Longlisted for the Historians of British Art (HBA) Book Prize 2023

World is Africa brings together more than 30 important texts by Eddie Chambers, who for several decades has been an original and a critical voice within the field of African diaspora art history. The texts range from book chapters and catalogue essays, to shorter texts. Chambers focuses on contemporary artists and their practices, from a range of international locations, who for the most part are identified with the African diaspora. None of the texts are available online and none have been available outside of the original publication in which they first appeared.

The volume contains several new pieces of writing, including a consideration of the art world 'fetishization' of the 1980s, as the manifestation of a reluctance to accept the majority of Black British artists as valid individual practitioners, choosing instead to shackle them to exhibitions that took place three decades ago. Another new text re-examines the ‘map paintings’ of Frank Bowling, the Guyana-born artist who was the subject of a major retrospective at Tate Britain in 2019. The third introduces the little-known record sleeve illustrations of Charles White, the American artist who was the subject of a major retrospective in 2018 at major galleries across the US. Among the other new texts is a critical reflection on the patronage the Greater London Council extended to Black artists in 1980s London.

World is Africa makes a valuable contribution to the emerging discipline of black British art history, the field of African diaspora studies and African diaspora art history.

For decades, Eddie Chambers has been synonymous with incisive writing on Afro-Diasporic sonic and visual culture. True to form, the wide-ranging essays in World is Africa – from the aesthetic politics of the 1980s to jazz record sleeves to contemporary art – are at once precise and polemical. This is a vital companion to 1999’s Run Through the Jungle, and introduces readers to Chambers's capacious intellectual practice – as pressing as ever, his writing elaborates the ongoing project of righting art history's many elisions. World is Africa is essential reading for anyone interested in Black Atlantic culture and the ever-shifting landscape of diaspora scholarship. -- Ian Bourland, Assistant Professor, Department of Art & Art History, Georgetown University, USA.
With Run Through the Jungle, and Things Done Change, Eddie Chambers established himself as perhaps the most trenchant and tenacious commentator on British art of the last two decades. World is Africa should leave no one in doubt about his unmatched authority in the field of Black Diaspora art criticism. -- Chika Okeke-Agulu, Professor, African and American Diaspora Art, Princeton University, USA.

Eddie Chambers is Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. He has been writing about African Diaspora and Black British art practices for several decades and his scholarship includes Black Artists in British Art (I. B. Tauris, 2014) and Roots and Culture: Cultural Politics in the Making of Black Britain (I. B. Tauris, 2016).