Decolonizing Islamic Art in Africa: New Approaches to Muslim Expressive Cultures

New research explores Muslim arts and identities in postcolonial Africa.

This collection explores the dynamic place of Islamic art, architecture, and creative expression in processes of decolonization across the African continent in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Presenting new methodologies for accentuating African agency and expression in stories about Islamic art, it is a vital new contribution to recent widespread efforts to liberate the art historical canon.

Bringing together new work by leading specialists in the fields of African, Islamic, and modern arts and visual cultures, the book directs unprecedented attention to the contributions of African and Muslim artists in articulating modernities in local and international arenas. Interdisciplinary and transregional in scope, it enriches the under-told story of Muslim experiences and expression in Africa, which is home to nearly half a million Muslims, or a third of the global Muslim population.

Furthermore, the book elucidates the role of Islam and its expressive cultures in postcolonial articulations of modern identities and heritage, as expressed by a diverse range of actors and communities based in Africa and its diaspora. Countering notions of Islam as a retrograde or static societal phenomenon in Africa or elsewhere, contributors propose new methodologies for accentuating human agency and experience over superficial disciplinary boundaries in the stories we tell about art making and visual expression thus contributing to widespread efforts to decolonize scholarship on histories of modern expression.

Ashley Miller is assistant curator of African art at the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, Michigan.