Africa's 10 Best Exhibitions You Should See This Summer

29 May – 12 July After previously exhibiting in partnership with other artists in Cape Town and abroad, this will be the very first solo show at the Stevenson Gallery for Mawande Ka Zenzile. His exhibition, titled Experimentation: All Hell Break Loose, explores themes including politics, colonialism, commerce, power and ideology in the modern world. Ka Zenzile works in paint and sculpture, building his works from found objects and seemingly unconnected cultural images – you will find Mowgli from The Jungle Book alongside images of Osama Bin Laden and Saint Sebastien in the exhibition. High culture and low culture are combined and brought together in free association to build a complex web of images that make up the chaotic nature of modern existence. All the while, Ka Zenzile uses the scarecrow and the boat as repeating symbols – the one a memento mori, the other an image of the individual confronting the disparate nature of modern life.

5 – 20 June Ragheb Ayad died in 1982 and is regarded as one of the finest modern painters ever to emerge from Egypt. Working in the first half of the 20th century during the years of British occupation, Ayad was the first artist who sought a uniquely Egyptian identity in his works, which featured images of daily life, folklore, and popular culture and were influenced by the art of the Pharaonic age. From 1924 he was behind the Cairo Salon exhibitions promoting native Egyptian painters, and later Ayad served as Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo. The works on show at the Safar Khan Gallery have rarely been seen in public and come from the collection of Sherwet Shafai, who was a close friend to Ayad.

5 – 28 June Located in the Old Town in Cape Town and surrounded by 18th and 19th century auction houses, antique shops and galleries, the Cape Gallery possesses one of the most refined and elegant settings of any gallery in Africa. Its natural emphasis is on exhibiting works by Cape artists interested in traditional subjects such as wildlife, landscape, and flora. For the annual winter solstice exhibition, the gallery has taken as its theme ‘Threshold’ and will feature works from leading South African painters and sculptors. Amongst the artists and works featured will be the charcoal drawings of Jen Lewis, the bronze sculptures and plein air landscape works of Niel Jonker, and the dreamy and brightly coloured montages of Leon de Bliquy. Also watch out for the witty skyscapes of Peter van Straten.

6 June – 29 July The B’Chira Art Center is one of the leading galleries displaying contemporary work by Tunisian artists, and has been open since November 2011 in a wonderful setting close to the Ennahli Park. The ACT 03 exhibition is an opportunity for leading contemporary artists in Tunisia to show off their work – there will be a mixture of paintings, video art, and installations from 25 Tunisian artists following the exhibition opening and book signing by the author Khaled Abida, whose new work is focused on the allegorical works of Paul Klee. Among the artists featured is the highly regarded Mohamed Ben Soltane, the present curator of the B’Chira Art Center, whose work includes sharp social criticism and focuses on the state of Tunisia following the revolution of 2011.

7 June – 8 July The whitewashed town of Sidi Bou Said has long attracted artists including Paul Klee, Michael Foucault and Henri Matisse. Le Violon Bleu exhibits works by Tunisian and international artists and this summer will be presenting ceramic works by artists from across the world. The Autour de la Terre exhibition features the works of five ceramicists in total: Ymen Chetouan, Marie José Armando, Malek Gnaoui, Khaled Sen Slimane, and Valeria Nascimento. Tunisian Gnaoui has recently exhibited in London at the Arab British Centre, while Nascimento, now based in London, is originally from Brazil and uses the natural imagery picked up in her childhood spent on a cattle ranch in her large-scale ceramic installations. Khaled Ben Slimane’s work is more traditional, incorporating traditional Berber symbols and verses from the Quran – you can find his work in the British Museum.

7 June – 19 July Whatiftheworld Gallery opened in 2008 in Cape Town in what was formerly a synagogue and now provides a showcase venue for leading young South African artists. Rowan Smith is one of the finest talents on the contemporary art scene in South Africa and has already exhibited in galleries in New York, Paris, Los Angeles, and Istanbul. No Everything will mark his third exhibition at the Whatiftheworld Gallery and provides an ironic and ingenious exploration of South African history in the post-Apartheid era. Smith works with found objects such as crisp packets, restaurant signs, bones, springbok horns and images of Cecil Rhodes, exploring their modern meanings in an era where mass consumption is the only real unifying force in South Africa.