ORAFRICA is an association created under the 1901 French act, based in Paris and founded by Nathalie Miltat.
Its vocation is the contemporary, multiform valorization of art and sub-Saharan culture.
It offers visibility to artistic and cultural initiatives and develops a program punctuated by three types of events :

Study Days
The ORAFRICA Association defines a theme, thread of debates developed during a day, by professionals guests.

Orafrica’s Meetings
Orafrica organises encounters which aims at presenting little known artists or at valorising innovative initiatives. These meetings are multidisciplinary and opened to everyone.

The Orisha Award
The Orisha award for contemporary African art is an international prize aimed at revealing, sustaining, and supporting sub-Saharan emerging contemporary artists living or not in Africa.

It’s a meeting and thinking platform for artists, curators, thinkers, writers and musicians coming from the multiplicity of sub-Saharan cultures, including Diasporas.

ORAFRICA COMES FROM THE STORY OF NATHALIE CODJIA MILTAT AND HER WILLING TO HIGHLIGHT HER ROOTS.

She was born in Benin and grew up in Cameroon in a family living between Senegal, Ivory Coast, Benin, Togo and France. Therefore from a very early age she faces pluralism of languages and cultures and was able to experience the cross-border life.

While in Paris, she studied art history at the Ecole du Louvre and at the Sorbonne where she specialized in sub-Saharan art.

Very early, she initiated a collection of classical art.

In 2005, she opened the “Noire Galerie” [Black gallery]. The gallery seeked to “point out the pluralistic realities, the positive expressions, the dynamics coming from Africa and its diaspora, the particularities of a moving continent in order to show that these realities are taking a foothold in the present, and that they offer another point of view.”

Then in 2011, she opened Appartement and collaborated with young guest curators to explore a new way of exhibition and promotion of the international contemporary creation. You can find there, artists such as Bertrand Lavier, Nadira Husain, Alaye Kene Ato, Kaye Donachie and Myriam Mihindou.

In 2014, the urge for a more regular enhancement of contemporary African art prompted Nathalie Miltat to organize the first prize for African contemporary art ever initiated in Europe : the Orisha Award.

As a continuation of this commitment, the Orafrica Association was created in 2016. Its purpose is to promote and highlight sub-Saharan art and culture.