Tuesday, 19 Mar 2024
Tag: Stella Atal

Celebrating 50 years of Independence at International Women's Day Uganda 2013. Photo by Petra Behnsen.

The International Women’s day Festival

On March 8th, one couldn’t help but wonder how art would be used to celebrate such an interesting phenomenon of the human race. Would it call for a sculpture of the woman in all her glory, a painting of her most-prized assets? Or how she embraces art in her day-to-day life to make it comfortable for herself and her loved ones? Certainly for the international celebrations of the Women’s day at the Sheraton, the answer lay in this last one. The theme of the festival was how independent is the Ugandan Woman? A retrospect of the past 50 years, present and future perspectives.

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From FasFas Art Café, Kampala, 2012.

Nudity? It is Artistic Expression and Free Speech (part III)

In this third and final part of a three-part essay, Angelo Kakende reviews the recent Nude 2012-exhibition at FasFas: “Nudes 2012 was different from Nude 2000, Nude 2001… It was mobilised with local resources and initiatives. This created the burden of the need to sell and recover costs. In my opinion, it is this economic incentive which affected the positions the artists took while. They treaded carefully avoiding the risk of offending anyone.”

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Artworks by Ronex. (Photo by Alex Lyons for KLA ART 012)

Kampala Contemporary Art Festival: Setting new trends in art exhibitions

“It had never occurred to me that setting up twelve shipping containers across the city could account for a festival, but it certainly did when the shipping containers were translated into art exhibition points. This was the Kampala Contemporary Art Festival dubbed ‘12 artists, 12 locations’ and it ran from 7th-14th October with a theme ‘12 Boxes Moving’.” Elizabeth Namakula reviews.

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Image collage from the LaBa! 2011.

Liberation-Arts-Participation at the 6th LaBa! Street Art Festival

This year Uganda will celebrate its golden jubilee, and what better way to celebrate such a milestone other than with art! On June 9, Mackinnon road Nakasero will be ready for the sixth LaBa! Street Art Festival, once again organized by Goethe-Zentrum Kampala (GZK) / Ugandan German Cultural Society together with Ugandan artists.

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Artwork by Ivan Yakuze. (c) All rights reserved.

Olubugo Reloaded: The push towards a new awareness

The exhibition ‘Olubugo Reloaded’ at FAS FAS Gallery is important because it presents artworks based on the bark cloth material with a focus on what place it has in Uganda and within the contemporary arts of Uganda. Art lecturer in fibers and weaving, Lesli Robertson of the University of North Texas, continues to see that bark cloth is finding stronger ground every year and it is through the work of Ugandan artists and designers that this material continues to elevate its place within contemporary art.

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Design by Xenson (c) 2011.

Xenson’s Futuristic Past enthralls

With the likes of Xenson and his contemporaries like Stella Atal and Latif, the Uganda fashion flag is flying high and whoever thought the fashion boom in Uganda could end pretty soon, is in for a shocker. “Fashion is a journey. I wanted to create something and leave the interpretation to the people. I wanted my clothes to speak for themselves and I believe they did,” explained an exhausted Xenson after the show.

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Patronage, finesse and passion

Could the above be the ingredients that can be injected into Kampala’s visual arts scene to spice it up? It cannot be denied that the art industry has grown over the past ten years, but where should it go from here? Startjournal.org caught up with a few renowned artists to discover what they believed were the elements necessary for Kampala’s visual arts scene to be the best it can be.

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Can you really find your favourite Ugandan visual artists online?

Eight out of ten Ugandan visual artists publish information about themselves and/or their work online. Facebook is currently the most popular way of maintaining ones online identity, but the full-time artists and the experienced artists maintain a wider range of websites, and seem to benefit from that. Startjournal.org has conducted a survey about artists’ first experiences being online.

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