Mukhtara Yusuf is a cultural activist of Nigerian Yoruba origin based in the US, who explores identity making in the context of the black diaspora. Her media of choice include printwork and collage, but she is especially committed to fashion and jewelry design. To her, dress articulates the unfinished business of self-making as a “3rdculture kid” of the diaspora. In …

This week the artistic platform Design Indaba has held its Annual Festival and handed the stage to South Africa’s top creative minds. These include Zipho Gum, aka Tony Gum, a 20-year-old film student at the the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and a social media sensation. Gum caught the collective attention with her “Coca-Cola” series showcased at Johannesburg Art Fair 2015, quickly becoming one of the foremost …

Writer Taiye Selasi is credited for having introduced the neologism Afropolitan into pop culture with her famous essay “Bye Bye Babar” (2005), which reformulates cosmopolitanism and citizenship for hypermobile Africans. In the words of Selasi, Afropolitans “belong to no single geography, but feel at home in many”. The ambassadors of a “multi-dimensional thinking”, they “form an identity along at least three dimensions: national, racial, cultural”. This means …