East Africa Art
Sidamo, Ethiopia
Section of large panel of (mainly) bas relief engravings of domestic cows and calves(?). Bodies of most animals have been polished and have udders. Pecked engravings of animals (usually lacking bas relief) generally lack udders and polishing on bodies. Whole panel contains 18 large cows and nine small animals (calves? Or bulls?), all facing right.
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http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/article-117893/little-piggy-went-market
Eight works from Kenyan artists shortlisted for Bonhams Africa Auction
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Rehema Chachage (Dar es Salaam, 1987) is a Mixed Media artist-working mostly in video and sculptural installations as well as performance-based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
She graduated in 2009 from Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town where she received a Bachelors of Arts in Fine Art degree.
The themes explored in her work are very much determined by her situatedness, but the most prominent ones are ‘rootedness’ and ‘identity’—being a stranger, the outsider, the other, alien and often voiceless—most of which have been inspired by the social alienation that she experienced in the four years she spent as a cultural ‘foreigner’ and a non South African, black female student in a predominantly white middle class oriented institution.
Her exhibited artworks includes ‘Haba na Haba’ (Michaelis school of Fine Art, Cape Town) and, ‘Chipuza’ and ‘Mwangwi’ (Goethe Institute, Tanzania). She is one of the selected 42 African artists to participate in this year’s Dak’art Biennale of contemporary African art.
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ART: Face I & Face II by Ethiopian artist Ephrem Solomon Tegegn
Mixed media portraits made from wood and collaged paper that contains script in Amharic.
Ahmaric is the official language of Ethiopia and is the second-most spoken Semitic language in the world after Arabic.
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Erick Msumanje | My Mother’s Songs
My Mother’s Songs, is set in an African landscape that examines inter-generational trauma. The film depicts a collection of traumatic experiences through the eyes of several young women desperately trying to make sense of their existence. This theme is connected to Africa’s history of brutal colonialism, shattered dreams from independence, and chronic poverty.
View the harrowing trailers and read more.
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Don’t be fooled by the attractively colourful and slightly cartoonish signature style of Kenyan artist Michael Soi’s work, for there is a world of seriousness and heavy socio-political undertones in his illustrations.
Soi’s work illustrates visual portraits that serve as social commentary inspired by his observations of daily life in his hometown of Nairobi.
“My work mostly touches on issues related to the youth like fashion trends, music and life in general. I try to create an attitude of what you see might be what you get from it. I am involved in work that deletes, distorts and changes various images into what I want them to be, and am excited by the subtle play that erasure seems to create when executed in certain ways.
“My work is not about the suppression of images or distortion, or the negation of what the image represents, but is about obscuring the images in order to create a different relationship between the final piece and the viewer.
Most of my work is social commentary inspired by the city of Nairobi that addresses everything from this to what we would rather not talk about in public.”
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CAROLINE KAMYA: IMANI
written by Sihle Mthembu
The multiple narrative film is the last frontier for Africa cinema, very few directors on the continent have done it and got it right, and most of those are not part of the current filmmaking generation. There is something about the standard set in film like 21grams and Crash that seems to elude African filmmakers. But this is something that has not seemed to bother Caroline Kamya. Her new film entitled Imani is easily one of the most important films of the new Ugandan film renaissance. The film tells the story of three people (a domestic worker, a dancer, and a child soldier) and their lives over a period of a day. Born in Uganda and having worked oversees a project like this must have been a challenge for a little know filmmaker like Kamya something she says she says was very evident d whilst putting the project together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOAgCebSrVE
“There was very little available in terms of finance for the project so I had to save up and eventually the Swedish Film institute came and board and helped with some of the funding” says Kamya. Having been co-written with her sister Agnes, Imani was the brainchild of many years of Kamya being tired of working in London.
“The inspiration for the film was for me to show multiple worlds in the same space”, says Kamya “and I wanted to make a film that ordinary Africans can connect with on a day to day level” the resultant product is a gripping story that chronicles the ties that we all have with each other, but more over it shows the boldness of a young director ready to stake her claim in what very often is a polarized industry. It is a confident film. This however was not always the case for Kamya who acknowledges that having a low budget played a key part in having a better organized script and schedule. “when we had the first draft of the script it was good” says Kamya, “but the delay in finding the finance made us have a better plan and script to shoot with at the end” . What makes the film an even greater cinematic achievement is that the actors used as the principal cast are well not actors at all.
Kamya had gathered members of drama clubs from all over Uganda and auditioned and trained many of them during the films pre production phase. The resulting performances bare a naked truthfulness and authenticity that comes with lack of experience.
The film is clinically executed by people who have been directly affected by problems that the film’s subject matter deals with. “I was surprised with many of the performances I received, when I make films I like character driven pieces. For me characters are the story”, she adds. It’s no surprise that the film opened to critical acclaim at the Berlin Film festival and was even in competition at the 31st edition of the Durban international film festival. “I love the Durban Film this fest and I’m not just saying that now, this is a festival that really gives filmmakers a chance to network and watch great films and I hope people will come to appreciate my work as well” said Kamya “I also like the business model of the film, it incorporates every aspect of filmmaking something I think may other African film festivals don’t seem to do quite so well”. Despite having been a low budget film, Imani has fared well but above and beyond that it showcases Kamya as a key merging talent in Ugandan cinema.
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Somali women, wearing the infamous orange & red “Alindi” fabric made in Somalia.
The women are weaving a baskets around a milk/water containers. This basket will, later on, be attached on to a camel.
The main purpose of weaving this kind of basket is to protect the fragile clay pot — containing valuable liquids like water and milk —thus, it will act like a crash-helmet. Also, the woven basket provides handle points for the container, so that it can be conveniently carried by hand, or attached to the camel.
Why is it infamous?
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