We Face Forward - Art From West Africa Today

There’s an African vibe in Manchester this summer. That’s all down to We Face Forward, a season of contemporary art and music from West Africa, taking place across three galleries, two museums, four music venues, libraries, community spaces and on an art bus. It features 33 artists and a host of musicians from 11 West African countries. Over the Olympic summer, we are celebrating the global and the local, exploring the links between Manchester and West Africa as part of the London 2012 cultural festival.

Forget everything you think you know about African art; embrace all that you don’t yet know about the art, culture and creativity of West African artists today. Major new sculptural installations, painting, drawing, photography, textiles, video, sound and fashion ask us to consider global questions of trade and commerce, cultural influence, environmental destruction and identity. Challenging and humorous, curious, noisy, elegiac and eclectic — this is the dynamism of West African cultures today. These form a huge, city-wide exhibition, spreading across Manchester Art Gallery, Whitworth Art Gallery and the Gallery of Costume (Platt Hall).