This exhibition is created by Foam and Forum on European Culture, and is curated by Johny Pitts and Kim Knoppers. The exhibition takes place on the occasion of Forum on European Culture 2020

Date
18 september – 1 november 2019

In Afropean: Travels in Black Europe, writer and photographer Johny Pitts (b. Sheffield, UK) examines the life of black communities as he travels  across Europe. Crossing the continent from London to Paris, via Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Stockholm, Moscow, Rome, Marseille, Madrid and Lisbon, in search of the ‘Afropean’ identity, he sketches an underexposed story about the continent in words and images. In Amsterdam he hears from The Black Archives about Hermina and Otto Huiswoud, fighters against colonialism and for black communism. He documents Cova Da Moura, the Cape Verdean Favela on the outskirts of Lisbon that has its own underground economy, and visits the Clichy Sous Bois district in Paris, where uprisings erupted in 2005 following the deaths of Bouna and Zyed, two boys who died hiding from police who were chasing them.

Pitts travels from London to Paris via Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Stockholm, Moscow, Rome, Marseille, Madrid and Lisbon. Consciously and unconsciously he sketches hidden stories about the black presence in Europe, in both words and images. As he travels he tries to discover the content of the ‘Afropean’ identity and concludes, ‘These scattered fragments of Afropean experience had formed a mosaic inside my mind ( … ) the Afropean reality was a bricolage of blackness and I’d experienced an Africa that was both in and of Europe.’

Pitts’ journey resulted in the book Afropean – Notes from Black Europe, published by Penguin in 2019, in which he combines texts with his photographs. He had no formal training in photography, but has been using a camera since he was a teenager. He captures his journey in quiet, atmospheric almost cinematographic images in diverse tints of black and white, giving his impression of a place – graffiti, snow, figures, metro stations – using both the camera and words.  The figures in his European cityscapes are sunk in their own thoughts, reflecting a sense of solitude that perhaps lies in Pitts himself.

A selection of photos appeared in the book Afropean: Notes From Black Europe, published by Penguin in 2019, for which Pitts was recently awarded the Jhalak Prize. Pitts is also the founder of the online platform Afropean.com.