African Arts Libraries Lab (AAL Lab) Network

The African Arts Libraries Lab (AAL Lab) and Affiliates Network was launched by Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation and Yinka Shonibare Foundation in 2025. The AAL Lab brings together Africa-based libraries, publishers, and archival initiatives, while the Affiliates Network connects global institutions and supporters who champion and resource this work internationally.

The Lab and Network builds connections between Africa-based libraries, archival initiatives, and independent publishers, alongside global institutions and supporters. The Lab and Network are alive and evolving, growing organically through shared interests, common challenges, and a readiness to explore new ways of working together.

In its inaugural cycle (2025-26), the Lab and Network will be incubated within Re:assemblages, a roaming programme led by G.A.S. and Y.S.F., designed to foster experimentation and collaboration among African and diasporic art libraries and archives. This work builds on the G.A.S. Foundation’s own library and archives, including the Picton Collection comprising 1,500 volumes collected over six decades by Professor John Picton, Emeritus Professor of African Art at SOAS University of London, and Sue Picton.

Within this framework, the Lab launches Contemporary Art and Archive Practices (CAAP), a series of public convenings that brings artists, archivists, researchers, and other practitioners into conversation around the ways contemporary art engages with archives. The series considers archives not only as repositories of historical material, but as active sites of interpretation, memory, and knowledge production.

The AAL Lab and Affiliates Network embraces an expanded notion of archives, libraries, and publishing, including educational and non-collection-based practices. Explore our current members.

To enquire more about membership, contact our Project Lead, Naima Hassan, at library@guestartistsspace.com.

Membership depends on location:

Institutions based in Africa, or operating in Africa and internationally: join the AAL Lab
Institutions based outside Africa: join the Affiliates Network

AAL Lab Intake Form

AAL Lab Affiliates Intake Form

Convening: Liz Johnson Artur, Black Balloon Archive

A public talk with artist Liz Johnson Artur, presented in partnership with Gallery TPW and the National Gallery of Canada, explored her Black Balloon Archive and its documentation of Black life and community across the world.

Hosted at Gallery TPW, Johnson Artur led two sessions centred on her photographic, film, and installation practice, reflecting on the archive’s attention to everyday life, community gathering, music, style, celebration, and forms of cultural expression often overlooked by conventional archives. The convening also considered how photographic archives can hold forms of communal, ancestral, and embodied knowledge.

Find Out More

Convening: Worlding from Below - Mapping African Literary Spaces

The second convening, Worlding from Below: Mapping African Literary Spaces brought together scholars, librarians, researchers, and cultural practitioners to examine the restoration of Nairobi’s McMillan Memorial Library and the role of literary spaces in processes of restitution and repair.

The convening featured Marianne Wamuyu and Tarus Sharon of Book Bunk, who shared their work transforming McMillan Memorial Library into an inclusive civic space, alongside Dr Laura Nkula-Wenz and Dr Polo Moji of the University of Cape Town’s African Literary Cities project, who explored African literary geographies, memory, and restitution.

Find Out More

Convening: Ecotonal Readings - Library, Landscape and Sustainable Futures

In partnership with 32° East, Uganda, Ecotonal Readings: Library, Landscape, and Sustainable Futures brought together Dr. Anna Adima and artist and printmaker Kajebe Jacob Joshua for a presentation and workshop exploring the relationship between libraries, landscapes, and sustainable practices.

Drawing on the concept of “ecotones” the transitional zones where ecosystems meet, the convening considered 32° East’s library and sustainably built campus as spaces where knowledge, materials, and communities intersect. Dr. Adima presented research on the history of sustainable art practices in the region, followed by a workshop with Kajebe on sustainable printmaking.

Find Out More