The Global Stage Feels Small

By Kenji Maghoma

Global: relating to or encompassing the whole of something, or of a group of things. That’s how the word is defined in the dictionary. It’s clear to me. But when I look at the calendar of international events, it almost never manifests this way. Too often, “global” describes the vantage point of a few, centred in the West framed by borders of power, wealth, and visibility, while calling itself universal.

I won’t go into how we got here...others have dissected the roots of this far more eloquently than I could. But I do want to share how I feel about why this matters.

Over the past couple of months, the spotlight in mainstream media has swung from Cannes Film Festival to the London Design Biennale, to Art Basel and the Venice Biennale. Along the way, there have been occasional stories about the rise of African creatives and how the continent is finally being noticed. My initial reaction? Okay, fine. But the conversations about the future of creativity are still geographically narrow and framed inside a limited imagination.

Movement is the oldest rhythm of the earth. There has never been a time when ideas, music, language, or craft weren’t moving. History reminds us of this over and over again; from Zaire 74, when people travelled to Kinshasa to witness not just a fight, but a festival of music and Black cultural power, to FESTAC ‘77, when thousands of artists, thinkers, and musicians gathered in Lagos for one of the largest Pan-African cultural festivals. This continues today. In May 2024, Guinea-Bissau hosted its first biennale, with over 150 artists from 17 countries and next year, the first Pan-African Architecture Biennale, curated by Omar Degan, will be held in Nairobi.

The problem isn’t that events take place in London or Cannes, it’s that some still believe movement should be one-directional. That being global means being seen there, rather than valued here. This matters especially now, as the climate challenge forces us to rethink everything, from how we work to how we grow and how we move.

Perspective matters. If you only view from one centre, everything else looks like the periphery.