At the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Sierra Leone makes its historic debut with
“Worlds of Today”, a pavilion that transforms national representation into a broader meditation on memory, resilience, identity, and the future.
Presented at the Liceo Artistico Guggenheim, the exhibition responds to the late Koyo Kouoh’s invitation to work “in minor keys”: to move away from the spectacle of dominant narratives and listen instead to quieter histories, everyday resistance, and new forms of collective imagination.
Curated by Sandro Orlandi Stagl and Willy Montini, the pavilion brings together four Sierra Leonean artists—Hawa-Jane Bangura, Ayesha Feisal, Hickmatu Bintu Leigh, and Abu Bakarr Mansaray—alongside artists from other West African countries and an international group. Rather than presenting a single image of contemporary Sierra Leone, the exhibition creates a dialogue between different experiences of history, migration, technology, ecology, and social transformation.
From Trauma to Imagination
The works of the Sierra Leonean artists reveal how personal and collective histories can become sources of invention.
Abu Bakarr Mansaray turns his experience of Sierra Leone’s civil war into intricate drawings of fantastical machines, transforming trauma into an Afrofuturist language of control and possibility. Hawa-Jane Bangura, meanwhile, uses meticulous pointillism and references to civilizations such as Kush and Axum to challenge colonial silences and reconnect contemporary African identity with a deeper cultural past.
For Ayesha Feisal, the body becomes a site of transformation and resilience. Her organic sculptures draw on the adaptability of nature to explore survival and shared consciousness. Hickmatu Bintu Leigh addresses a very different contemporary threat: misinformation. Her practice considers art as a critical tool for navigating the increasingly blurred boundaries between information, manipulation, and truth in the digital age.
A West African Conversation
One of the pavilion’s most distinctive features is its expansion beyond Sierra Leone’s borders.
Artists from Senegal, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria—Seini Awa Camara, Abdoul Ganiou Dermani, Eloy Lokossou, and Mòyọ̀sórẹ́ Martins—bring a wider West African perspective to the project.
This ECOWAS dimension deliberately resists the idea of Africa as a cultural monolith. Different languages, histories, traditions, and experiences of modernization come together in a polyphonic conversation.
For the curators, this is not simply a group exhibition but a form of cultural dialogue that demonstrates how art can cross borders before politics does. The project acquires particular significance amid the concurrent presidencies of Sierra Leone and ECOWAS under H.E. President Julius Maada Bio.
Nigerian artist Mòyọ̀sórẹ́ Martins, whose practice connects Lagos and the Bronx, embodies this transnational perspective. His recurring “Watchman” figure explores protection and vulnerability, bringing Yoruba visual traditions into dialogue with the contemporary metropolis.
Art as a Space for Renewal
The pavilion’s choice of a school as its venue reinforces its commitment to dialogue and education. The Liceo Artistico Guggenheim becomes a living classroom where artists, students, and visitors can encounter different ways of seeing the present.
“Worlds of Today” ultimately argues that there is no single contemporary world, but many worlds existing simultaneously—shaped by memory, displacement, technology, ecology, and hope.
In the space between these voices, Sierra Leone’s first Venice Biennale pavilion finds its strongest statement: Africa is not simply being represented in the global art conversation; it is helping to redefine the conversation itself.
By bringing Sierra Leone into dialogue with West Africa and the wider international art community, “Worlds of Today” turns Venice into an archipelago of connected perspectives—and offers art as a rehearsal for a more plural, sustainable, and human future.
