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Early in 1977, thousands of artists, writers, musicians, activists and scholars from Africa and the black diaspora assembled in Lagos for FESTAC ´77, the 2nd World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture. With a radically ambitious agenda underwritten by Nigeria´s newfound oil wealth, FESTAC ´77 would unfold as a complex, glorious and excessive culmination of a half-century of transatlantic and pan-Africanist cultural-political gatherings. Devised by Chimurenga and edited by Ntone Edjabe and Akin Adesokan, this is the first publication to consider FESTAC in all its cultural-historic complexity, addressing the planetary scale of the event alongside the personal and artistic encounters it made possible. As the tenth title in Afterall´s Exhibition Histories series and the third in Chimurenga´s Chimurenga Library series, the book features a bespoke expanded format and design scheme, and gathers extensive unseen photographic and archival materials, interviews and new commissions.

Text: Allioune Diop, Barkley Hendricks, Audrey Lorde, Dominique Malaquais, Marilyn Nance, Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi, J.D. Okhai Ojeikere, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Betye Saar, Wole Soyinka (among others).

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