A new exhibition at the Château Sainte-Hélène in Nice explores African cultures through the fabric that became the continent’s signature.
The Musée International d’Art Naïf Anatole Jakovsky in Nice has always shown good instincts about art that slips through the official categories. Its current exhibition, Africa Pop, which runs through 18 October, is entirely in character. Featuring over 200 artefacts, the show tells the cultural and historic story of the humble wax cloth, and how it has become almost synonymous with an entire continent.
But the curators’ vision goes further: these fabrics are true works of art with a genuine compositional vision, and, in constant natural dialogue with the work of African artists, they capture emblematic elements of their cultures.
Photo courtesy and © Natja Igney
Echoing the permanent collection across every section of the Château Sainte Hélène, an emotion-filled journey begins the moment the visitor steps through the museum’s gate. Structured like a giant picture book, the immersive scenography with acute attention to detail places large textile panels (some measuring 5.50 m × 2.40 m) alongside other objects from across the continent: Gélédé masks from Benin, loom pulleys from Côte d’Ivoire, embroidery, beadwork, tie-dye… creating a dialogue with the waxwork rather than keeping it at a polite distance by distinguishing “craft” and “everyday items”.
The variety of spaces throughout the museum makes it possible to create several artistic projects that fit together coherently within one large exhibition. In an exceptional move, and through September 20 only, a portion of the exhibition is presented in the former curators’ apartment, an area normally off-limits to visitors.
Courtesy Ville de Nice
Rooted in no single tradition, this generic, unifying, pan-African fabric brings together an entire continent, bridging generations as well as Africa and its diasporas. Patterns, however, have long functioned as social communication, with specific designs carrying understood meanings about marital status, wealth, or current events. No topic is off limits: political messages, sport, music, food, space travel, seduction, technology, animals – even satellite dishes and mobile phones are printed on today’s fabrics, reflecting African realities, and how they resonate with our own daily lives.
Far from being only used for clothmaking, wax textiles are also endlessly versatile and pop up everywhere in daily life as tablecloths, upholstery, home decoration, bags, wrapping material, or baby slings, to name but a few.
Worn from Dakar to Kinshasa, by modest grandmothers and flamboyant style queens alike, the boldly patterned cotton is universally associated with Africa. And yet, it originated a long way from there.
All photos courtesy and © Natja Igney
In the 19th century, Dutch manufacturers in Indonesia built machines to produce cheap imitations of local batik, hoping to undercut the handmade originals. Indonesians were unimpressed. The mechanical process left a crackle effect they considered a flaw, and the fabrics found no buyers. When those same textiles were shipped to Africa, the reception was entirely different. West Africans took up the fabric, renamed it, gave its patterns meanings, turned it into clothing, ceremony, household objects and sharp social commentary – and made it so thoroughly their own that it is now read worldwide as a symbol of African identity. It is still manufactured largely in the Netherlands.
In a way, this discovery was at the origin of this exhibition. Co-curator Anne Grosfilley herself had assumed wax was authentically African until, as a teenager trying to buy fabric at a Burkina Faso market, a vendor asked whether she preferred “English” or “Dutch” prints – a question that stopped her cold. This eventually led her to a thirty-year research career as an anthropologist studying African textiles and fashion. In tandem with distinguished historian and sociologist Claude Boli, scientific director of the French National Sport Museum, she has one goal in mind: to make people think about something they have seen so often yet know so little about.
An original 30-minute film also revisits traditional dress and contemporary fashion designers’ outfits to explore elegance in all its forms. Chic is put centre stage. Far more than a carte blanche for the expression of Black cultures, this project celebrates the meeting of Africa’s peoples. It is an exaltation of what unites us, an ode to sharing.
Courtesy Ville de Nice
The personal collection of the museum’s founder and donor, French art critic Anatole Jakovsky (1909 –1983), turns out to have a longer conversation with Africa than the museum’s modest holdings might suggest. An anonymous Ethiopian painting, bequeathed by Jakovsky himself at the museum’s founding, is considered by some specialists a precursor of naïve art. In the archives, a notebook dedicated to Togolese painter Hubert Kponton, spine lettered in gold, sits alongside Jakovsky’s notes on Nigerian sign painters – artists he described as a generation “disoriented by cultural contacts” but who had “found their own artistic expression.” And a 1994 canvas by Susana Llorente of a village scene in Côte d’Ivoire hangs in the exhibition alongside the wax panels; it visually echoes – painted cloth beside actual cloth. The museum, it turns out, has been in this conversation for decades. Africa Pop simply makes it visible.
VISITOR INFORMATION
Africa Pop at Musée International d’Art Naïf Anatole Jakovsky, Château Sainte-Hélène
Through October 18, 2026 (private apartment through 20 September)
Admission €5 (free with proof of local residence)
Guided tours available in English and French upon request – call +33(0)4 93 71 78 33 for details.
VENUE DETAILS
Musée International d’Art Naïf Anatole Jakovsky, Château Sainte-Hélène
23 avenue de Fabron
06200 Nice
Tel: +33 (0)4 93 71 78 33
PHOTO CREDITS
- Lead image courtesy and © Natja Igney
- All other images as credited
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