African contemporary art enters the spaces of the Ca' Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art

From May 20 to October 1, 2023, Ca’ Pesaro - International Gallery of Modern Art in Venice hosts AFRICA 1:1 Five African Artists at Ca’ Pesaro, an exhibition of site-specific works created by five artists from the African art scene, invited to Venice in residence in spring 2023 to work in contact with the Gallery’s history and collections: Option Nyahunzvi (Zimbabwe, 1992), Pamela Enyonu (Uganda, 1985), Alexandre Kyungu (DRC, 1992), Boniface Maina (Kenya, 1987) and Ngugi Waweru (Kenya, 1987).

The exhibition is the result of a project put in place by AKKA Project, Africa First and Ca’ Pesaro, which, in the spirit of the 18th Architecture Biennale, created AFRICA 1:1 LAB, Artists Residency Program, an artist residency project that brought five young African artists to experience the Venetian art environment while offering their personal creative contribution to the city as it prepares for the pre-announced Laboratory of the Future of the 18th Architecture Biennale curated by Lesley Lokko. The residencies involved the creation of five work spaces, real studios at AKKA Project and the immersion of the young African artists in the cultural context of Venice and Ca’ Pesaro in particular.

Through the study of the Gallery’s history, original documents, and the works of the masters preserved in the permanent collection, the five authors-in-residence constructed unprecedented dialogues with the city’s visual tradition and the history of the Palace.

Contemporary African art thus enters the spaces of the International Gallery of Modern Art with Pamela Enyonu, Alexandre Kyungu and Ngugi Waweru introducing a broad reflection on the themes of identity, trauma and socio-political spaces; Boniface Maina, on the other hand, contributes to the dialogue established with the Museum’s collections through a surrealist vision, while Option Nyahunzvi explores new contexts of spirituality.

Image: Ngugi Waweru, Conservative Bubble, detail (2023; mixed media and acrylics on canvas, 130 x 100 cm). Courtesy of Chris Dennis Rosenberg Kimbugwe.

African contemporary art enters the spaces of the Ca' Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art

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