As Nataal’s special project at AKAA opens, we introduce the artists who make up our exhibition
Meet Andrew Dosunmu. The renowned photographer, filmmaker and creative director was raised in Nigeria and started out his career as a design assistant for Yves Saint Laurent in Paris before moving into image making. Now based in New York, his visual language focuses on the humanity and beauty of global cultures.
Dosunmu’s images have been featured in Vogue, i-D, The FADER and Interview, and he’s shot for Puma, Converse and Nike. He has also directed music videos for the likes of Tracy Chapman, Isaac Hayes, Wyclef Jean and Kelis. In 2010, Dosunmu produced and directed the documentary The African Game, in which he explored football’s relationship with African culture in the build-up to the World Cup.
In 2011 he directed his first feature film, Restless City, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and starred Nataal co-founder Alassane Sy. Dosunmu’s 2013 follow up, Mother Of George, received global critical acclaim and was the closing film at the Maryland Film Festival. Both visually seductive pieces of cinema reflect upon the African immigrant experience in New York. His third film, Beat-Up Little Seagull, stars Michelle Pfeiffer and Kiefer Sutherland and is due for release in 2017.
A long-term friend of the Nataal family, we invited Dosunmu to share some of his unseen photography with us for our special project at AKAA this week (read the full story here). He selected his Stickman series of the Sotho people in the Kingdom of Lesotho, taken between 2009 and 2012. His emotive portraits capture herdsmen and their families in their native, rugged environment and swathed in traditional knitwear. "The elegance and the resistance of the Basotho people have always been for me the best example of black achievement in the face of oppression,” says Dosunmu.
AKAA is at Carreau du Temple, 4 rue Eugène Spuller, 75003, Paris from 11 to 13 November
Words Helen Jennings
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