Koyo

Kouoh:

On

the

power

of

Black

self-representation

How have artists from the African continent and its diaspora represented themselves in painting over the past hundred years? This is the question that Koyo Kouoh, executive director and chief curator at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town, and her team asked themselves when organizing “When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting.” Taking its title from Ava DuVernay’s 2019 Netflix miniseries When They See Us, the exhibition brings together works by over 150 Black artists, who shift their focus from “they” to “we,” deliberately centering the Black gaze and lived experience.