Art in Africa

I guess before coming here I never really heard of any African art, normally when you hear about Africa you get all the negatives.  You hear about poverty, food shortages, riots, genocide and HIV/AIDS.  Unfortunately, its rare that positive aspects of African cultures are show cased.

So I’ve been in Arusha now for just over a week, and I’ve been in Africa for two weeks now!  While exploring and getting to know Arusha I’ve encountered quite a bit of art. 

My first weekend, I went on a tour of Arusha and was introduced to two very talented artists SiKenguru and Gasto.  We met them in their gallery and were able to have sneak peaks of some of their works, both were very enthusiastic about me taking pictures to show on my blog.  SiKenguru is a more established artist, and has met Hillary and Bill Clinton (he had the letter from the White House to prove it).  SiKenguru also has a piece of his art in a gallery in Berlin.  Gasto is SiKenguru’s student, and has some very neat work as well!

SiKenguru and a sample of his art work

Gasto and some of his art work

A mural and the Via Via, a local restuarant

 

This weekend we visited an Art Gallery in Arusha.  It is a very beautiful building, the outside is shaped like a spear, a shield and a bowl.  It was super cool.  Inside it was FULL of different pieces of art from all over the continent!  From Sculptures and Masks to Chairs and Paintings, it was really neat to see it (and it was free, which made it all the better!).

The Arusha Art Gallery (Sheild, Spear and Bowl)

OK this is inappropriate, but hilarious.  There was a 14ft sculpture of a giraffe, which was VERY anatomically correct.  I bet you can guess what this is a close up of.  Why they were labelled as 'Extremely Rare' we weren't too sure, since every sculpture of giraffes we'd encountered had testicles.

These little sculptures reminded me of Jacob!! (Like the Toy Story 3 guys!)

Some Tinga Tinga art.

Well there you have it.  Another little snap shot of some African Culture