The Afrofuturist Village was a solo exhibition of photographs and a short video by Masiyaleti Mbewe, a Zambian artist and writer based in Windhoek, Namibia (Fig. 1). It was part of FAVT: Future Africa Visions in Time, an ambitious program of exhibitions, performances, and workshops held at the Goethe Institute Namibia, between January 24 and March 27, 2018. The program explored various “modes of futuring,” or ways of experiencing and manipulating time.1 By conceiving of time in terms of present actions, such as remembering or desiring, rather than as fixed moments, FAVT highlighted the possibilities available within contemporary art to reinterpret the past and shape the future. Opening just a few days after the premiere of the film Black Panther (dir. Ryan Coogler, 2018), Mbewe's Afrofuturist Village offered a glimpse at how Afrofuturism is being conceptualized in Southern Africa in an age of social media.
Although inspired...