African contemporary art has long moved beyond being treated as a discovery. Its artists are commanding major exhibitions, entering important collections, winning international prizes and creating work that speaks as confidently to local histories as it does to global conversations. What makes the current moment particularly exciting is the sheer range of practices coming from the continent. Scrap metal becomes sculpture, discarded jute sacks cover entire buildings, painting interrogates extraction and labour, while installation becomes a way of telling stories about memory, identity and society. From established names with decades of work behind them to younger artists shaping what comes next, these five artists offer very different reasons to pay attention.
Dotun Popoola (Nigeria)
Dotun Popoola is a Nigerian metal sculptor known for transforming discarded materials into colourful, intricate works of art. Born in Lagos in 1981, he holds degrees in Fine and Applied Arts, specialising in sculpture and painting. After training in various art studios, he became certified as a hybrid metal sculptor in 2015.
His accolades include the Director General’s Award for Best Artist of the Year at the 2009 NYSC Arts Competition. Popoola has exhibited extensively, from ARTX Lagos to Qatar, India, Turkey, Marrakech, Bahrain and Dubai, while also conducting art workshops internationally. He volunteered at Scrap Festival 2023 in Detroit and spent eight years as a curator at Nigeria’s National Gallery of Arts.
In October 2023, he served as a juror for a steampunk miniature sculpture competition on Vancouver Island, Canada. His work and career have appeared in more than 100 publications worldwide.
Ibrahim Mahama (Ghana)
Born in Tamale in 1987, Ibrahim Mahama has become one of the most influential voices in contemporary art and the first African artist to top ArtReview’s Power 100.
The Ghanaian visual artist is celebrated for monumental, site-specific installations created from materials associated with labour and trade, particularly discarded jute cocoa sacks, timber and industrial remnants. Through them, he explores global economies, colonial histories, inequality and the movement of goods and people.
Living and working between Accra, Kumasi and Tamale, Mahama founded the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA), Red Clay Studio and Nkrumah Volini. He has exhibited at Documenta 14, the Venice Biennale and Centre Pompidou, with a solo exhibition at Fondation Cartier, Paris, in 2026. He received the Sam Gilliam Award in 2024 and the Gold Award at the inaugural Art Basel Awards in 2025. His work is held in major public collections worldwide, and he is represented by APALAZZOGALLERY and White Cube.
Natnael Ashebir (Ethiopia)
Natnael Ashebir, born in 1995, is a prominent Ethiopian multidisciplinary artist living and working in Addis Ababa. He is regarded as one of the exciting contemporary artists emerging from Ethiopia’s visual arts scene.
His complex work brings personal memories together with wider socio-cultural commentary, examining modern urbanisation, identity and social structures. That combination of the intimate and the societal makes Ashebir an interesting voice among a younger generation of African artists who use personal experience to consider changing environments around them.
Jean David Nkot (Cameroon)
Jean David Nkot is interested in what lies behind the things the world consumes. A graduate of the Institut de Formation Artistique of Mbalmayo and Institut des Beaux-Arts of Foumban, he also participated in the “Post-Master Moving Frontiers” programme at the École nationale supérieure d’art in Paris-Cergy in 2017.
Working across painting, ceramics, sculpture and installation, Nkot examines the human condition and the effects of globalised capitalism. Since 2020, his practice has focused particularly on the exploitation of African raw materials such as cotton, chocolate and minerals, and their social and environmental consequences.
His work has been shown in Miami, New York, London, Paris, Marrakech, and Cape Town, as well as at institutions including Guangdong Times Museum, Institut des Cultures d’Islam, SAVVY Contemporary, and Kunsthalle Krems. His works are held in collections including FRAC Sud, Fondation H, Fondation Blachère, Fondation Almas and the Amir Shariat Collection.
His 2025 solo exhibition, Théâtre des corps, drame de la matière, curated by Christine Eyene, was presented at AFIKARIS, Paris. The gallery presented his solo exhibition at Art Brussels in April 2026.
Peju Alatise (Nigeria)
Born in Lagos in 1975, Peju Alatise is an interdisciplinary artist, architect and author of two novels who works between Lagos and Glasgow. She studied architecture at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology while running a private art studio, and she works across painting, film, installation, and sculpture.
In 2017, Alatise represented Nigeria at its debut pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale and won the FNB Art Prize. The following year, she founded the Alter-Native Artists Initiative, which provides training programmes and residencies for young emerging artists.
She was selected for the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2020 and participated in Frieze Sculpture in London in 2022. Alatise is a fellow at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, which also collects her work. Her debut novel, Orita Meta, chronicling the interwoven paths of three women, was nominated for the ANA/Flora Nwapa Prize for Women’s Writing in 2006.
