AFRICA AMERICA
We know about African influence in Brazil and the Caribbean, but what do we know about the presence of black populations in the Andean region of the South American continent? Africa-America is a roaming journey built around photographic portraits; they ask questions about contemporary traces of African identity within the black diaspora of the Andes. Indeed, from the sixteenth century onwards, the plantation-based economy in the Spanish Americas developed on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts with the large-scale importation of slaves from the coasts of Africa. Nowadays these black ‘Afro-descendent’ populations are living through a historical turning point as they publically express their many different cultures; they are creating a unique syncretism made up of indigenous influences, the legacy of Spanish colonisation and their African roots with the avowed intention of finding their true place in the countries where they remain largely a minority. In their own way, they are all searching for their African roots - which they know little or not at all. Africa-America reminds us of the black populations of Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, the equatorial regions, Bolivia and Chile.