Memory is never static. It shifts across generations, travels through cultures and finds new meaning through the objects, stories and experiences we carry with us.
Memory in Motion: Identities, Materials and Resonances brings together a diverse group of contemporary African artists whose practices explore the complex relationships between memory, identity and materiality. Curated by Gilles Yoro (Felin Light), the exhibition examines how personal histories intersect with collective narratives, revealing the ways in which the past continues to shape the present.
Together, these artists move between personal memory and collective history, creating works that feel both intimate and expansive.
Throughout the exhibition, materials themselves become storytellers.
Discarded objects are transformed. Reclaimed surfaces are reimagined. Layered pigments, carved wood and mixed media processes hold traces of time, labour and lived experience. Rather than serving only as artistic tools, these materials become part of the narrative itself.
Artists such as Gerald Chukwuma and Mederic Turay embed memory directly into material and surface,turning everyday objects into visual languages that speak about history, transformation and value. Meanwhile, Mwass Githinji and Ayanda Mabulu engage political and social histories, reflecting on identity, power and the
lasting echoes of postcolonial experience.
Elsewhere, artists including Opa Bathily, Kebe Ibrahim Bemba and Kenof “Franck Kemkeng Noah” draw from spiritual traditions, symbolic systems and ancestral knowledge. Their works remind us that memory is not only historical — it is also carried through ritual, belief and cultural continuity.
The exhibition also creates space for quieter moments.
Through the practices of Ange Arthur Koua, Ndabuko Ntuli, Alexis Daniel Onguene Tassi and Dieudonne Djiela Kamgang, memory becomes deeply personal. Gesture, abstraction and figuration speak to identities shaped by migration, urban life and global exchange — identities that continue to evolve rather than remain fixed.
At its heart, Memory in Motion is an invitation.
An invitation to reflect on what remains, what changes and what continues to resonate across time.
Because memory is never still.
It moves through people. Through objects. Through histories. Through art.
And within this exhibition, it remains in motion.
Memory in Motion: Identities, Materials and Resonances
Curated by Gilles Yoro (Felin Light)
Exhibition Dates: 2 May – 12 July 2026
Art of Contemporary Africa (AOCA), San Francisco