Top speakers to attend African cultures conference

WE ARE drawing close to the 2nd International Conference of African Cultures (ICAC)a historical changing conference taking place from September 11-13, 2017. ICACaims to bring together over 200 local and international delegates in the art, culture and heritage seeking to deliberate important issues surrounding the future and history of art and culture from Africa. Like the first ICAC in 1962 this event will be important not only for the region, but for the whole continent. Its impact will hopefully map out the ways in which institutions, governments, academics and practitioners are more effectively involved within art and culture from Africa.

The conference will feature renowned keynotes speakers, both local and international with tested knowledge on the topics such as The Historical Dimensions of Art in Africa, Development of Contemporary art on the Continent, Building from Scratch and Plugging the holes: Space for contemporary Africa, The Design Tradition in Africa and Its impact on Arts and culture and The Role of Heritage in Formulating Identity. The keynote speakers will be considering Art History from Africa and on mapping the future on Art and speakers include Thembinkosi Goniwe, Berry Bickle, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung only to mention a few.

To begin, Thembinkosi Goniwe is an artist and art historian and currently a visiting researcher at the Wits School of Arts.

Goniwe have lectured in fine art and art history at the University of Cape Town, University of the Witwatersrand, University of Fort Hare and Vaal University of Technology.

He holds a Master degree in Fine Art (1999) from the University of Cape Town and Master degree in Art History (2005) and completing his PhD (2015) from Cornell University. His artworks have been exhibited locally and internationally. He has contributed essays in various publications and curated exhibitions in South Africa, United States of America, Venice and Scotland.

Berry Bickle was educated at the Durban Institute of Technology and Rhodes University in South Africa. She works between Zimbabwe and Mozambique, addressing the region’s long history of colonialism that has been, in part, documented, regulated and perpetuated through

the written word of the colonizers. She is most fascinated by the fragments of history that remain from both official scripts as well as personal, everyday notes, cookbooks, scrapbooks and almanacs of the generations of Africans living under colonial rule.

Her works range from delicate, mixed-media pieces that refocus our attention on snippets of script (often reproduced on what look like old parchments) to playful ceramic works upon which a loose cursive script is written to large-scale installations of mixed media, layered with fragmented stories, poems, testimonials, diary excerpts and edicts to video projections and photography.

Indeed, her artwork is “archaeology” of the present, incorporating everyday material into spectacular tableaux. A versatile artist, Bickle asks her viewers to question the potency, the prevalence and the differences between senses of memory and history, both personal and collective.

Finally, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (PhD), born in 1977 in Yaoundé, Cameroon, is an independent art curator and biotechnologist. He has been living on and off in Berlin since 1997, where he studied food biotechnology at the Technische Universität Berlin. He completed his doctorate in medical biotechnology at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf and a post-doctorate in Biophysics in Montpellier.

He currently works, parallel to his activities as a curator, as a scientist in a medical device company. He is the founder and art director of the art space SAVVY Contemporary Berlin, where he has directed and curated exhibits with more than 30 artists from five continents.

He has worked as curator, art director and consultant for several international exhibition projects and festivals in Germany, France, England and Cameroon, and has published more than 15 exhibition catalogues.

Helen Keller“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”be sure to join us for are life changing event. Registration is open on line.

For more information with regards to the conference please email: icac@nationalgallery.co.zw