“To be continued . . .”

Abstract

This paper examines three photographic series from Angolan multimedia artist Kiluanji Kia Henda. In these works, the artist manipulates photography’s claim to truth as a means to destabilize the viewer’s presumptions of the African cityscape and its past, present, and future. The photographic medium allows Kia Henda to explore these ideas because it purports to image the present. To this end, the artist employs the documentary style to picture present-day reality. But by overlaying these representations with new narratives, new historical figures, or new skylines, Kia Henda’s work shifts the meaning of that imagery. I argue that the artist has used urban space as a medium in and of itself, one that intersects productively with the photographic framing of that space. Together, these strategies work to imagine and image a future African city as informed by the past.