In 1971 the American art historian Linda Nochlin ironically quoted the question asked by a gallery-owner friend, “Why haven’t there been any great women artists?”¹ This was a purely rhetorical question that nevertheless launched a number of studies on the place of women in the history of Western art. The question quickly ignited artistic and feminist circles around the world. And Nochlin goes on to say that “the injustice is even deeper, stemming from the educational and institutional system of the art world, from the vision of reality rooted in the dominant, white, male and Western tradition”.² Other contexts, other questions: Why have there been no great African women artists? Have there even been any African women artists at all? I was then reminded of a text by Frances Beale published in 1970, “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female”.³ This text inspires me today with its observation of a triple penalty: being African, a woman and an artist. Can one imagine any deeper injustice, to paraphrase Nochlin, than this triple penalty when it comes to the process of making women artists invisible? Upon discovering the work and papers of the speakers in this session, who also devote most of their research to rehabilitating, documenting, revealing and sharing the stories of these African women, be they artists, fighters or activists, it is of course first of all an aesthetic emotion (the archive photos, for example) that overwhelms us, then very quickly the bitter realisation of injustice: the history of art has indeed been written by men, and in Africa perhaps even more so!

Thus, the observations and practices developed by our speakers bear witness to these stories, that are rendered invisible, hushed up, erased from memory, and give us a glimpse of a multitude of paths and destinies of extraordinary women who have achieved remarkable things. And it is precisely the plurality of their practices, the heterogeneous character of the social, cultural and intellectual contexts at stake that enable us to gain a better understanding of the notions of “woman artist”, “femininity” and “female condition” in an African context. This forces us to question how these notions shape what is accepted, understood, retained, archived or not in the formation of art historical narratives.

In this context, women, through their work and what they say, have positioned themselves in opposition to these assignments, refusing the marginalisation of their art. In my opinion, all of these acts bear witness to the investment of these women artists, activists, researchers and historians on issues of making invisible, the aim being to constitute, through observations and reflections, the implacable observation, which then invites us to look at the world differently: what are the stakes and the scope of these narratives that have finally been revealed? What strategies and methods have been put in place by our speakers to access and gather these stories? These questions, which are sometimes still not asked, take on primary importance here and thus contribute to defining the outlines of a global history of art, through the prism of these women artists from Zambia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Cameroon, Tunisia and Algeria. From the African continent, they are writing the history of art that is to come.

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