‘ART TALK WITH YVETTE MUTUMBA (DE)’

AFROPOLITAN CONTEMPORARY ART

Yvette Mutumba is co-founder and editor-in-chief of the art magazine Contemporary And (C&) – Platform for International Art from African Perspectives. She is a senior guest researcher of the project African Art History and the Formation of a Modern Aesthetic (2015 – 2018). From 2012 to 2016 she was curator at Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt a. M. Here she co-curated the exhibitions “Foreign Exchange”, “El Hadji Sy: Paintings, Performance, Politics” and “A Labour of Love“, which is nominated for the 2016 Global Fine Arts Award. Mutumba studied Art History at Freie Universität, Berlin and holds a PhD from Birkbeck, University of London. She has published numerous texts on contemporary art from African perspectives as well as Global Art History, and co-curated further projects dealing with related topics. Recent publications include: “Notes on Art and Food in Global Times“, in: 13th Fellbach Small Sculpture Triennial (2016), A Labour of Love (2015).

She presents here artists a range of artists from Europe.

Isaac Kariuki, London
A.Junior Boakye-Yiadom, London
Lerato Shadi, Berlin
Anawana Haloba, Norway
Youssef Limoud, Basel
Heba Y. Amin, Berlin 

Isaac Kariuki

Isaac Kariuki is a visual Artist and writer working between London and Nairobi. His work centers on the body, internet culture, autonomy and identity. He is the founder and editor of Diaspora Drama, an almost biannual publication exploring creative people of colour with overarching themes of the internet and technology.

A. Jnr. Boakye-Yiadom

Through a multi-media artistic practice I create hybrid performances where objects and materials are generated – both archival and self-produced – and kinetically combined to form languages of connectivity and multiplicity. In effect the work has often taken a presentational form of an installation where an instigated performance takes place. My work has increasingly incorporated a deep-rooted interest in exploring and evoking physical sensory responses.

Lerato Shadi

Shadi lives and works in Berlin. She completed a BFA in Fine Art from the University of Johannesburg. In 2008 she was featured artist in Art South Africa magazine, and in 2009 she was included in The Generational: ‘Younger Than Jesus artists-directory’ published by the New Museum, New York. In 2010 she was awarded a Pro Helvetia residency in Bern, Switzerland. In the same year she had her solo show Mosako Wa Seipone at GoetheOnMain in Johannesburg. From 2010 to 2012 she was a member of the Bag Factory artist studios in Fordsburg, Johannesburg. In 2012 her work was featured at the Dak’art Biennale, and in the III Moscow International Biennale. She is a fellow of Sommerakademie 2013 (Zentrum Paul Klee) and completed in the same year a residency program by invitation of Iniva at Hospitalfield (supported by ROSL). In the following year her performance, Makhubu was showcased at Iniva in London. Shadi was awarded with the mart stam studio grant, Berlin in 2014. In 2015 she performed and exhibited Seriti Se at Gallery Wedding in Berlin. Shadi presented her solo show Noka Ya Bokamoso at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in 2016. In the same year she exhibited her solo show Di Dikadika Tsa Dinaledi at GoetheOnMain in Johannesburg. Currently she is completing the MFA at the ‘Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee’. She is the winner of the Alumni Dignitas Award of the University Johannesburg in 2016.

Anawana Haloba

Anawana Haloba (b. 1978, Livingstone, Zambia).) lives and works in Oslo and Livingstone. She completed her BA at the National Academy of Arts in Oslo in 2006 and is a graduate of the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Anawana Haloba’s artistic practice is an ongoing investigation process into positions of different societies within varied political, social, economic and cultural contexts, ideological and post-independence frameworks. Her artistic practice is symbiotically linked to and through her preparatory exercise in drafting poetry in the forms of sketches from which the artist abstracts to performative based artworks within moving image, installation, and sound, while creating situations where the material culture of any given place can be probed and reconsidered within the scheme of rapidly shifting contemporary subjectivities.  Haloba’s work has been featured in both solo and group exhibitions, including, National Museum of African Arts Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC, USA; the Rauma Biennale, Finland; ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany; Museum Berardo Collection, Lisbon, Portugal;la Biennale di Venezia, 2009; Sydney Biennale, Australia; Manifesta 7, Bolzano, Italy, the Sharjah Biennial 08 and 11, UAE. Haloba is also participating in the 32nd edition of the Bienal de São Paulo with the project “Close Up” curated by Jochen Volz, and co-curated by Gabi Ngcobo, Júlia Rebouças, Lars Bang Larsen, and Sofia Olascoaga. The 11th Shanghai Biennial Project “The Dragon King in Sleep Pride Rock” curated by Raqs Media, co curator Smooth Uguchukwu-Nzewi.

Youssouf Limoud

EN Youssef Limoud is an artist and a writer, born in Giza-Egypt, 1964. He graduated from the College of Fine Arts, Cairo, 1987, also studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, 1991-1992. His paintings and installations have been shown in a number of exhibitions in Egypt and abroad. He recently won the Leopold Senghor award of Dak’art 2016 for his installation Maqam, He writes, mainly about art, in some Arabic newspapers and magazines. He published some books about art, Egyptian art history, and poetry. Limoud lives and works between Basel and Cairo.

Heba Y. Amin

Heba Y.Amin is an Egyptian visual artist, researcher and lecturer. She is currently teaching at Bard College Berlin, is a BGSMSC doctorate fellow at Freie Universität, and a recent resident artist at the Bethanien artist residency program in Berlin. Amin has received many grants, including the DAAD grant and the Rhizome Commissions grant. She is the co--‐founder of the Black Athena Collective, the curator of visual art for the MIZNA journal (US), and curator for the biennial residency program DEFAULT with Ramdom Association (IT). Furthermore, Amin is also one of the artists behind the subversive graffiti action on the set of the television series “Homeland” which received worldwide media attention. Amin’s work is embedded in extensive research and a studio practice that looks at the convergence of politics, technology, and urbanism. Working with various media, her work investigates the impact of infrastructure on the human psyche through junctures, glitches and flawed memory. By combining interconnected histories, her approach problematizes the narratives situated in contested territories through the tools used to construct them. She is particularly interested in tactics of subversion and techniques used to undermine systems as well as topics surrounding critical spatial practice. Amin has had recent exhibitions at Kunsthalle Wien, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Kunstverein In Hamburg, Camera Austria, Berlin Berlinale 9thForum Expanded Exhibition, the IV Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, the WRO 15th Media Art Biennale Poland, the National Gallery of Mongolia, and the Art Museum of GotlandS weden. She also has an extensive repertoire in public speaking and has published several works. She lives between Berlin and Cairo. Amin is currently represented by Zilberman Gallery in Istanbul and Berlin.