‘More Than Meets The Eye’ Celebrates A Century Of African Art At Geneva’s Musée Rath

African and African diaspora art is having a long-overdue moment in the global spotlight. More than Meets the Eye, the ambitious exhibition currently on view at the Musée Rath in Geneva, offers a sweeping and breathtaking exploration of nearly a century of African modernism and contemporary expression. Curated from the Compagnie Bancaire Helvétique (CBH) Bank’s outstanding art collection, this survey is both a revelation and a reckoning – a vibrant testament to Africa’s artistic legacies and a celebration of the continent’s multiplicity of voices, visions, and visual vocabularies.

Presented at Switzerland’s oldest fine arts museums–Musée Rath, established in 1826–the exhibition marks a significant milestone. Featuring more than eighty artists from twenty-one African nations, More than Meets the Eye spans the years 1929 to 2025 and traces the evolution of African art from early modernist innovators to trailblazing contemporary figures shaping the discourse today.

At the heart of this exhibition is the CBH Bank Collection, one of the most notable private collections of African art in Europe. For over fifteen years, the Swiss family-owned CBH Group has been building an impressive repository of paintings, sculptures, and photographs by artists born or active in sub-Saharan Africa. The result is a collection that functions not only as a chronicle of modern African art but also as a reflection of Africa’s evolving cultural identity in the postcolonial and globalized eras.

From Congolese modernists to contemporary icons like El Anatsui and Zanele Muholi, More than Meets the Eye celebrates a century of African artistry–where memory, myth, and modernity converge in a dazzling dialogue.

A Curatorial Vision Rooted in Dialogue

More than Meets the Eye is co-curated by two figures who bring complementary expertise and sensitivity to the project: Jean-Yves Marin, former Director of the Musée d’art et d’histoire de Genève (MAH), and Ousseynou Wade, former Secretary General of the Dakar Biennale. Their collaboration produces a curatorial approach that is at once scholarly and poetic, intellectual yet deeply humane.

Marin, an archaeologist and museologist, brings decades of experience in institutional curation and an understanding of how to contextualize art within history. Wade, an advisor to the Museum of Black Civilisations in Dakar and a veteran of six Dakar Biennales, contributes a decolonial and culturally embedded perspective, ensuring that African art is presented on its own terms rather than filtered through the lens of Western art history.

Together, they have created a curatorial framework that rejects the tired anthropological narratives which, for much of the twentieth century, confined African art within ethnographic or “primitive” categories. Instead, More than Meets the Eye situates African creativity within the global canon, celebrating the plurality and sophistication of its aesthetic languages.

Wade and Marin’s vision is encapsulated in a joint text in the exhibition catalogue: “The growing success of African artists today unquestionably has its roots in ancestral heritage passed down by lineages of women and men who, for millennia, have translated their vision of the world through striking colour and enlivened forms. Far from the West’s cliché of exotic Africa, their vibrant and luminous art belongs to a dynamic of cultural reappropriation that celebrates the joy of being in harmony with nature and numerous protective deities.”

A Thematic Journey Across a Century

The exhibition unfolds across seven thematic chapters, each exploring dimensions of emergence, spirituality, intimacy, affirmation, and the everyday. Rather than arranging the works chronologically or geographically, the curators opt for a thematic structure that encourages visual and conceptual dialogue between artists across time and place.

The scenography by celebrated Paris-based interior architect Pierre Yovanovitch enhances this fluidity. The galleries are bathed in warm tones of ochre, rust and burnt umber, a palette that evokes African earth and sunlight while providing a serene backdrop for the art. Discreet alcoves conceal wall labels, allowing the works to breathe freely without the distraction of textual mediation. The result is an exhibition that invites immersion and contemplation; the viewer’s eye drifts naturally from painting to sculpture to photograph, discovering resonances and contrasts across media and generations.

Visitors are greeted at the entrance by Generous (2021), a monumental wooden sculpture by Beninese artist Dominique Zinkpè. The crowned, goddess-like figure stands sentinel at the exhibition threshold, like a presiding spirit of abundance and protection. This opening gesture sets the tone for what follows: a journey through Africa’s artistic modernity that is simultaneously spiritual, political, and sensorial.

Emergence and the Birth of African Modernism

The first gallery, devoted to the theme of Emergence, traces the birth of African modernism in the early twentieth century. Congolese pioneers Albert and Antoinette Lubaki and Djilatendo are represented through rare and delicate watercolours–among the first known works of modern painting from sub-Saharan Africa.

Albert Lubaki’s whimsical images of warthog-like creatures and elephants meandering across green hills combine abstraction with narrative figuration, exuding both innocence and visionary imagination. Antoinette Lubaki’s scenes of fishing and village life embody a similar naiveté, yet their rhythmic compositions reveal a sophisticated sense of design. Djilatendo’s geometric depictions of birds show an early attempt to reconcile indigenous symbolism with modernist form.

These early works are accompanied by mythological paintings from Pilipili Mulongoy and the mystical Scène d’initiation by Bela Sara, where crimson-painted dancers enact a nocturnal ritual beneath a spectral moon. Together, they articulate a distinctly African modernism, one born not from imitation of Europe but from the creative reactivation of traditional motifs within new pictorial languages.

Spirituality and the Power of Matter

Spirituality is a recurrent undercurrent in African art, and this theme is explored through a striking ensemble of sculptures and paintings that engage the sacred and the ancestral. Seyni Awa Camara’s terracotta figures of women cradling children and animals evoke the fecundity of motherhood and the symbiosis of humans and nature. Camara, whose work was celebrated at the 2020 Venice Biennale, fuses the personal and the mythic in clay, transforming maternal experience into cosmic allegory.

Equally compelling is Mozambican artist Gonçalo Mabunda’s The Coerced of the Ideal (2022), assembled from decommissioned weapons. His sculptures transform instruments of death into totems of resilience, referencing Mozambique’s civil war while asserting art’s capacity for regeneration.

Emerging Congolese artist Géraldine Tobe contributes Vanité de Vanité, a haunting image rendered not with pigment but with soot blown onto canvas. Her gender-fluid figure, veiled in smoky translucence and covered with all-seeing eyes, suggests spiritual awakening as both revelation and dissolution–a vanitas for the contemporary African soul.

Between Two Worlds: The Politics of Identity and Migration

The exhibition’s central section, Between Two Worlds, bridges modernism and the present, addressing the complexities of migration, postcolonial identity, and globalisation. It features established artists such as Yinka Shonibare alongside a vibrant younger generation including Hilary Balu, Catheris Mondombo, Romeo Mivekannin, and Ayanfe Olarinde.

At its heart stands Shonibare’s Planets in My Head, Flute Boy (2019), a mannequin figure in Dutch wax fabrics, flute in hand, his globe-like head symbolising diasporic multiplicity. Shonibare’s playful yet incisive commentary on race, empire, and hybridity anchors this section, linking African heritage with global contemporary art discourse.

Nearby, Romeo Mivekannin’s monumental reinterpretation of Manet’s Olympia–with a self-portrait of the artist replacing Manet’s white female model–subverts canonical European imagery, reasserting Black subjectivity in the art historical narrative. This bold gesture, previously shown at Louvre-Lens, epitomises the exhibition’s mission to reclaim representation from the colonial gaze.

Everyday Life, Intimacy, and the Poetics of the Ordinary

The final rooms move from struggle to serenity. In Everyday Life and Intimacy, the focus shifts to domestic and emotional worlds, revealing how African artists have continually celebrated the poetry of the quotidian.

Ivorian artist Yeanzi (Lanin Saint-Etienne Yeanzi) paints ghostly figures in melted plastic, their blurred features suggesting both individuality and erasure, a haunting metaphor for urban anonymity and postcolonial flux. Aboudia (Abdoulaye Diarrassouba), by contrast, confronts the horrors of child soldiers in Côte d’Ivoire through graffiti-like, frenetic compositions whose intensity recalls Jean-Michel Basquiat. Aboudia’s wide-eyed children are full of terror at the horrors they have witnessed.

The Congolese master Moke (Monsengwo Kejwamfi) offers respite with his joyous depictions of couples dining under family portraits–snapshots of domestic contentment rendered with vivid colour and humor. These are complemented by tender portraits from young contendors to the art of African portraiture including Abe Odedina, Cassi Namoda, Kaloki Nyamai, Victor Olaoye, and Matthew Eguavoen, each capturing moments of affection, friendship, or repose.

Kenyan-born artist Olivia Mae Pendergast’s luminous portrait of a mother and daughter bathed in dappled light is a highlight of the exhibition: a vision of maternal serenity reminiscent of Impressionism yet grounded in African warmth. It is an image of peace and continuity, a fitting coda to a show that ultimately celebrates life over trauma.

Photography and the African Gaze

Photography, often sidelined in survey exhibitions, is treated here as an equal medium. Malian greats Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé are highlights. Keïta’s 1940s studio portraits, with their patterned backdrops and regal poise, remain definitive records of a newly self-aware African modernity. Sidibé’s exuberant images of Bamako’s youth culture in the 1960s–dancers, lovers and musicians–capture the optimism of independence and the rhythm of postcolonial urban life. An edition of his exuberant Nuit de Noël (Happy Club) is displayed here and also at Fondation Cartier’s new Paris show, underscoring the importance of this exceptional photographer and documenter of life in Mali.

These historical works converse with J.D. ’Okhai Ojeikere’s iconic Hairstyles series (which can be found in the lower ground floor of the exhibition), documenting Nigerian women’s elaborate coiffures as sculptural expressions of identity. In contrast, contemporary Kenyan photographer Thandiwe Muriu reimagines portraiture through dazzling, geometric compositions inspired by Kitenge fabrics. Her vibrant images transform the sitter into pattern, collapsing subject and environment in a way that both celebrates and questions visibility.

Zanele Muholi’s black-and-white self-portraits form another powerful anchor, asserting queer Black identity with fierce dignity. Muholi’s presence–following their acclaimed Tate Modern retrospective in 2024–underscores the global recognition of African artists who have long been marginalised. Their inclusion here broadens the conversation, reminding viewers that African art is as much about contemporary activism as it is about heritage.

Global Dialogues and Institutional Shifts

More than Meets the Eye arrives at a moment when major institutions are finally reconfiguring the art-historical map to include Africa’s modern and contemporary contributions. The exhibition’s resonance with Tate Modern’s current Nigerian Modernism show is striking, particularly in its inclusion of figures like El Anatsui and Shonibare.

Anatsui’s Zulez (2023) is a highlight of the Geneva exhibition, and shows a departure from his signature bottle-cap tapestries, which have been exhibited at Venice Biennale on two occasions. Painted on reclaimed tropical hardwood, Zulez is a vivid depiction of clustered houses reads as both landscape and abstraction, suggesting renewal and rootedness. Anatsui’s evolution mirrors that of African art itself: ever adaptive, materially inventive, globally resonant.

The synergy between these exhibitions–the Tate in London, Musée Rath in Geneva, and Fondation Cartier’s concurrent Paris show featuring several prints by Sidibé–signals a long-awaited institutional reckoning. African art is no longer peripheral; it is central to the story of modernity.

A Landmark Exhibition

In its scope, sensitivity, and visual impact, More than Meets the Eye is nothing short of transformative. It offers not just a survey but a reconfiguration of art history, inviting viewers to perceive Africa not as a singular narrative but as a constellation of modernities. The exhibition’s title proves apt: beneath every image lies another layer–of history, memory, resistance, or joy–waiting to be seen.

The partnership between Musée Rath and CBH Bank demonstrates how private collections can serve public missions when guided by curatorial intelligence and ethical engagement. It also affirms Switzerland’s growing role in the international conversation about African and diaspora art.

Ultimately, More than Meets the Eye is about vision—how we see, and what we fail to see. Through its careful choreography of works across time and geography, it reveals the extraordinary depth of African creativity, asserting its rightful place at the heart of global culture.

More than Meets the Eye is at Musée Rath, Geneva, until 23rd November 2025.