An expanded Arete Circle will meet for the first time later this month— a small group of people who want to help us figure out how to grow. Not a bureaucracy with committee rules. Just people who care about what we're building and are willing to think with us about where it goes. Talking about meeting, we'll be at Art Basel Africa. If you're there, would love to meet . . .
Growing our reach and network is something we think about. A lot of what lands in front of you these days sounds the same — much of it AI, same rhythm, same hollow warmth. Original art is the opposite. A sculptor in Lagos working through something she can't say any other way. A photographer in Maputo who grew up watching a coastline change. That rootedness in a body, a place, a life that was actually lived — AI can't generate that. We think people feel the difference even when they don't know it or explain it. The more the world fills up with content made by no one in particular, the more work that came from human life stands out. So we keep making the case for people to meet and for original art to continue to be discussed — in newsletters like this, and at diners like the one we had in Jozi last week.
The South African table was a wonderful mix of artists who'd come to Senegal in November, a few new faces, a banker turned poet for the night — nobody had planned that, it just happened. That's usually the sign of a good evening. We ate late, talked later, the kind of conversation that only happens when people have had enough time together to stop being careful.
The world feels harder than it did — people angrier, about stranger things. We can't fix that, but we can keep putting the right people in a room and seeing what happens.
Sometimes nothing. Sometimes something you couldn't have planned.
Maputo, June 2027. More soon.
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ARETEWORKS STORYTELLING WORKSHOP
BENIN YOUTH CLIMATE REPORTER ACADEMY
In May 2025, we ran an AreteWorks storytelling workshop in Lomé with Palais de Lomé and AFRISOS. Among the twenty-seven African conservationists, artists and filmmakers who spent three days together was Megan Valère Sossou, an environmentalist and climate journalist from Benin, and the Executive Director of the NGO Save Our Planet.
A year on, with our support and Earth Rising Foundation's, Megan ran his own training. In January, Save Our Planet brought together thirty young journalists and climate activists in Bohicon for a four-day workshop on climate journalism and climate justice, followed by a month-long media competition. Twenty-three stories came in across print, radio, television and social media, covering everything from shea to charcoal production, heatwaves to coastal fishing. Eight winners, four men and four women.
The participants have since formed the Beninese Network of Young Climate Reporters, with a national coordinator, regional focal points, and a charter they drafted themselves. It is the kind of ripple we hoped Togo might produce.
GALLERY FEATURE: SOUTH AFRICA
EVERARD READ JOHANNESBURG
Everard Read opened on a Johannesburg street in 1913, when the city was barely thirty years old and still finding its feet as a mining town. It is now the oldest commercial gallery on the continent, with sites in Cape Town, Franschhoek and London, but the original Johannesburg gallery on Jellicoe Avenue in Rosebank remains its heart. The adjacent CIRCA building, opened in 2009, hosts a programme that interweaves contemporary art with science and technology installations.
The reason to look closely at Everard Read is its roster. Lady Skollie, who has shown there since Good & Evil at CIRCA in 2019 and most recently, the Sour Grapes exhibit in Franschhoek, is one of the most arresting voices working out of South Africa today. She draws and prints in ink, crayon, watercolour and woodcut, weaving Khoi iconography into work that is by turns sexual, political, funny, raging.
Across its four galleries, Everard Read represents many of the artists we follow. Worth a visit, in person or online, especially if you are passing through Franschhoek.
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LADY SKOLLIE. TRYING TO LEARN ABOUT US BUT THE BOOK IS EMPTY AND THE QUILL HAS RUN DRY. THE SNAKE ESCAPED THE BAG THROUGH A HOLE AND THE BALL AND CLAW TABLE IS WONKY. 2025 Photos : © everard-read.com
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His practice now spans sculpture, drawing, painting, video and installations built from everyday objects: cooking pots, plastic bags, beads, the materials that pass through ordinary hands. In 2010, for the Salon Urbain de Douala, he stacked seventy-six enamelled marmites and thirty-eight lids into a twelve-metre tower at a New Bell roundabout. It is still there. Pascale tells the story of Colonne Pascale with affection. For many in the city it appeared as if by magic, and when residents learned that he was behind it, some saw him more as a magician than an artist. He did not mind. "Open the gate and let people think what they think," he says. For him, art belongs to everyone, to be read, misread, loved, feared, or simply felt.
What interests Pascale, in his words, is not theory but the daily rhythm of people caring for one another. A meal being cooked, a pot being mended, a neighbour lending a hand. His legal training sharpened his sense of justice. His village upbringing taught him humility. The two live alongside each other in the work, freedom and structure, boldness and care.
Asked what it means to be human, he is unhurried. "I don't really know. I just try every day to be a bit nicer. Maybe that's enough. I hope above all to still be human on the day I die."
A phrase to hold close.
Follow him at @pascalemarthinetayou
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Images : © Pauline Giroux
WHERE WE FIND INSPIRATION
LOVE THE OCEANS
Love The Oceans works out of Jangamo Bay in Inhambane Province, on Mozambique's southern coast. The end goal is a Marine Protected Area for the region. The means of getting there is, deliberately, the slow one.
Founded by marine biologist Francesca Trotman after a research trip to Mozambique in 2013, the organisation grew out of a hypothesis (that the shark fin trade in Jangamo was unsustainable) into something broader. The local approach now spans research, education and diving, but the through-line is community. Marine Resource Management classes at Guinjata and Paindane schools. Free swimming lessons in a bay with strong rip currents and a history of drownings. A long-term vision in which Love The Oceans eventually becomes unnecessary, because the community is running the conservation itself.
What draws us in is the patience of it. Marine Protected Areas are usually designated top-down, by governments. Love The Oceans is supporting one being built the other way around, from the school classrooms up. It is the same instinct we keep returning to in our own work: the people closest to a place are the ones who should decide what happens to it.
Find out more at lovetheoceans.org.
EVENT FEATURE
RMB LATITUDES ART FAIR 2026
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It pairs gallery booths with carefully built outdoor presentations. And its Focus programme works in-country with each year's spotlighted nation for months before the fair itself, rather than parachuting in for a long weekend. In 2025 that was Botswana. In 2026 it is Nigeria.
The 2026 theme is Oasis. It is loosely tied to Johannesburg's 140th anniversary, a city founded without access to a major body of water, where creative life has nevertheless taken root. "The Fair embraces Johannesburg's spirit of resilience and renewal," says curator Denzo Nyathi.
Three days only. If you can get there, go.
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