Roots of Expression

Alliance Francaise will be hosting this sculpture exhibition opening tomorrow 18:00 hrs (CAT).

A full review will appear in The Art Pages next month

Wednesday Cartoon

Here's our cartoons series, resuming after a brief hiatus. We are all pretty busy right now at the gallery working on the new paper amongst other things. Check back later for news updates.

The Art Pages – An Update

Work is going well, we already have two articles currently being edited as well as photos. So far contributors have been respectful of deadlines and been attending our meetings.

The key work right now is to look for funding for subsequent issues of the paper. We have managed to scrape together enough to publish our first issue but after that we need another source of funding. We are looking into some grants from embassies that have a keen interest in supporting the arts, but these grants can take some months to be approved. So we are have to be creative. We have a possible idea for raising some money but this idea is still in its early stages, stay tuned for more!

Despite these financial issues we are so heartened by the amount of support we are receiving from artists who feel this kind of newspaper is long overdue. For them and many others, we will continue the work.

We are also working on a website that will help promote The Art Pages, this is still very much under construction and we have to make allowances for our temperamental internet, but it is definitely getting there.

Roots of Expression – New Exhibition

"THINGZ and TIMEZ" is the theme for an exhibition by Lusaka based Artists from the 'Roots of Expressions' -(ROXS), an affiliate to the Zambia National Visual Arts Council. This show runs through from 25^th to 29^th June at the Alliance Francaise in Lusaka, Zambia. It is a reflection of how their work has changed over time, taking experimentation as a guide when approaching nature for inspiration. Roots of Expressions has shown its creations at the National Museum, the Henry Tayali Gallery, the Alliance Francaise in 2008 and some of its works can be seen at Iseni House in the Dutch church in Kabulonga.

ROXS objectives are to collaborate with other art organizations locally and internationally with the aim of stimulating the Development of Art.

Contacts can be made by e-mailing studios.rootsofexpression@gmail.com or visit roots of expression on facebook.

Wednesday Cartoon

Wednesday Cartoon

Notes from the gallery - Getting 'out there'

Things are quiet at the Henry Tayali gallery at the moment. Many artists have been in Livingstone for the last two weeks taking part in the workshop and will be returning soon full of ideas and motivation.

While the cats have been away, we mice have been not really playing but using the time to think about ways to push the gallery forward as well as the art scene here in general. Despite the plethora of artists working in Lusaka, the community is sometimes fragmentary as each group gets on with the business of working and trying to sell their work. As a result, it is often a challenge for the blog team to keep up to date with events that are going on. So our first aim is to try and bring together collaborative elements that will be willing to report back to 'Lusaka Art Scene' so we can share with you all what is going on.

Using the internet for communication between artists here is a learning curve too, especially since internet access is expensive and slow. We're persevering and hope other artists will too. In a country with no art school and limited access to resources, the internet is an invaluable tool for artists to develop contacts outside of Lusaka and to find out about what is happening in the art world internationally. In order to point artists in the right direction as well as providing a platform for artists and supporters alike to network, we started our Ning network. Unfortunately this was days before the announcement that Ning is beginning to charge for this service, we hope that May 4th's anouncement of new prices will not be a shock and that we can somehow find funds to keep it going. http://lusakaartscene.ning.com/

Wednesday Cartoon

News Updates

AAW studios and Barefoot are collaborating on a project on art installations that will be seen all over Lusaka in outdoor spaces. The subject is 'The environment and climate change' and the workshop will culminate in a festival. More to come.

The Insaka workshop has started in Livingstone and is going well. We hope to get a report from the artists involved. the workshop will continue unil May 5th when there will be an open day.

The Henry Tayali Gallery is working on a proposal for funds that will be used for a merchandise workshop. Artists will be trained in screenprintng and lino printing and some principles of graphic design in order to sell their work at the gift shop that is also planned.

The New Lusaka Art Scene Network

We have started a new network on Ning in order encourage supporters, but also as an online space in which to discuss and share events, resources and ideas. Whether you are based in Lusaka or not, we still need your help and involvement. Feel free to join:



Visit Lusaka Art Scene

Wednesday Cartoon Day

We are pleased to be posting a cartoon by Nasalifya, one of Zambia's young and talented artists and writers. We hope to be showing at least one of his cartoons every Wednesday.

Chilyapa Lwando

Artist Focus - Chilyapa Lwando

Chilyapa Lwando is a busy man these days. Not only does he work full time for the Henry Tayali gallery, he's an active photographer and painter. Currently he is working double time to get ready for his exhibition at Alliance Francaise next month. Lwando is prolific and has a large body of work from which draw his pieces. Consequently the exhibition will be something of a retrospect.

The themes of traditional culture and society figure most in his work, though Lwando has been focusing on traditional culture in particular. He feels it is important to preserve and promote Zambian culture as he fears it is being eroded. However his paintings are not merely to educate but to celebrate and reinforce his own sense of identity as well as a way of exploring and critiquing some of the traditional ways found in Zambia and Africa more broadly. For Lwando his art and cultural identity are very closely woven together.



Other aspects of Lwando's work address social issues such as HIV/Aids and the role of women. He draws inspiration from the everyday activities of children and women.


Lwando's paintings are vivid and he likes to use fibres or sand to give his paintings texture. If you are in the Lusaka area on March 19th, stop by Alliance Francaise to see Chilyapa Lwando's paintings 'in the flesh' so to speak, and experience their vibrancy first hand.

Black History Month Exhibition Opens

The opening of the Black History Month Exhibition at Lusaka National Museum was a huge success with even the esteemed Kenneth Kaunda attending.

More pictures and accounts of the exhibition are to follow, meanwhile here are a few snaps.

Upcoming Filler Exhibitons at Henry Tayali Gallery

Here is a brief run down of the themes for exhibition fillers until June 2010. Filler exhibitions are showcases of work from the Henry Tayal archive of works. They are not new pieces but are exhibited when there is a hiatus between more high profile exhibitions and still very much worth visiting. There are no firm dates as yet.
January - Market Scenes

February - Romance

March - Sanitations and Environment

April - Harvest Time

May - Harvest Time

June - Traditional Ceremonies and Rituals

The Essence of Art

The following is a mini-essay by Zenzele Chulu one of our contributors.

Art is applicable in everyday life, society needs art all the time without realizing it. We need road signs for direction to move from street to street, town to town, place to place. We have digital billboards or murals, street and road names, house numbers and city planning involves design of roads , landscaping, public parks ,office blocks, housing and industrial. It took artists and designers to create the cloths we wear, the houses we live in, the car or bus or bicycle we use, all manmade items are conceived through design. We want our houses to be decorated with crafts and other artistic elements, rooms such as kitchens or sitting rooms come in color scheme. In fashion we want designer gowns, slippers, suits, skirts, shoes, including the art of cosmetics, life is artistic. Talk about uniforms used in all fields of human activity. Consumer products are designed to attract its customers with colourful packages.

Furthermore Art for art’s sake, contemporary paintings , sculptures, prints , drawings can be classified in many ways. Art as representation allows us to keep a record of life, reminding us of past events, emotions, beliefs, good or bad. Art as a means of communication means institutions have used art and artists to depict much needed information on issues that affect society on a large scale, creating murals, banners with visual messages ranging from human rights, HIV/AIDS prevention, child abuse or gender violence or inequalities, advocacy, war, corruption, sanitation, deforestation, including millennium development goals. Art has a beneficial impact on general literacy skills. Educators, psychologists and pedagogical theorists all agree that art benefits young peoples sensitivity to the physical environment, cognitive development as well as social and emotional development.

The more artistic an item is, the more it costs. So you see the design element influence in our daily lives is inescapable and unavoidable. In sports we need ‘state of the art’ infrastructures like stadiums, sports halls, racing tracks, design of team jerseys. Art is here to stay, society can exist live without these elements, hence the role of art in development is overwhelming. Artists have designed the traditional artifacts used in high ceremonies, they have for time immemorial designed the regalia of authority, design of symbols of power, the crown and throne for chiefs, kings , queens, princesses and all royalty of bygone civilizations and artists still design today’s symbols of power. Art in Africa has always been central to the needs of the society , traditionally seen to represent the cultural totems of that particular community in ceremonies and rituals from ancient days to the present day. Art has been an important medium of preserving cultural values.

The role of art as a witness of life around each community is evident in its quest of documenting social life cycle from a variety of angles. Visiting an art gallery is must option for tourists to have an insight of each society and its ways of life by looking at contemporary art. For those who are left behind by advanced people who can read and write, visual literacy provides a third way of learning and expression, it has the impact to give voices to those who are kept silent by established educational methods and encourages self expression. In countries such as Zambia, it also encourages self employment in the face of high unemployment, as most artists are either self taught or trained but live on art, through production of various arts and crafts.

The value of art as a means for communicating across cultural boundaries and as a vehicle for interrogating issues related to identity, culture, human rights and conflict resolution and social transformation is a very important function art has to society and in this case the depiction of the theme for this year’s Womens cerebration; Equal Rights , Equal Opportunities – Progress For All.


Kenneth Zenzele Chulu

Coordinator
Insakartists Trust

Kanyama Youth Project

The Kanyama area of Lusaka is a bustling, crowded, dirty and vibrant area. In Nyanja, a local language often used in the capital, nyama is meat and Kanyama was historically where meat was slaughtered. Tucked away behind the market is the Kanyama Youth Project, a small NGO that aims to provide training for young people in a number of areas including catering and mechanics, but we went to meet with Albert Kata who is running an art project here.

Albert runs art workshops for children and young people in this deprived area. He’s been running the project since he founded it ten years ago. Albert showed us the studios and a new building funded by the World Bank that will be used as an exhibition space. We met some of the artists who help run the project but also help raise funds through small odd jobs like sign writing and selling their own artwork.

The art section of the Kanyama Art Project receives almost no outside funding and has to look for money to buy materials for their workshops. Hopefully through increased networking with VAC they will be encouraged to write proposals for more funding for their workshops in the future.

Artist Focus - Stary Mwaba

Stary Mwaba says it was being exposed to the work of Mark Rothko that revealed to him the possibilities in straying from a realistic form of painting to something more abstract. Indeed Mwaba’s paintings seem to be a marriage of realism with the a freer more abstract style, figures, rendered meticulously with intensely expressive faces are often found surrounded with more expressionist figures and backgrounds, representing a kind of internal dialogue or inner consciousness. Or perhaps it is the other way around; Mwaba’s subjects look pensive, deep in thought while the world around them fades into an abstract mesh of colour and form.
It is this technical and contextual duality in Mwaba’s paintings that make his work so intriguing and rewarding.

The catalyst for Mwaba’s talent came while he was a peer educator more than thirteen years ago. He found it easier to express what he wanted to say through illustrations and when facing extreme difficulties at home, painting became a useful escape and outlet for his feelings and thoughts. An artist friend eventually made him aware of the Visual Arts Council of Zambia, and Mwaba found himself surrounded by artists and art that have been crucial in his somewhat informal art education. At VAC and another art collective, Rockston, Mwaba learned that once the rules of art have been learned, they can be broken and boundaries pushed. Mwaba talks of the importance of learning the ‘language or art’ and that being an artist is more than being technically skilful with a brush or pencil.

Since his beginnings when he taught art in a private school and often slept in the local gallery, he has exhibited all over the world including: Gallery Momo in South Africa, The Watermill in New York City and a German expo in Hanover. In 2004 Mwaba won the Commonwealth Arts and Crafts award and consequently worked in Trinidad and Tobago along with artists Peter Doig and Chris Ofili.

Amongst his influences, Mwaba cites Klimt and Picasso and a Mozambique artist Malangatana. The fluid and graceful figures of Klimt can be seen in some his work giving his subjects of everyday people a powerful dignity. Being Zambian has been both a help and hindrance to Mwaba’s work. There is a distinct lack of role models for young artists in Zambia and very little opportunities within the education system to study art. Zambia’s art scene is still trying to find a secure platform and is little known internationally. It is also unfortunate that works of art by local artists do not get as much interest as they could from tourism and the ex-pat community. It seems that visitors prefer the more ‘typical’ souvenirs that comfortably represents the outsiders image of sub-Saharan Africa – African masks, for example or baskets, clay pots and wooden big game animals. They are also cheaper and easier to transport in your back pack. Despite this Mwaba’s work is without bitterness and refuses to adhere to African stereotypes, while portraying everyday life in Zambia with vision and originality. The everyday life and condition of people here Mwaba feels, has attuned his sense to the small moments that are full of meaning.

New Year News

After something of a hiatus, Lusaka Art Scene is back with news of upcoming events in the fair capital.

For January things are pretty quiet at the Henry Tayali Gallery with their exhibitions startin next month. That doesn't mean you shouldn't drop by and see paintings from the previous Insaka Artists' Exhibition and works by established artists.

The Alliance Francaise frequently has cultural events from music, cinema to the visual arts. On 22nd January there is a concert featuring 'African Pride', 'Jimmy Guitar and the Spirit of Africa Band' and 'Stephan Nsofwa'.

We at Lusaka Art Scene are working hard to publicise any art events going on in Lusaka, if you know of something please get in touch. At the bottom of the page is a list of other events coming in February. Happy New Year!