It is not a question of putting an end to the universal, but of putting an end to the vertical universalism that sets up the West as the measure of all culture and history, the one that overhangs, establishes and dominates, in favor of a "truly universal universal", as Souleymane Bachir Diagne imagines it, a universal that gathers, listens and celebrates encounters.

Malcom Ferdinand, Une écologie décoloniale  

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The mass media do not transmit ideologies: they are themselves an ideology.

Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality   

Within the community, everybody has the right to teach and to be taught. Education is a matter of reciprocity. True Knowledge is acquired through sharing.

Proverbe Kongo  

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My encounter with the work of Franco-Congolese artist Nicolas Premier dates back to 2020. Broadcast in episodes at the time, the film Africa Is The Future moved me with its approach to the pan-African and Afro-descendant experience and its profound poetry. Surprised by the project's lack of visibility, I tried to find a way to bring it to light. The opportunity arose in a call for proposals from the academic journal Racar, which sought texts on preserving the visual historical narratives of black diasporas  . I proposed writing a review of the work  , which enabled me to contact the artist for an interview to learn more about his artistic process. 

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Nicolas Premier's practice is multifaceted and multidisciplinary. It reflects a wide range of influences, including hip-hop culture and jazz, which are visible in the construction of his films, such as Africa Is The Future. Like a DJ, Premier selects hundreds of cinematographic, literary and cultural references, which he assembles into an orchestrated flow of images, leaving plenty of room for improvisation. Through his mastery of the art of sampling and mixing images, Premier presents us with a powerful and spiritual work. It highlights the cultural heritage of the continent and its diaspora, the persistence of colonial history in our daily lives and imaginations, and the immanence of existence on our planet and in the universe around us.

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Africa Is The Future (AITF) is an integral part of the history of the 21st century. Created over more than twenty years, this ever-evolving, shape-shifting project, initially provoked, questioned and challenged the perception and place of the African continent in the world. This paradigm shift began with the September 11, 2001 attacks. At the time, Premier was in Brazzaville, where he noticed a huge discrepancy between the international mobilization in support of the United States and the deafening silence in the face of the atrocities of the civil war in Congo-Brazzaville from 1993 to 2002, which had allowed current president Denis Sassou-Nguesso to take over the reins of power  . This lack of consideration echoes the current media treatment of conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Palestine and Yemen, where facts are often reduced or distorted, implicitly suggesting that, for the international community, certain lands and bodies are perceived as destined to suffer, and that their misfortune surprises no one  . This indifference is the product of a mental construct stemming from the colonial system.​

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For its Canadian premiere, the project Africa Is The Future begins a new transformation, taking the form of an immersive exhibition-program, combining photography, video and archival elements. Divided into three sections, the exhibition space starts with the project's first evolutions. The eponymous brand's T-shirt collections, created in 2004, immediately set a provocative tone by linking the terms "Africa" and "Future". From the outset, AITF aimed to overturn preconceived ideas about the continent. The project was an international success and received massive support from the music community, illustrated here by archival video montages from the time. In the 2010s, the project evolved to celebrate the brand's tenth anniversary with the production of the AITF Covers. This series of imaginary magazine covers parodies, from an Afrofuturist angle, the codes of photojournalism, particularly those of the American magazine LIFE. With a corrosive sense of irony, these works subvert Western stereotypes of Africa, presenting a vision of a prosperous continent, master of its own destiny, exerting a major cultural and political influence in the 2030s.