Yvette Mutumba and Julia Grosse, the curators behind the Armory Show's African Perspectives Focus. (Photo: Ginny Suss)

African artists were the heart of New York’s premier art event last week. The Focus section of the 2016 Armory Show, African Perspectives, brought the continent and the diaspora to the center stage of Pier 94. Its curators, Contemporary And co-founders Julia Grosse and Yvette Mutumba, were also the only women to curate an Armory Focus in the section’s seven-year history.

“To be in a space where we’re finally at the epicenter of the conversation, and not in the fringes or in the nooks and the crannies, is really great,” Shariffa Ali, a Kenyan-Ethiopian theater-maker in New York City, tells Okayafrica. “I love being able to walk into a space and see work by my peers and African contemporaries from my left, on my right, in front of me, behind me,” she says. “To be fully immersed is truly an amazing experience.”