Blog / Texts

Niger-Delta / Future-Cosmos: A Resource List

POSTED: 22 February 2024

A list of resources exploring themes of Afrofuturism, socially engaged practice and the politics of representation to accompany Wilfred Ukpong's exhibition Niger-Delta / Future-Cosmos

Delve into issues of socially engaged art, Afrofuturism, and the politics of representation with this reading list and playlist compiled by Wilfred Ukpong and Autograph, to accompany his exhibition Niger-Delta / Future-Cosmos on display at Autograph until 1 June 2024.

📚 books and texts 📚

➡  Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, published by Verso Books, 2012.

➡  Octavia Butler, Kindred, published by Headline, 2018.

➡  Alfred Gell, Art and Agency, published by Oxford University Press, 1998.

➡  Elizabeth Hamilton, Afrofuturism and the Technologies of Survival, published in African Arts Vol. 50, No. 4, 2017.

➡  N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season, published by Orbit, 2016.

➡  Grant H Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Conversation in Modern Art, published by University of California Press, 2004.

➡  Nnedi Okorafor, Lagoon, published by Hodderscape, 2014.

➡  Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, published by Verso Books, 2011.

➡  Mark Sealy, Photography: Race, Rights and Representation, published by Lawrence Wishart, 2022.

➡  Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy, published by Random House, 1984.

➡  Caroline Tisdall, Joseph Beuys, published by Thames and Hudson, 1979.

➡  Lisa Yaszek, Afrofuturism, science fiction, and the history of the future, published in Socialism and Democracy, Vol. 20, No.3, 2006.


🎶 music 🎶

A playlist compiled by Autograph’s Director, Mark Sealy, to accompany the critically-acclaimed exhibition African Cosmologies: Photography, Time and the Other which featured Wilfred Ukpong's work alongside 29 other artists from across the African continent and its diaspora.




part of the exhibition

Wilfred Ukpong: Niger-Delta / Future-Cosmos

16 Feb – 1 Jun 2024
Free exhibition

Tickets and more

Banner image: Wilfred Ukpong, The Advent of the Visionaries - A Screen to Behold [detail], 2017. From the series Blazing Century 1: Niger-Delta/Future-Cosmos © and courtesy of the artist and Blazing Century Studios.

Other image on page: Wilfred Ukpong, Strongly, We Believe In the Power of this Motile Thing That Will Take Us There #2, 2017. From the series Blazing Century 1: Niger-Delta/Future-Cosmos © and courtesy of the artist and Blazing Century Studios.