AfricanColours - "Urgent Matters", End of Residency Exhibition

International Sat 19-12-2009

"Urgent Matters", End of Residency Exhibition
By a Correspondent

End of residency exhibition - Art Enclosures / Confini d’arte – Residencies for international artists in Venice

URGENT MATTERS

Samuel Githui and Victor Mutelekesha

19 December 2009 - 25 January 2010
Opening hours: 10.30 – 17.30

Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa
Palazzetto Tito, Dorsoduro 2826, Venezia

Opening ceremony: 19 December 2009
5 pm, Palazzetto Tito, Venezia

Memoria del presente/dove è sempre adesso, a live music performance featuring Ema, will follow at 7.30 pm

Urgent Matters, the end of residency exhibition for the project Art Enclosures / Confini d’arte – Residencies for international artists in Venice will open on Saturday, 19 December at 5 pm. During the event the works that artists Samuel Githui and Victor Mutelekesha produced during their summer residency in Venice will be presented to the public.

ART ENCLOSURES

Created and promoted by Fondazione di Venezia, and jointly implemented together with Polymnia Venezia and Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, the project Art Enclosures is aimed to promote and showcase the talent and works of young emerging African artists, giving them visibility and the opportunity to show their work in an exhibition and a publication at the end of the residency project.

Fondazione di Venezia is very active in the field of cultural heritage conservation and enhancement and believes in the importance of intercultural dialogue between different worlds and realities. Through this project it aims to promote young talents and encourage artistic creativity within their own territory.

The scheduled program of activities included public meetings, visits to exhibitions and museums, moments of discussion and study visits, which have contributed to allow artists Samuel Ghitu and Viktor Mutelekesha to establish fruitful and durable contacts within the fabric of the city and the local arts community.

Thanks to these experiences, the artists were able to focus in particular on the social and cultural context of Venice, though each artist has adopted different poetics and modes of artistic expression.

A recurrent theme in the works of the two artists is the human condition in the present world, a "present" characterized by an increasingly visible social and environmental breakdown, marked by strong contradictions, emblems and symbols that should be urgently analyzed and weighed up.

Hence Urgent Matters, the title of the exhibition, a sort of warning meant to indicate, explain, and reflect on, the imminent urgent agenda in all its various forms.

THE ARTISTS AND WORKS

Particularly in the videos Shadow of my Shadow and Not there yet, Viktor Mutelekesha (Zambia, 1976) investigates the constantly metamorphosing human condition, the meaning of which cannot be fully comprehended.

The artist emphasizes the theme of human transit, touching issues such as immigration and the clandestine condition. After beginning his studies in Lusaka, Victor Mutelekesha, felt the need to move as far as possible from the place where he was born and decided to attend the National Arts Academy in Oslo.

The ideas of migration, transfer and transformation are the concepts at the basis of his desire to make art. Victor confronts his "urgent" matter in Rise to the Ashes, where he re-designs a three-dimensional map of the world, highlighting the points of depletion and subsequent redeployment of natural resources.

Through the depiction of this process, the artist intends to highlight the disparity between the different economic, geographical and social areas of the world. Samuel Ghitui (Kenya, 1973) studied at the Creative Art Center in Nairobi, where he was born and still lives, devoting himself entirely to art.

His work focuses on his perception and understanding of the world around him. His urgent question is related to communication, integration and the problems that lack of understanding entails. The underlying theme of his work is the urgent need to communicate the reality surrounding him in order to start an open dialogue, a reflection on the importance of the social environment and the community that inhabits it.

In his installation titled Venezia, the bed, a symbol of the home, is an incubator of thoughts, memories, experiences, hopes filtered through an ideal prism form of tubes, where the images collect the testimonies of lives and become the mouthpiece for universal values.

The exhibition also contains the series of paintings titled I Sottoportici, and Bagged, a video addressing the issue of immigration. The exhibition will also spill out of doors with an installation involving a gondola, the most quintessential Venetian means of transport.

The opening of Urgent Matters will be preceded by another important event for young talents , the 93rd Joint Exhibition of the young artists of Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, which will be inaugurated at the Gallery in St. Mark’s Square on the same day at 12.00 noon.

For further information
Ad Hoc Communication 02/7606741 Daniele Biolcati 335/1415582

Posted By: Maggie Otieno

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