Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2021. Originally from Tanzania, his fiction reflects the ethnic diversity of East Africa, exploring issues such as migration and cultural uprooting.

Art historian, writer and filmmaker Nana Oforiatta Ayim has developed a new language to talk about African art that does not replicate Western concepts, pioneering a panAfrican Cultural Encyclopedia and a Mobile Museums project in Ghana.

While coming from different perspectives, Gurnah and Ayim both create work that questions simple narratives and structures built on imperial models. They explore how to remember a past deliberately eclipsed and erased by colonialism.