Now in its 41st edition, Les Recontres D'Arles Photograhie is an international photography festival that features numerous workshops, exhibitions, colloquiums, projections & other activities. The event will also see the announcement of the Prix HSBC pour la Photographie 2010 prize-winners, with the company also supporting the Clicks for Classes project (a countrywide scheme that saw schoolchildren & photographers working to reinvent the class photo) and France 14.

With no fewer than 17 African countries marking 50 years of independence in 2010, Belgium's BOZAR and Royal Museum for Central Africa are organising the Visionary Africa festival. Geo-Graphics will be the keynote exhibition and will display some 220 ethnographic objects in 'a visual and narrative dialogue with contemporary art'. The traditional works of art come from Belgian private and museum collections, while Doual’art (Douala, Cameroon), La Rotonde des Arts (Abidjan, Ivory Coast), Centre for Contemporary Art Lagos (CCA Lagos) (Lagos, Nigeria), Centre for Contemporary Art East Africa Nairobi (CCAEA Nairobi) (Nairobi, Kenya), Picha (Lubumbashi, Congo), Darb 1718 (Cairo, Egypt), Appartement 22 (Rabat, Morocco), and Raw Material Company (Dakar, Senegal), will present their own artistic identity and works by 'its' African artists. In addition, architect and artistic director of GEO-Graphics David Adjaye will present images from his 10-year photographic journey through urban Africa.

His name might not ring immediate bells for all, but the work of sculptor Tom Claassen has very much become part of the Dutch landscape: daily thousands of motorists past his five vast elephant sculptures at a traffic intersection outside Almere; each year, vast numbers of air travellers stream past his ‘Snowmen’ at the entrance to Schiphol Airport’s D pier; his rabbits play on the grass next to the Kunsthal in Rotterdam and a seven-metre-high figure stands in front of the town hall in Hoofddorp. This major retrospective of Claassen's work will be on show in and around the exhibition centre and will include works normally sited in public spaces – like his horse sculpture from De Plantage in Utrecht and a huge, stylised rat called Brigid from the Kröller-Müller Museum.

Housed in several locations in Berlin, this year’s Biennial takes as its focus how contemporary artists respond to the theme of the present. Or moreover on reality, what it means to different people, how it relates to different situations and how with so many different visions of what reality means whether that ultimately leads us to question contemporary art, and its relationship to reality. The Biennial’s theme is contextualised by an exhibition with works by Adolph Menzel (1815-1905), curated by the American art historian Michael Fried, as well as work such as photography by Michael Schmidt.

Raqs Media Collective is based in New Delhi and brings together the work of three artists: Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. Much of their collaborative output explores the relationship between contemporary art, historical enquiry and philosophical speculation. This particular exhibition was inspired by the collective’s visit to Tyneside in 2009 and the North East ‘s maritime history, specifically recent photographs documenting the giant Swan Hunter shipbuilding cranes leaving the River Tyne to be repurposed in India. The visit has resulted in the production of a body of work that reflects the collective’s diverse specialisations and includes sculpture and poetry.

To mark its 50th anniversary the Guggenheim invited nearly 200 artists, architects and designers to envision dream designs for the central void of the Museum’s rotunda. The resulting projects, many of which throw caution to practicality and even reality, are presented within this exhibition by artists such as Anish Kapoor and Lawrence Weiner, designers including Fernando and Humberto Campana and Studio Job and architects such as Studio Daniel Libeskind and West 8. Despite such a wide range of ideas, certain themes emerge including the desire to climb the building, the impact of sound on the environment and the interplay of light and space.

An inviting contemporary art fair, Art Rotterdam not only attracts cutting-edge galleries from the Netherlands and beyond but is also supported by a programme of events & exhibitions that are much more than add-ons. Galleries taking part include Hoet Bekaert (BE), C-Space (CN), Adler (DE) and De Zaal, Gist, Van den Berge, Lumen Travo, Rob de Vries, all from the Netherlands. Among the parallel events will be the illy prize 2010; an exhibition of Carsten Höller at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen; and QUICKSCAN #1, a show of 25 known & unknown photographers at the Dutch Photomuseum.

Thatcher, Pinochet, Albright: It sounds like a collection of power portr aits, but in this exhibition by Belgian artist Thomas Huyghe there's definitely something missing. These are not depictions designed for above the fireplace of a Members Club, although... Painting the 'public self-portrayal' of such figures to bring into sharp focus the 'power of the manipulated image', they are just one way in which the artist explores private property and ownership. He raises questions that ask 'What is our own?' 'What do we share?' And over what do we have control?' and the results of those investigations find form in 3D models of camera dollies on the ‘board’ of power; installations or light boxes devoid of their advertising messages; anti-social sculptures; and in compositions that are framed by the grotesque.

Jérôme Sans and Guo Xiaoyan, respectively the UCCA’s director and chief curator, define the participants of this show as the most compelling emerging and mid-career artists working throughout China today. Presenting new and recent works by Cao Fei, Chu Yun, Liu Wei, MadeIn, Qiu Zhijie, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu, Yang Fudong and Zheng Guogu, the exhibition combines genres of painting, sculpture, installation and photography. Featured works include Yang Fudong’s video installation Dawn Mist, Separation Faith (2008) and Is Just a Blink of an Eye (2005), a performance piece by MadeIN (culture ltd.), a multi-functional company established in 2009 by Xu Zhen, dedicated to artistic creation, production, diffusion and curation. 

Les Rencontres de Bamako – Biennale Africaine de la Photographie - might be a good pretext to escape the darkness of November - in search for the light in Mali’s capital – in the full running for its 8th edition on the African image and identity. The high ambition is to make Bamako a synonym for ‘African capital of image’.

Under the title ‘Borders’ the event deals with what it says: territorial borders, “from natural barriers to artificial lines traced across the earth, in Africa more than elsewhere, borders and their complex realities represent current problematics and the crystallizations of processes which are political, economic, socio-cultural, and at this time particularly tied up with ethnic, cultural, religious and other sorts of personal and group identifications.” This pan-African contemporary initiative has selected and invited some 40 photographers.

In its 15 years existence the Bamako Encounters have premiered many African photographers, promoting them to the global stage of photographic events. The full exhibition programme in the city will be supported by a symposium, screenings and learning trails – all initiatives to better connect the locals of Bamako closer to the biennial.