Christopher Moller Gallery | Amila Africa: A Pan-African Exhibition

The Christopher Moller Gallery was proud to recently host the Amila Africa VIP Soirée as part of Energy Africa Week 2025, a private evening that welcomed delegates, politicians, and cultural leaders from across the continent for a night of creativity and connection. In celebration of the event, the gallery presents Amila Africa: A Pan-African Exhibition, featuring new and selected works by Ablade Glover, Tony Gum, Mpho Feni, Lionel Mbayiwa, Louis Nel, Nessi Penman, and Sizwe Sama. Across generations and geographies, these artists illuminate the shared threads that bind African expression: resilience, renewal, and the quiet rhythm of values carried forward through time. Though their languages differ, from abstraction to figuration, from fabric to photography, they meet in a common space of human experience, where tradition converses with modernity and individuality opens into universality.

At ninety-two, Ablade Glover, one of the founding fathers of modern African art, continues to paint with extraordinary vitality. His large People Scene [HSE 246/19] becomes a visual symphony of colour and movement, a living metaphor for unity within diversity. Tony Gum, one of the most influential visual voices of her generation, extends that dialogue through her powerful works umFazi and Amampondomise. umFazi, a rare resale from her sold-out series, juxtaposes the traditionally dressed woman balancing firewood with a makeup brush held aloft, embodying the balance between heritage and contemporary self- definition. Amampondomise, exhibited for the first time on African soil after its showing in Milan, transforms the idea of ritual into futurist rebirth, the African feminine rendered timeless and sovereign.

Mpho Feni explores universality through stillness and form. His pink-toned figures transcend race and geography, reflecting a humanity that unites rather than divides. Around each composition, a deliberate white border offers breathing space, a visual pause that mirrors his meditative process. Feni’s works remind us that art, like consciousness, is both intimate and boundless.

Lionel Mbayiwa brings the pulse of contemporary life into dialogue with ancestral symbolism. In The Fishes’ Path and Good Times, the geometry of African mythology collides playfully
with the imagery of Western pop culture, his “Angry Birds” influenced motifs capturing how tradition and technology now coexist within the same visual field. As a father of two teenagers, Mbayiwa observes the evolution of identity in the modern African household: the past and future meeting in vibrant conversation.

Nessi Penman channels a quieter form of renewal through her works Frequency and Recalibration. In Frequency, her thick impasto surfaces vibrate with organic energy; in Recalibration, she shifts into softer, earth-toned hues — a celebration of the African landscape as a site of healing and return. Her work speaks of harmony and restoration — a visual recalibration toward balance and presence.

With Sizwe Sama, textiles become testimony. His twill-fabric portraits The Queen is Coming and Single and Ready to Meet Him transform pattern into narrative. The first honours the
universal power of motherhood; the second reflects the courage of being, a gay African man rooted in maternal love and cultural pride. Sama’s work radiates joy, resilience, and belonging, love expressed through colour and cloth.

Finally, Louis Nel’s Grey Seascape offers a moment of still reflection. Drawn from the gallery owner’s private collection, the work evokes the Afrikaans proverb “stille water diepe grond”— still waters run deep. Its quiet expanse of sea and sky forms a meditative pause within the exhibition, mirroring the reflective ethos that underpins the gallery’s curatorial vision: that art, like water, reveals its depth only in stillness.

Together, these artists create a chorus of voices, distinct yet harmonious, echoing the timeless values of connection, renewal, and unity across Africa and beyond. Amila Africa: A Pan-African Exhibition stands as a celebration not only of art, but of the living continuum of African creativity: where the wisdom of the past meets the imagination of the present, and where every brushstroke, stitch, and photograph speaks of a shared humanity that transcends all borders.

This show runs from 9 October – 13 November 2025.