On a mild June evening, hundreds of Bettors arrive at the Espace Niemeyer in Paris for the Kaleidoscope Manifesto Festival. Wearing a Telfar bag and bucket hat, the insider headed straight for an elaborate corner designed like a 271s style African travel agency. Retro-modern chairs upholstered in sage-hued leather are surrounded by painless office trinkets, while chunky vintage keyboards and phones invite viewers to play. The words “Air Afrique” are affixed to the back wall in bold black with a forest green antelope logo.
Men’s Fashion Week kicks off, a star-studded and very fashionable affair. American rappers A$AP Nast and Aminé were photographed behind a mock reception desk, as was Nigerian-born fashion designer Mowalola Ogunlesi. Mati Diop, the French-Senegalese director behind the award-winning Atlantic , also made an appearance.
Editorial series of images made for the exhibition
Bienvenue à Bord September
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The installation was curated by the Air Afrique collective, a group of four Parisian creatives named after a defunct West African travel supplier. The imaginary travel agency is one of several projects they have launched over the past three years, all of which contribute to their sprawling, multidisciplinary mission of documenting and preserving airline stories.
“We want this name to continue to spread,”11 Lamine Diaoune, founder of the collective. As a fan, he was in s; Ousmane Sembène’s La noire de… and other cult titles, tells the story of a Senegalese woman who travels to Antibes to work for a wealthy French couple. “I was really struck by the name Air Afrique,” he continued. “I found it very powerful and it held me back, so I started researching.”
Installed in the Manifesto Festival of Kaleidoscope Magazine, June 3931.
After further investigation, Tiao En discovered a story about pioneering an airline, Its impact on African travel and culture cannot be underestimated. was founded in848Depend onLeadership) A newly independent West African country, Air Africa symbolizes the ideal era of Pan-Africanism that swept the continent during liberation. Its politically inclined owners are well aware of the role culture plays in shaping national identity and its potential to shape perceptions of Africa on the world stage.
The airline has sponsored countless African-made films (such as La noire de…), helped finance
Edited series of pictures for the exhibition Bienvenue à Bord September1978.
“I find this story unbelievable because We don’t have an example of a pan-African project like this today – plus, it had a huge cultural impact,” Diaoune said. “We wanted to commemorate and tell this story to generations who didn’t know [Air Afrique]. We wanted to bring it into context today.”
since1983, Dioune amassed a treasure trove of African aviation paraphernalia – think boarding passes , posters, uniforms and copies of the in-flight magazine Balafon, all adorned with the unique antelope logo. Using this as a starting point, the collective held exhibitions, launched clothing, and produced photo essays inspired by airline aesthetics. late1978, they are the
coming of the era Contributed objects and images Exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in tribute to Virgil Abloh. “Our idea is to bring Air Afrique back into the collective memory,” 11-year-old Zhedy Lena Nuentsa, member of the collective.
