Vivid Synergies! is a residency project by Afriart Gallery connecting a visual artist with a writer and a curator – supported through the Ignite Culture Fund. The program targets East African creative practitioners based in Uganda, who are enthusiastic to work on contemporary art storytelling. From May 2023 until May 2024 there will be three residencies in total, each fusion a creative trio of a visual artist, a writer and a curator for a period of four months. It is not a stay-in residence, the artists are free to organise their schedule and meet and create from wherever they are.
How do African artists want to document, tell, share, publish and archive their work? Vivid Synergies! focuses on (re)defining visual literacy through self-determined documentation, distribution and archiving of art works – each creative trio processes and builds on two cultural products being released in the end of each residency: Exhibition and Book. The project is giving a space for artists to experiment in a well-curated format and create synergies. Key is a collaborative spirit - the residency thrives for impactful collaboration within the local arts ecosystem and empowers the role of mediation/ curation in the East African art sector, which is underestimated so far.
Meet our artists in residence of the first cohort: Denzel Muhumuza aka Razaroar, a digital artist based in Uganda, and Gretta Ingabire, a passionate storyteller and multidisciplinary artist who just moved to Kampala from Rwanda. Learn more about the artists in this documentation episode where they talk about how art came into their lives and how it’s like to work together during the Vivid Synergies programme.