On display at the Benaki Museum until May 25, Africa Amongst Us is a multi-medium exhibition showcasing archival objects from Nigeria, Cameroon, and Kenya, alongside stories, artifacts, and art from the African diaspora in Greece. The exhibition illuminates the histories of the diaspora, presenting a timeline that braids together traditional and everyday items to highlight how African communities have grown, flourished, and shaped Greek society.
The exhibition and its accompanying series of guided tours, discussions, and performances have been co-organized and co-curated with ANASA Cultural Center for African Art and Cultures. ANASA has long worked to promote African culture in Greece, using its programming to open space for conversations often missing from mainstream cultural discourse—questioning the stereotypes around Greekness, Blackness, racism, and discrimination in contemporary Greek life.
In this episode, we speak with Béatrice Koumnta, an organizer with ANASA about the Africa Amongst Us exhibition and how the group uses cultural connection both a bridge and a challenge to entrenched stereotypes. “I think by creating these hubs of culture, we kind of break the gap between the different cultures,” explained Koumnta. “So we just become one, and from there, we move.”
Koumnta spoke about how this approach of sharing the every day was a revolutionary approach to broaden the historiography of the diaspora: “Often when you see like a Black person on TV, you only focus on like athletes, artists, etc. And through this exhibition, we not only showcased the artists and the athletes, but also the simple person, a simple person with a simple job that is going through the same issues. The person that has been here forever, has shown African entrepreneurship in Greece, showcased the importance of history and what we’ve done so far.”
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