This webinar will examine the Rencontres de Bamako (Bamako Encounters), Africa’s premier photography biennale, as a critical site for global artistic exchange and local cultural development. Since its inception in 1994, the biennial has served as a unique platform for African photographers to engage with international audiences while fostering regional networks and creative infrastructures. Drawing on Jennifer Bajorek and Erin Haney’s seminal essay, “Eye on Bamako: Conversations on the African Photography Biennial” (Theory, Culture & Society, 2010), the discussion will unpack the biennale’s dual role as a cultural nexus and a contested space negotiating issues of representation, globalization, and funding structures.
The session will also situate Bamako Encounters within the broader evolution of photography in Nigeria and West Africa, highlighting connections to projects such as Invisible Borders Trans African Photography Project and the conceptual practice of Uche Okpa-Iroha, Art History Graduate Fellow, whose work interrogates identity, colonial legacies, and cinematic narratives. By exploring these dynamics, the webinar aims to illuminate how biennales like Bamako catalyze transnational dialogues while nurturing local talent, ultimately reshaping the global perception of African visual culture. The program will be introduced by Kathleen Bickford Berzock, the Block's Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs. Responses to Uche Okpa-Iroha's presentation will be given by Oyindamola (Fakeye) Faithful, the Acting Managing Director of Res Artis and a co-curator of the 14th edition of the Recontres de Bamako “Kuma: La Parole” (2024), and Obasola Bamigbola, renowned photographer. Co-sponsored by Program of African Studies.
About the Speakers:
Kathleen Bickford Berzock is Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs at Northwestern University’s Block Museum of Art, Professor of Practice in Northwestern’s Department of Anthropology, and affiliated faculty in the Department of Art History and the Program of African Studies.
Uche Okpa-Iroha is the 2026 Block Museum Curatorial Graduate Fellow and an Art History doctoral student at Northwestern University. Presently, he is exploring photographic archives in Nigeria as part of new research investigating these archives as sites of silence, memory, and history, and how these materials hold valuable information for shaping new historical discourse in contemporary times. Okpa-Iroha is the Founder and Director of Lagos-based informal photography school, The Nlele Institute. He is a founding member of the Nigerian photography group the Blackbox Photography Collective and of the Invisible Borders Trans-African photography travel group. Twice has won the Grand Prix Seydou Keita Award for the best photography creation with the “Under Bridge Life” (2009) and “the Plantation Boy” (2015). He also received the Jean Paul Blachere prize in 2009 and the Callanan Excellence in Teaching Award by Center Santa Fe, New Mexico USA in 2022. Okpa-Iroha is an alumnus of the Rijksakademie van Beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2011- 2012). He co-founded the photography and video art night of projections – FOTOPARTY Lagos and the Lagos Portfolio Review. Okpa-Iroha is also the founder of Lagos Open Range Exhibition Project.
Oyindamola (Fakeye) Faithful is a Learning and Participation Producer, Curator and Consultant working to improve cross cultural collaboration, champion wellbeing through the arts and improve learning through aesthetic education. Her practice centres embodied and participatory art experiences, place based pedagogy and creative health practices.
Oyindamola is the Acting Managing Director of Res Artis, the worldwide professional body for artists’ residencies, working with a network of 700 residencies globally to support place based, lifelong learning. She previously served as Executive and Artistic Director of the Centre for Contemporary Art, (CCA) Lagos, where she worked to advance curatorial practice, pedagogy, and archival research within contemporary African art discourse.
Oyindamola is the Education Director of the Àsìkò Art School, a roving Pan-African residency and learning programme, and Associate Executive Director of the Global Arts in Medicine Fellowship, a virtual training program for art and healthcare practitioners.
She has worked on various curatorial projects including; ‘Identity: An Imagined State’ (2009), Lagos Biennial II ‘How to Build a Lagoon With Just a Bottle of Wine’ (2019), ‘Passengers in Transit’ as part of the 60th edition of La Biennale de Venezia collateral projects (2024) and the 14th edition of the Recontres de Bamako “Kuma: La Parole” (2024).
Obasola Bamigbola is a photographer and visual storyteller whose work explores African spirituality, cultural identity, and social narratives.
With a background in Communication, his passion for photography was ignited when he first stepped into a darkroom.
Obasola’s work has received international recognition, such as the Cultural Lens of the Youth Assembly at the United Nations and the Africa Rising Photography Award at Africa Day in Nairobi, Kenya. And his works exhibited at distinguished venues, including the John & June Allcott Gallery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA), Mosaïque Interculturelle (Ottawa), Melville J. Herskovits Library for African Studies, Northwestern University (USA), Gallery La Belle Étoile, Arles (France), Koo Ming Kown Exhibition Gallery, Hong Kong Baptist University, Noorderlicht International Photo Festival (Netherlands), Photo Vogue Festival (Italy), Kunsthaus Göttingen (Germany), Rencontres de Bamako (Mali), Abuja International Photo Festival (Nigeria), among others.
Beyond exhibitions, Obasola has worked on numerous projects and workshops internationally, using his lens to document, educate, and spark meaningful conversations on identity, history, and social change.
Image: Nlele Institute Lagos offsite exhibition at the Bamako Encounters Whither I Stand and The Trajectory of Vision Bamako, Mali. 2015. Courtesy of Uche Okpa-Iroha.
Cost: Online. Free and open to all
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