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Rhodes>Arts of Africa >People>Associate Artists

Immaculate Mali

Immaculate Immy Mali lives and works in Kampala. Her work revolves around notions of presence and absence, personal memories of childhood juxtaposed with current personal and collective narratives in Uganda and abroad. In Mali’s work, memory is a tool through which she describes the social (cultural and religious), political and economic landscape of Uganda not withholding post-colonial and British imperial influences in the shaping of identities. Using a variety of media including, text, video, sound, sculpture, installation, animation, her work attempts to unpack the complexities and entanglements of memory and existence in a neo/postcolonial Uganda.

Last Modified: Mon, 10 Feb 2020 10:46:24 SAST

Rhodes>Arts of Africa >People>Associate Artists

Usen Okon Obot

Usen Obot

Usen Obot (Associate Artist and 2021 Artist in Residency with the Residencies for Artists and Writers (RAW) programme, Arts of Africa and Global Souths Research programme, Fine Art Department, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa) holds a BA Art and Design, Fine and Applied Arts. His work seeks to interrogate and bring to the fore the consciousness that we have or have not harnessed to influence our society. The works have evolved from two-dimensional presentations in pen, ink, watercolour, oils and acrylic presentations of sites, events, objects, emotions, and thoughts to experimentations into common materials. In turn, his colours, material and theme in his recent works have equally changed to reflect and encompass our society's present state, his experiences, and the thinking that he wishes to provoke. His recent works focus on the exploration into the use and combination of common materials such as Wood, biodegradable material, fabric,, metal, Stainless steel, glass fibre, etc. These stretches across painting, sculpture, installation, and site-specific works. His choice of work materials communicates his concern around transmutation, immigration, assimilation and the complexities that underpin African society.

 

He has exhibited extensively in galleries, Museums and Art fairs including the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum, Red Location Museum, William Humphreys Art Gallery,  Gallery Guichard (USA), GFI Art Gallery, Carol Craven Art Gallery (USA), Rust-en-Verd Art Gallery, Galerie NOKO, FNB Johannesburg Art Fair and  Turbine Art Fair amongst others. His works have been featured in Omenka Magazine, Art Africa Magazine, etc. Obot has developed and spearheaded works and projects for social cohesion, socio-political and community engagements. His oeuvre also includes clothing design,  re-engineering furniture and design. He has works in the collections of the Nelson Mandela University, the Red Location Museum, ABSA Bank, and NANDOS amongst others. Usen Obot was named the Herald Citizen Of The Year 2021 in Arts and Culture. 

 

Last Modified: Tue, 05 Oct 2021 09:57:10 SAST

Rhodes>Arts of Africa >People>Associate Artists

Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja

Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja

Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja (2021 Artist in Residency with the Residencies for Artists and Writers (RAW) programme, Arts of Africa and Global Souths Research programme, Fine Art Department, Rhodes University, Makhanda/Grahamstown, South Africa) is a performer, educator and writer with practice-research interests in performance, archives and public culture. He is currently completing his PhD research work at the University of Cape Town, with a thesis on Oudano, an African concept of performance. This study looks at how Oudano mobilizes queer praxis, sonic and movement formation as well as critical pedagogies and spatialities.

Mushaandja’s work has been performed widely at festivals, museums, theatres and archives in Germany, Switzerland, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Cameroon and Namibia. Previous records of Mushaandja’s performance work as Tschuku Tschuku include Black Bantu Child (2012) and Trance ! Namib Freedom Station (2017). The latest Tschuku record Ondaanisa yo pOmudhime was released in September 2021 and is available on all online platforms and on CD. Mushaandja’s latest performance project is ZILIN: for the first and future African sonic stars was premiered in 2021 at the National Arts Festival (Makhanda, South Africa) and Zürcher Theater Spektakel (Zurich, Switzerland) where it was awarded the ZKB Public Choice Award.

He is also engaged in curatorial and research leadership in his work as a co-convener of the annual Owela Theatre and Performance Seminar at Odalate Naiteke Practice-as-Research Programme in collaboration with the National Theatre of Namibia. This also includes his work as UNESCO National Expert on the Intellectual Property and Local Content (IPLC) advocacy programme. 

Last Modified: Thu, 04 Nov 2021 11:16:32 SAST

Rhodes>Arts of Africa >People>Associate Artists

Senzo Shabangu

Senzo Njabulo Shabangu (2021 Artist in Residency with the Residencies for Artists and Writers (RAW) programme, Arts of Africa and Global Souths Research programme, Fine Art Department, Rhodes University, Makhanda/Grahamstown, South Africa) is a multidimensional artist who was born in the village of Driefontein, Mpumalanga and spent a large part of his childhood living at an apostolic mission station. Imagery from this time in his life features regularly in his work.  His work explores space, alienation, and identity.

Shabangu often places city landscapes emerging from below and suspended above his characters creating an almost claustrophobic sense of being surrounded by the city. Within this theme, Shabangu also deals with movement in the city and how people are moved. Many of his works look at how people live and the politics surrounding forced removals.

Shabangu studied printmaking at the Artist Proof Studio in Newtown (2006-2008) after being introduced to the medium through the Taxi Art Education Program at the Johannesburg Central Library. Although this was the beginning of Shabangu’s formal artistic training, he had been drawing on his own since childhood.

Senzo’s recent solo exhibition was called Their Humble Abode, Raw Spot Gallery, Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa (2021). The exhibition is a body of work that narrates the story of African children as they migrate from different places in search of better education and how students leave their loved ones to settle for a certain duration at universities or other institutions, sometimes far away from home. The work is based on students’ faith, morals, mother tongues and teachings they have received. The exhibition includes paintings of the ark to symbolise how students walk together to the imaginary promised land and the greener pastures lying ahead of them. In this body of work, he travels through the continent in his mind, engaging with, for example, Goree Island in Senegal, Ethiopia, the Cape to Cairo stretch, etc, in honour of the African child who goes out to battle like a soldier. 

 

Last Modified: Mon, 20 Sep 2021 07:44:39 SAST