“There are always all these ingredients—social forces, political forces, economic forces—but sometimes, and somehow, they all come together and make a form of practice, or an institutional structure.”

Sumayya Vally, Johannesburg

“In our interactions with cultural institutions that disperse funding, we’d wanted to articulate a different relationship where we as the people who are receiving this funding are able to have more say, rather than always being instrumentalised to fit an agenda.”

Sinethemba Twalo, NGO Johannesburg

“The history of the market has proven to us that artists have not always had the voice to make decisions that are crucial to their own practices.”

Nuna Adisenu-Do, Compound House Gallery, Accra

“Unlike traditional institutions bound by rigid hierarchies, independent art spaces thrive on experimentation and risk-taking. For these cultural venues, the very idea of what ‘independence’ means can be a source of conflict.”