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His scholarship centers the pan-African aesthetic and political formations of independent Guinea, from the cultural revolution of Ahmed Sékou Touré to its afterlives in the late twentieth century and into the present. Thinking through and with visual and cultural production, from painting and photography to cinema, textiles, and architecture, he examines how artists mobilized these forms as modes of cultural and political imagination within, alongside, and against a state that linked Conakry to independence movements across the continent and the world. Wider interests include the Black Atlantic, histories of institution-building, global literature, and migration.
He holds an A.B. in History, African Studies, and Visual Arts from Princeton University, where his thesis, BLUEPRINTS, on indigo dyeing and artisanal textile traditions in Guinea under Sékou Touré's cultural nationalization policies, received the Lawrence Stone and Shelby Cullom Davis Thesis Prize and the Henry Richardson Labouisse 1926 Prize. He is currently a graduate student at The Africa Institute in Sharjah. He has presented his research at the 19th Triennial Symposium on African Art (ACASA), DePaul University and the Art Institute of Chicago, the Lusaka Contemporary Art Center, and Princeton University.
Max also writes and curates on contemporary art. He has curated and contributed to exhibitions and projects in collaboration with museums, galleries, and art spaces across Africa, the Gulf, Europe, and North America. In 2024, he co-created IMAG(IN)E with Collin Riggins, a summer photography program in the Bronx. In 2025, he served on the jury for the Southnord UP NEXT Prize and curated the exhibition of the winning artist, Viola Nimuhamya, in Stockholm. He has served as Curatorial Assistant at the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris on the exhibition Ibrahim Mahama: The Harvest Season, set to open in October 2026.
In his own creative practice, Max contends with themes of memory and migration through writing, installation, and film. He has presented work in several group exhibitions, including Sound Images organized by Tina Campt, Exceed Your Vision curated by James Welling, and Livity curated by Azariah Jones. In 2025, Max was named the inaugural recipient of the Southnord Residency Programme Award, in partnership with the Lusaka Contemporary Art Center.
Max is leading the Miriam Makeba Museum project in Dalaba, Guinea, a joint project of the Miriam Makeba Foundation and the Kwame Ture Foundation set to open in 2028.
maxdiallojakobsen@gmail.com
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