Afrextract :

Danny Chiyesu and Andrea Stultiens

Afrextract is an interdisciplinary research project on "Environmental Histories of Resource Extraction in Africa: Understanding Cultural and Political Responses to Environmental Transformation".
The project was initiated by Iva Pesa who is an assistant professor in contemporary history at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands who has been doing research in the copper belt for fifteen years. Next to the Copperbelt, Afrextract also investigates environmental histories in the Witwatersrand and the Niger Delta.
The contribution at Bakashimika International Photography Festival is the first public exhibition of the research project.

Danny Chiyesu is an established multi-disciplinary visual artist. In his creative post-production process, he digitally overpaints photographs.
Chiyesu serves as the assistant editor of the Zambian youth magazine Speakout, is chief photographer and marketing manager at Mission Presse, and has been a long-time member of the Ndola Photographic Society. Danny Chiyesu was commissioned by the Afrextract research project to document the surroundings of the mining industry in Mufulira, and the people living in its direct environment.

Andrea Stultiens is an artist and researcher from the Netherlands with a background in documentary photography who teaches at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (The Netherlands).
Her artistic- and research practice revolves around questions concerning images and imaginations of Africa.
Her role in the Afrextract research project is to make the production and use of photographs a valuable element in it, for researchers, for participants, and eventually for wider audiences in and beyond the African context.