This Week in Black Art and Culture (May 17 – 23, 2026)

Above: Barack Obama with Carrie Mae Weems. Photo courtesy of the Obama Foundation

From Cannes to Chicago, Leiden to Lagos, we are tracing the expanding terrain of Black artistic and cultural production in film, literature, contemporary art, and public memory. At the Cannes Film Festival, African filmmakers command increasing international attention with works exploring trauma, migration, labor, and intimacy. In Chicago, Carrie Mae Weems prepares a major public commission for the Obama Presidential Center. Elsewhere, writers of African and diasporic descent continue to gain recognition on global literary stages, and new exhibitions examine how Caribbean music, restitution, and cultural inheritance continue to shape contemporary artistic discourse. Together, these stories reflect a cultural landscape marked by movement, return, experimentation, and the continued reshaping of history through art.

Carrie Mae Weems Unveils Major Public Art Commission for Obama Presidential Center

American artist Carrie Mae Weems will debut a new large-scale public artwork at the Obama Presidential Center when the campus opens on Chicago’s South Side in June 2026. Titled The Cool Blue Wind, the commission forms part of the Obama Foundation’s expanded cultural programming exploring memory, civic life, and collective experience.

The installation combines photographic collages printed on metallic surfaces with shifting blue tonalities alongside an original sound composition. Drawing inspiration from the cultural resonance of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election, the work also uses jazz as a conceptual structure, invoking improvisation, rhythm, and collective listening as ways of thinking through history.

Across the piece, fragmented photographs unfold like musical sequences, creating a layered meditation on remembrance and public imagination. Sound operates as both atmosphere and connective tissue, extending the work beyond static imagery into an immersive spatial experience.

Weems joins a major roster of artists commissioned for the 19.3-acre campus, including Mark Bradford, Theaster Gates, Julie Mehretu, Maya Lin, and Jenny Holzer.

Designed as a civic and cultural hub, the Obama Presidential Center will include museum galleries, gardens, public programs, athletic facilities, and a presidential library. Within that broader vision, Weems’s commission stands as a reflection on how image, sound, and shared cultural memory continue to shape public life.

African Cinema Expands Its Reach at Cannes 2026

The Cannes Film Festival has once again turned its attention toward African cinema, with this year’s schedule bringing together an ambitious mix of first-time filmmakers, established auteurs, and cross-continental productions that reflect the growing global appetite for African storytelling.

The 2026 edition features films from Rwanda, Nigeria, Morocco, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and beyond, many screening within the festival’s influential Un Certain Regard section. The increased visibility arrives at a moment when international demand for African and diaspora film continues to outpace supply, according to recent research by Next Narrative Africa Fund and Parrot Analytics, which identified the United States as the single largest market for African screen content.

Among this year’s most historic selections is Ben’Imana by Rwandan filmmaker Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo, the first feature by a Rwandan director to premiere in Cannes’ Official Selection. Set in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, the film examines intergenerational trauma, forgiveness, and silence through the story of a survivor confronting her daughter’s unexpected pregnancy. Thierry Frémaux, artistic director of Cannes, described the work as “an amazing work of cinema.”

Nigeria also returns prominently to the Croisette with Clarissa, the sophomore feature from Nigerian-born brothers Arie Esiri and Chuko Esiri. Reimagining Mrs. Dalloway within contemporary Nigeria, the film stars Sophie Okonedo, David Oyelowo, Ayo Edebiri, and Nikki Amuka-Bird. Shot across Lagos, Delta State, and northern landscapes, the film explores memory, intimacy, and social performance through a gathering in Lagos where old relationships resurface.

Elsewhere, Moroccan filmmaker Laïla Marrakchi returns to Un Certain Regard with Strawberries (La plus douce), a drama inspired by reports of exploitation faced by Moroccan women working as seasonal fruit pickers in Spain. Blending social realism with questions of migration, labor, and gendered violence, the film follows workers who organize legal action against abusive employers.

Beyond premieres, Cannes 2026 also signals deeper institutional investment in African cinema. During the festival’s official press conference, Frémaux highlighted ongoing support for a national cinema center project in Kinshasa led by Congolese filmmaker Dieudo Hamadi, framing it as part of a broader commitment to world cinema.

As African film industries continue expanding across both local and international markets, this year’s Cannes lineup reflects a continent increasingly shaping the future of global cinema on its own terms.

Symposium in Leiden Examines Memory, Restitution, and the Afterlife of Cultural Loss

Artists, scholars, curators, and writers gathered in Leiden, Netherlands, on May 20 for Another Gathering: The Beauty We Inherit, a symposium exploring the cultural and spiritual implications of restitution and absence in the wake of colonial looting.

Held at Wereldmuseum Leiden, the gathering was organized within the framework of the exhibition Back to Benin: New Art, Ancient Legacy, curated by Aude Christel Mgba and currently on view at Museum de Fundatie until June 7, 2026.

The exhibition brings together ten contemporary artists of Edo heritage in dialogue with Ama O Ghe Ehen, an 18th-century Benin bronze plaque recently restituted from the Netherlands to Benin. While recent years have seen increasing return of looted Benin objects, the symposium centered on the deeper ruptures created by colonial extraction — historical, spiritual, artistic, and emotional.

Participants included Isaac Emokpae, Mistura Allison, Satch Hoyt, Bhavisha Panchia, Renee Akitelek Mboya, and Kokunre Agbontaen-Eghafona, among others.

Through screenings, lectures, performances, and conversations, the symposium asked how absence itself might become a site of knowledge, imagination, and renewed cultural relations. The event also arrives amid ongoing restitution efforts by the Wereldmuseum Leiden, which formally agreed to return 119 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria in February 2025.

Lisa-Anne Julien Wins Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa

South African-based writer Lisa-Anne Julien has won the Africa regional prize at the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for her story Me and Ma’am, a nuanced portrait of intimacy, labor, and class relations between a domestic worker and her employer.

Set over the course of a single workday, the story follows a domestic worker navigating the emotional complexities, boundaries, and contradictions embedded within domestic labor. Judges praised the work for balancing humor, introspection, and emotional precision while moving beyond familiar racial frameworks often associated with South African class narratives.

Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, Julien has lived in Johannesburg for over two decades. Speaking after the announcement, she described the story as emerging from the intersection of her Caribbean upbringing and her lived experiences in Africa. “My story is written from this merger.” The Africa regional jury was chaired by South African author Fred Khumalo, who described the winning entry as “a story about women looking out for each other.”

Julien’s previous novel, If You Save Me, won the University of Johannesburg’s 2022 Debut Prize for Fiction. Her work has also appeared in the Caribbean literary magazine Pree, while her residencies include programs with Femrite, Yale Writers, and the Jakes Gerwel Foundation.

The overall Commonwealth Short Story Prize winner will be announced on June 30, with all five regional winners set to be published by Granta ahead of the ceremony.

Four Black Writers Shortlisted for 2026 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award

The 2026 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award shortlist has been announced, with four Black writers recognized for debut novels that span questions of identity, inheritance, history, and belonging.

The shortlisted authors include Stephanie Wambugu for Lonely Crowds, Olufunke Grace Bankole for The Edge of Water, Rickey Fayne for The Devil Three Times, and Rob Franklin for Great Black Hope.

Presented annually by Virginia Commonwealth University, the prize honors an outstanding debut novel published in the previous calendar year. Named after early twentieth-century American writer James Branch Cabell, the award recognizes emerging writers whose work expands the possibilities of fiction and imaginative storytelling.

The $5,000 award has previously gone to writers including Raven Leilani, Ling Ma, and Hernán Diaz.

This year’s winner will be announced in June or July following a selection process involving MFA students, the First Novelist Committee, and the previous year’s recipient.

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Explores Dancehall and Reggaetón as Political Histories

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago has opened an exciting show titled Dancing the Revolution, a major group exhibition tracing the political, spiritual, and cultural histories of dancehall and reggaetón through contemporary art.

Curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates alongside Iris Colburn, Nolan Jimbo, Cecilia González Godino, and Nibia Pastrana Santiago, the exhibition examines how Caribbean music cultures emerged from grassroots communities before becoming global forms tied to resistance, migration, sexuality, and liberation.

The exhibition spans painting, installation, photography, sound sculpture, and video, featuring more than forty artists, including Isaac Julien, Alberta Whittle, Carolina Caycedo, Edra Soto, and reggae pioneer Lee Scratch Perry.

Moving across cities including Kingston, San Juan, London, New York, Toronto, and Panama City, Dancing the Revolution positions sound system culture and Caribbean musical circulation as vital frameworks for understanding contemporary social and political life.

Dancing the Revolution is on view until September 20, 2026.

Exhibitions to See

Denilson Baniwa: Yawara Akanga | Gentil Carioca | On view till May 23, 2026 | São Paulo, Brazil

Brush Tu: Handle with Care | Circle Art Gallery | On view till May 29, 2026 | Nairobi, Kenya

Between Here and Elsewhere: A New Generation Steps Forward | Group exhibition at Javett Art Centre | On view until August, 2026 | Pretoria, South Africa 

Dancing the Revolution | Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago | On view till September 20, 2026 | Chicago, Illinois

M’barek Bouhchichi: Hands that Remember |  Antananarivo, Madagascar | On view till October 17,  2026

Compiled by Roli O’tsemaye

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