Kings and Queens of Africa: Forms and Figures of Power, a major exhibition at Louvre Abu Dhabi that traces the visual legacy of power across the African continent from the 11th to the 21st century. The exhibition concludes its display on the 12th of May 2025, making this week the final opportunity to engage with this significant survey of African art and power before the exhibition closes.
The exhibition offers a comprehensive look at how various forms of authority—ranging from empires and kingdoms to city-states and chiefdoms—have been represented through art. It features approximately 359 works, including sculptures, graphic arts, textiles, and contemporary pieces, from collections in Nigeria, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, South Africa, the UAE, and France that reveal how power is expressed and reinterpreted across time and geography.
Organised in collaboration with the musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chirac and France Muséums, the exhibition is structured into three regional sections:
- Part I: Kingdoms of West Africa
- Part II: Art and Power in Central Africa
- Part III: Kingdoms and Empires of Southern and East Africa
In addition to historical objects, the exhibition includes works by contemporary African and Afro-descendant artists, whose pieces respond to and reframe the histories on display. These interventions highlight the enduring influence of the past in today’s cultural expressions. The artworks were selected for how they relate to the surrounding cultural or thematic contexts, offering contemporary perspectives on Africa’s past. These works demonstrate how today’s artists engage with historical narratives using new techniques and visual approaches, emphasising the ongoing conversation between the past and the present.
The curatorial team includes Hélène Joubert, General Curator and Head of African Collections at the musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chirac; El Hadji Malick Ndiaye, Curator of the Musée Théodore Monod d’Art Africain in Dakar; and Cindy Olohou, Head of Collections at the Regional Collection of Contemporary Art, Île-de-France, alongside support from Louvre Abu Dhabi’s curatorial team.