Brilliant African artists shaking things up and changing the game: Frances Bodomo

If you ever visited the living room of somebody from “outside countries” and that person proudly shows you their African art collection, odds are you’ll be looking at a carving of an animal, a mask, or a piece of beaded jewellery.

The world thinks it knows what African art looks like, but it truly only knows tourist art. Afrocentric and fashionable, purchasable at airports or other high-end stores, dubiously, tourist art promises you the fairest of fair trade.

That is all very well and good—to each their own taste. However, there is a great deal more to art on the African continent. There are many refreshingly original and creative artists changing the way not only the continent, but also the world thinks of African art.

These mind-blowing artists range from a Mozambiquean fashioning furniture out of guns and artillery to a Senegalese photographer restaging The Matrix. Here are just some of the names to look out for that are changing the landscape of the African art world.

Ghana: Frances Bodomo (filmmaker)

Some say Africa is the future, others say Africa is now. One thing everyone can agree on is that Ghana’s Frances Bodomo is a filmmaker to look out for both now and in the future.

Filmmaker magazine named her one of the top 25 independent filmmakers to look out for in 2014. Though still up-and-coming, Bodomo’s short films have premiered at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival and the New York Film festival, among others.

She is the director behind the successful short films Boneshaker (which featured child-star Quvenzhane Wallis of Beasts of the Southern Wild fame) and Afronauts. Bodomo is currently developing this latter film into a feature that tells the story of the 1964 Zambian attempt to join the race to space.