World 3

The exhibition In the year of the quiet sun revisits moments from the grand political project of mid century Pan-Africanism, envisioned by revolutionaries such as W.E.B Du Bois, George Padmore, Frantz Fanon and Kwame Nkrumah as the total liberation of the African continent from Europe, through the building of a United States of Africa. One of the key works in the exhibition is the installation Statecraft. In this installation the short century of decolonization, as formulated by Okwui Enwezor, is envisioned in the form of a political calendar assembled from the unlikely and anaesthetic medium of the postage stamp. These masscult artifacts, issued to commemorate the independence of African nation-states, from the centenary of the founding of the Republic of Liberia in 1947 to the founding of the Republic of South Sudan in 2011, are integrated into an elaborately designed display system that invites sustained attention to this often overlooked media. The artists publication WORLD 3 both completes and complements the exhibition. In close relation to the work Statecraft, the book also employs the postage stamp as its main visual medium. The book assembles a trialogue between First Day Covers from newly independent African states, envelopes from the diaspora of the digital auction and an associative inventory of quotations from thinkers such as Walter Abish, Ayi Kwei Armah, Amilcar Cabral, Helene Cixous, Basil Davidson, Assef Djebar, Jacques Derrida, WEB Du Bois, Bessie Head, Frantz Fanon, Ruth First, Clarice Lispector, Kwame Nkrumah, Ali A Mazrui, Achille Mbembe, Fred Moten, Sony Labou Tansi and Nathaniel Mackey.