by these artists. The exhibition spans four generations, multiple disciplines and a profound understanding of the internationalism of contemporary African art.

Witness, surveys the intersections of collective memory, materiality and narrative to engage each artist’s unique aesthetics in an attempt to uncover the veiled backgrounds and the subterranean depths that characterize being in the world. Their points of origin, however, are anything but uniform. Each of the works exhibited in Witness exudes the atmosphere of its particular place and moment, and at the same time, retraces a path towards an accessible but still distant African origin. Though these artists are distinct in their connection to Africa—either as a place of birth or a space of cultural significance—their creative visions are aligned in the unapologetic work of historical and cultural excavation and repair.

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