Insistent Presence

Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection

September 13 - December 14, 2025

Nana Yaw Oduro Inkjet print titled PHILIP showing person with arms outreached, an orange shirt covers the face, tall grass is swaying in the background

Drawn from the collections of the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and curated by Emory PhD candidate Margaret Nagawa, Insistent Presence features works of sculpture, painting, ceramics, and printmaking by 24 artists who have lived and work on the African continent and in the diaspora. The exhibition examines how artists have reimagined the human figure to pose questions about social and political histories, contested identities, and a possible future for how we relate to one another. The artists in the exhibition think about twenty-first-century ways of being in the world and invite us to reflect on ourselves, our relationships, and the worlds we inhabit.

Insistent Presence: Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection was organized by The Chazen Museum of Art at The University of Wisconsin–Madison and curated by Guest Curator Margaret Nagawa. Generous support for this exhibition was provided by the Straus Family Foundation. 

About the Curator

Photo of Margaret Nagawa on a tan background, wearing a white shirt a beaded red necklace

Margaret Nagawa is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in contemporary African art. Her research interests focus on sculpture and language, addressing questions about debates surrounding the creation, persistence, and contestation of disciplinary divides separating visual and literary arts. She explores these debates by drawing on colonial museum curators’ writings, as well as sculpture and poetry produced by Ugandan practitioners. Nagawa’s research shows that artists center the human body in forging alternative definitions to the narrow categorizations of art, craft, and literature envisioned by colonial administrators. In doing so, she troubles the position of figurative sculpture as the canonical object in African art while subverting the assumption that East Africa is insignificant within the history of African art.

Nagawa holds M.A. degrees in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London, and Art History from Emory University, along with a B.A. in Fine Arts from Makerere University, Uganda. She has held fellowships, taught courses on African art at multiple institutions, and presented her work at international conferences. She has worked with art institutions across three continents, including the October Gallery in England and the Makerere Art Gallery/Makerere Institute of Heritage, Conservation, and Restoration at Makerere University. In 2022, she was awarded the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Object-Centered Curatorial Research at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, where she examined a sketchbook compiled by Senegal-born, France-based artist Iba N’Diaye (1928–2008).

Press Release

An exhibition press release will be available soon. For high-resolution images of featured artworks, please contact Emily Knight at emily.knight@emory.edu.