Kunst + Xoias

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via nuestrahermana:

Nuestra Hermana’s WOC Photography Series: Zanele Muholi


In 1972, Zanele Muholi was born in Umlazi Durban. After completing an Advanced Photography Course at the Market Photo Workshop in Newton, she held her first exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2004. She most recently earned her Masters of Fine Arts degree in Documentary Media from Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada in 2009.

She worked as a reporter and photographer for Behind The Mask an LGBTQI African magazine tackling queer community issues and visibility. In 2002, she began FEW (Forum For The Empowerment of Women), an organization providing a safe space for black queer women to discuss and organize.

Her photographic work is deeply rooted in both exposing the issues affecting the lives of African lesbians, African women and the black queer community. Her photographic art challenges the usual portrayal of black bodies. Her work has addressed and brought visibility to HIV/AIDS, assault and the violent crime of “curative rape” against black queers. 

Her work is intimate, honest, raw and emotionally charged.

She has held 6 solo exhibitions and has been part of several exhibits. One of her most well known being her first solo exhibit titled ‘Visual Sexuality: Only Half The Picture’. She has received 6 awards and contributions including the Tollman Award for Visual Arts and the Casa Africa award for Best Female Photographer.

You can learn more about her and her work by checking her website HERE.

Check out the archives here

(Please do not remove this article/bio attached to this photoset. This series is written specifically to promote & educate about POC photographers/QPOC/POC issues.)

(via guerrillamamamedicine)

Benjamin Grosser’s Amazing Interactive Robotic Painting Machine

Benjamin Grosser is an artist-composer currently pursuing an MFA degree in New Media at the University of Illinois School of Art + Design. Grosser’s visual art practice is research-oriented and focuses on the integration of art, music, and science as a primary medium to create works that investigate the ways technologies change the human experience of the world.

Prior to entering his graduate program, Grosser completed two degrees in music composition and worked as Director at the Imaging Technology Group at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology where his Virtual Microscope project received multiple grants from NASA. Although he has won a variety of awards for his work and his research has been covered by National Public Radio and the New York Times, his musical explorations in sound, using computers as a method of composing and generating sound, has been called

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pia-artezine:

 

Jorge Manuel de Oliveira Dias was born in 1972 in Maputo, Mozambique. Dias is a contemporary artist who works in photography, installation and video. In 1992, he graduated with a degree in Ceramics from the Escola Nacional de Artes Visuais (ENAV) in Mozambique and, in 2002, graduated with a degree in Sculpture from the Escola de Belas Artes (EBA), Rio de Janeiro Federal University (UFRJ). In Brazil, Dias is one of the founding members of the PERCURSOS group and in Mozambique he is one of the founders of the MUVART collective (Movimento de Arte Contemporânea de Moçambique).

In 2006, Jorge was the curator for Mozambique at ARCO´06 Art Fair in Madrid. Jorge Dias is currently curator at Mozambique’s National Museum and Art Professor in Maputo.

New Works from the Conceptual Art Jewelry group

Artists who make conceptual jewelry are concerned with conveying meaning through their work. In doing so, they may interrogate notions of preciousness, aesthetic beauty, or cultural, religious, political, and other ideological norms.

Conceptual art jewelry makers may employ a variety of methods to communicate their narrative message via the materials and forms in their work. Two of the most common methods are by the use of figurative representations and by the use of abstract form.

Both figurative and abstract forms of conceptual jewelry must reference the body while usurping the body’s function as a site for identity performance. And while doing so, it must establish itself as the primary performance framework or it may work in concert with the accoutrements of the body, namely the clothing and accessories worn, but only by demanding that all other accoutrements take a diminishing role.

When the public thinks of jewelry, most often they think of what is known as jewelry design, a discipline that has become associated with a focus on precious and rare jewels and metals that convey the wearer’s status and communicates the wearer’s position on the socioeconomic ladder. Jewelry design is concerned with notions of attractiveness, exclusivity, and trendiness. In short, conceptual art jewelry is informed by ideas and jewelry design has a decorative function that is driven by market demands. Both conceptual art jewelry and jewelry design are valid expressions for its makers and audiences.

Kunst + Xoias curates a conceptual art jewelry group on Flickr whose membership includes internationally renowned jewelry artists whose works have been exhibited in museums and galleries like Velvet da Vinci, Galerie Ra, Galerie Louise Smit, Klimt02, and others. Many of the artists hold graduate degrees and teach at universities, but some do not have degrees or are self-taught.

Kunst + Xoias is culling through years of images and working on a book of about Conceptual Art Jewelry. If you make conceptual art jewelry, or if you’d like to learn more, we invite you to visit the group on Flickr.

jonubian:

Nneka on Oil in the Niger Delta and Ken Saro-Wiwa

fyeahafrica:

Nneka on Oil in the Niger Delta and Ken Saro-Wiwa

Nneka discusses the oil situation in the Niger Delta and how it degrades the community in her homeland. Her involvement with Remember Ken Saro-Wiwa Movement raises awareness by speaking about the issues at her shows and on the radio. For more weekly interviews with artists, visit http://causecast.org/music

For those of you looking to join movements and causes that provide constructive measures of combating issues in Africa, this is a great video to watch and movement to follow.