Artists show their new use of photos at the 'Kipya Ki?'
Wednesday May 04 2022
"Murky Waters" by Sherie Margret Ngigi showing at the Kipya Ki exhibition in Kampala. PHOTO | POOL
The New Art City in Kampala is hosting a virtual exhibition titled Kipya Ki? (Luganda for What’s new?) featuring photography works by 10 East African and British artists.
The participating artists are Maria Ahmed (UK), Tom Faber (UK), Brook Getachew (Ethiopia), Canon Griffin (Uganda), Felicity Hammond (UK), Carol Kagezi (Uganda), Sherie Margaret Ngigi (Kenya), Duncan Poulton (UK), Elise Wootten (UK) and Lidiya Zelke (Ethiopia).
The exhibition, which runs until the end of the year, can be viewed online at kipyaki.newart.city. It is a collaborative project between Fotea, the organiser of the Uganda Press Photo Award, and Format International Photography festival.
Curators Trevor Mukholi from Uganda and Ibrahim Azab of the UK are supported by the British Council Cultural Exchange programme.
On show are works of digital photography, sculptures, computer generated images, moving images and sound. The artists tell stories that tackle contemporary social, economic, political and industrial issues.
Zelke’s Courage Beyond Earth and EGO digital collages were produced using a coded-image making process.
Faber has two digital moving images, both titled Fortress.
Multi-layered
Ahmed has several mixed media digital sculptures. Strawberry Fresco, Moving Fresco, Black and White Fresco, Fresco Green, Bird, Fresco Globe and Fresco Globe. She uses collages, books and moving images to investigate historic and contemporary languages of photography. Her multi-layered, poetic narratives are created using an archive of digital and printed matter.
Rumanzi’s five digital collage works — All These Travellers, In Existence Seeing Ourselves From a Distance, Strangers Must Meet Until There are No More Strangers, We Are Ants In Transit Go Tend Your Garden, and Worlds In a World — explore new ground as he juxtaposes archival and contemporary images that incorporate drawings.
Ngigi has five digital photographs — Mimi Ni Nani, Murky Waters, Debbie, Untitled, and Mke Mwema IV.
Ngigi is an artist, photographer and filmmaker. Her environment has been a source of inspiration and she uses images of women to highlight issues affecting them.
Kagezi has four digital collage works all titled Self Portrait. A multidisciplinary artist, her work explores the evolving self. She uses collage to interrogate the complexities of black Africanness, oneness, and order.
Poulton has four digital collage works: Nuclear Summer (Everquest), 2020, e-hoarder (The Fast and the Furious), 2019, Untitled, 2022, and IPHONE, 2019.
Wootten has four mixed media digital sculptures all titled Balancing Act(Fragment).
Her works reflect the visual and physical flatness of print, and the perspective determined by the lens. The photographs are almost sculpture and collage.
Getachew’s seven digital collages are Faces, Deal, (In)formation, Mania, Innocence, Lost, and Aura. His works are about glimpses of existence.