Exhibition Review

Mentorship, Synergies at 5th edition of Look One Art Exhibition

By Dominic Muwanguzi

  Artist Akshanti Bafunyempaka explaining his paintings to viewers at the opening of the Exhibition

What happens when you give a group of young artists a platform to express themselves? Often times, the unexpected happens. These artists will dig deep into their creativity to create art that captures their wild imaginations, and by doing so touch in a unique way the emotions and feelings of their audiences. This has been the tradition of the annual Look One Art exhibition organized by Xenson Artspace to provide opportunities to young artists to create and showcase their art in a professionally run art space. Unlike the previous editions, this 5^th edition premises itself beyond the ideal of offering opportunities to exhibit art.  It emphasizes the aspect of creating synergies in the way artists work and showcase their art but also offers deep thoughts on the subject of sustainability in art where artists are mentored to raise their profile.

The work on showcase evokes primarily freedom of expression which is critical in the artists’ artistic development. This is evident with the different themes, style and techniques the artists work with on canvas to appeal to their varied audiences. Peterfog’s (Ugandan) abstract paintings with detailed lines and patterns figuratively convey the connection between humans and nature. Within the scope of this relationship the artist seeks to portray the struggles, futility, desires and fulfillments of the world humans live in on a day to day.  Conversely, Angella Ilibagiza’s (Rwanda) acrylics paintings  offer intimate conversations on womanhood in contemporary society: the divergences in societal expectations where on one hand, a woman is expected or assumed to behave in a particular way while on the other hand, she feels independent and can freely decide on how to live her life as a modern woman. Yet detached from these rather introspective conversations, is Aksanti Bafunyempaka (Congo) explosive paintings that convey the story of pain, loss and hopelessness which is familiar with living in refugee camps. The artist’s paintings immediately grip the viewers’ attention with their intense imagery of colour and abstracted figures that appear like child play.

While the artists communicate differently in their work inspired by their different cultural backgrounds and personal experiences, the interconnectedness in their art is the exploration of general themes like resilience, migration, identity and tradition which run through each individual artist’s work. This feature is essential in providing context for the exhibition while not necessarily curtailing the creative work of the artist. More so, it creates a sense of commonality for the artist; challenging the artificial boundaries of country of origin, social status and formal art training. This curatorial approach strongly resonates with the highly acclaimed Africa Remix Exhibition where the curator, Simon Njami, was intent to bring the different countries of the continent into one exhibition without detaching one from the other. As such, Njami chose to explore hybridity and identity to achieve the objective of oneness. In much a similar way, the curator of this exhibition was preoccupied with presenting an exhibition with a fluid dialogue between the precise and the expressive, tradition and modernity, struggle and hope.

It is through such deliberate showcase of art that sustainability in art making and mentorship can be achieved. With such a type of exhibition, one may begin to wonder: what next or so what? These questions are important to prompt the organizers to begin thinking about the afterlife of the artists they provide a space to showcase their art. As the curator explained, this particular edition goes beyond the showcase of art but opens up the possibility of the gallery to engage further with the artists. “We shall have a training session for the artists in the exhibition and those who applied for the show but were not selected. The training shall focus on writing and speaking about their work as a tool to raise the profile of their art”, says Joshua Kajebe Jacob the curator of the show and gallery manager, Xenson Artspace. As such, if this approach is applied to the subsequent editions of exhibition, it will contribute to the sustainable nurturing of artists who do not only pride themselves in exhibiting their art in a professionally run art space but can competently compete in an art industry that is highly competitive.