Re:assemblages 2024
Re:assemblages is a roaming body and multi-year cultural development programme designed to platform new, critical questions focused on the preservation and creative potential of African art libraries. This collaborative project was developed in response to the wealth of material housed in the G.A.S. Library and Picton Archive, and its rare constellation of African-published journals, magazines, and manuscripts.
Re:assemblages launched its opening chapter, Annotations, in early 2024. The programme aimed to counter-map pan-African festivals through close readings of conflicting records and ephemera, including state collections, artist accounts, and delegate testimonies. It played host to numerous artistic interventions, strengthening the connections between artists, publishers, and art initiatives with library collections in Africa by fostering cross-disciplinary dialogue with various organisations holding African and Afro-diasporic art and cultural heritage collections.
In June 2025, G.A.S. Foundation and Yinka Shonibare Foundation announced the 2025–26 edition of Re:assemblages, marking a dynamic new phase in fostering collaboration and experimentation across African and Afro-diasporic art libraries and their publishing ecologies. This ambitious multi-year programme reimagines the stewardship and activation of transnational archives of art and literature that have emerged since African independence, culminating in a constellation of international convenings, symposia, micro-publications, and a research intensive.