Seven African Artists to Watch in 2025 

From emerging to mid-career, here are seven African artists to watch out for in 2025. 

COUMBA SAMBA

Born in 2000, Senegalese-American interdisciplinary artist Coumba Samba’s practice spans sculpture, installation, and performance. Her work explores the intersections of material culture, ideology, and diasporic narratives. Samba’s performances and installations consistently challenge dominant narratives, spotlighting marginalized voices through provocative and engaging works. She is one half of New York, a London-based girl-pop band and experimental performance project, together with Gretchen Lawrence. In 2025, she will have her first institutional solo show in Germany at the renowned Kunstverein Hamburg, a solo exhibition at GTA Exhibitions (ETH Zurich) in Zurich, and a showcase at Kunsthalle Basel. 

EBUN SODIPO

Based in London, Ebun Sodipo’s interdisciplinary practice probes possible trans futures through assemblage, sculpture, archiving, film, poetry, and performance. Sodipo uses research, excavation, and narrative to question historical and visual representations of race and gender. She mines ancestral knowledge and visual culture to depict the Black transfeminine experience, interrogating where the record of this presence exists more broadly within the archive of the Black experience. Her work is currently being shown at Site Gallery, Centre for Contemporary Art in Jerwood Survey. 

AGNES WARUGURU

Agnes Waruguru is a Nairobi-based artist exploring themes of geographical belonging, temporality, and transience using painting, drawing, printing, sculpture, needlework, and installation. The materiality of objects in space is at the core of her explorations, which are intimately rooted in personal identity politics, often referencing women’s practices and traditional cultural identifiers. In her practice, Waruguru draws from personal experience to create new landscapes, which can often be memory or emotion scapes. Her work was included in “Foreigners Everywhere” at the Venice Biennale 2024. She was recently featured in The Artsy Vanguard as one of the most promising artists working today. 

YADICHINMA UKOHA-KALU

Yadichinma Ukoha-Kalu is a Lagos-based experimental artist and illustrator. She is known for her exploration of objects, space, and boundaries through drawing, sculpture, fabric, and technology. Ukoha-Kalu is drawn to the material world, which drives her to actively seek out the connections and interactions between seemingly separate objects, believing that each object possesses its own unique world and system. Consistently creating multi-dimensional environments that blend surreal and abstract elements, her work aims to bridge the gap between traditional methodologies and contemporary practices, focusing on African artifacts and archival systems. She was recently shortlisted for The Norval Sovereign African Art Prize (2025). 

AHMED UMAR

Ahmed Umar is a Sudanese-Norwegian artist working with ceramics, jewelry, painting, performance, and printmaking. Recreating and performing their own life story as a Sudanese with roots shaped by a childhood in Mecca, embodying their experiences as a queer person and Muslim immigrant, Umar’s work explores identity, religion, and cultural values. Exploring the complex relationship between identity, authority, sexuality, depression, and art, their practice blends Sudanese and Western influences. In 2024, they won the Baloise Art Prize, the largest art prize affiliated with the Swiss iteration of Art Basel. 

ORRY SHENJOBI

Telling everyday stories from within diverse communities, Nigerian-British multi-disciplinary artist Orry Shenjobi‘s works transcend traditional artistic expression. Her multidisciplinary practice combines painting, textiles, photography, and film, as she explores themes of identity, community, and cultural heritage. She focuses on personal identity and community relations, incorporating photorealism and seamlessly combining photographs to create distinct personalities and scenes that exude color and depth. Her project, A wà ńbẹ̀”, celebrating the importance of the Nigerian Owambe party, was presented during the 60th Venice Biennale. 

KARIMAH ASHADU

Karimah Ashadu is a British-born Nigerian artist and filmmaker living and working between Hamburg and Lagos. Ashadu’s practice is concerned with labour, patriarchy, and notions of independence pertaining to the socio-economic and socio-cultural context of Nigeria and its diaspora. Her work has been exhibited and screened at institutions internationally, including the 60th Venice Biennale, where she was awarded the Silver Lion for a Promising Young Participant in the International Exhibition. Upcoming exhibitions include Camden Arts Centre in London, Canal Projects, New York, and MoMA PS1.