Akili Dada founder, Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg honored at White house

Source: The examiner 04/03/12

Author:Amy Crawford |

Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg

The professor in the politics department at the University of San Francisco is also the founder of Akili Dada, a leadership incubator for girls and young women in Kenya. Earlier this year, the White House honored the Kenya native as one of 14 “Champions of Change” with roots in East Africa.

What was it like being honored at the White House? Incredible! For me, it’s a life-defining experience.

Tell me about your work with Akili Dada. What we’re doing is building up and investing in a core of African women. We start out with teenage girls who are the brightest in their country. They have already started doing community service, and we essentially enable their ability to continue doing that. We provide scholarships. We make sure that they are networked.

How does your work in Africa intersect with your academic work and teaching? For me, they are built into each other. The ways we structure Akili Dada’s interventions are really informed by feminist studies. The other side of it is, I bring so much of my experience with Akili Dada into the classroom. I think it’s important for young people, especially in America, to understand the rest of the world, especially Africa.

 

 

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A new comedy TV series is looking for talented actors fro a range of roles.
Aged 18-45 with a sense of humor.

Multi-Cultural cast: American, European,Indian,Mixed race,African,Asian.
Previous experience is required.
Contact 0715 909 492

Friday May 17th-Sunday May 19th from 10am -4pm
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The exhibition “Synthesis: remixing locality” opens at Le Rusique on the 24th of May 2013

Art Nairobi and Le Rustique are delighted to exhibit “Synthesis: remixing locality”

3 artists from Namibia, Finland and USA

 

Nicky Marais

Nicky Marais is a Namibian painter and mixed-media artist.  She employs a vocabulary of abstract forms and colour relationships that originate primarily from the Namibian landscape.  Her paintings evoke a variety of geological landforms,  plants as well as the material culture of her arid, sparsely populated and ruggedly beautiful homeland.

Nicky Marais is a Namibian artist, activist and educator who lives in Windhoek, Namibia, and heads the Visual Arts Department at the College of the Arts.

 

Mikko Ijas

Mikko lives and works in Helsinki. The means this artist uses to execute his drawings is everything but traditional. By combining the disciplined observation and skill of a traditional draughtsman or painter with the capabilities of contemporary digital equipment and technology (ipad), Ijas produces luminous and colorful drawings that are new and familiar at the same time. In his drawings, Ijas balances an interest in perception and realism with meaningful, productive distortion. In doing so his work is in dialogue with the history and traditions of painting while he also acknowledges the influence of contemporary artist like David Hockney, who explores similar interest in drawings on hand-held electronic devices.   Written by Andries Fourie

 

Andries Fourie

Ancestral Voices: From Slaves to Matriarchs

This body of mixed-media works on paper addresses the role of South and Southeast Asian slave women, transported to South Africa by the Dutch in the 17^th and 18^thcentury, in shaping Afrikaans language, culture and identity.  The aim of this work is to acknowledge this painful history, and to celebrate the diverse, non-western roots of Afrikaans culture.

While the work examines the influence of slave women in general, it also does so by focusing on the lives of two of the artist’s own slave ancestors: Ansela van Bengale andCatharina van Palliacatte.

Andries Fourie was born in Tshwane (Pretoria), South Africa in 1968. His work deals largely with contemporary and historical aspects of South African culture.  In 1989, he immigrated to the United States. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at Willamette University in Salem Oregon, where he teaches sculpture.

 

Le Rustique Restaurant is along General Mathenge Drive, Westlands
Contacts: 0721 609 601 or 020 262 2927

 

Artist presentation by Japanese artists Yukihiro Taguchi & Shuta Hasunuma

Two resident artists from Nishio Workshop Nairobi-Yukihiro Taguchi & Shuta Hasunuma  will be having a presentation at Kuona Trust tomorrow from 2pm.

This session is open to all who would like to hear more about the work these artists do, their medium, their experience being in Kenya and any other topical interest you may have.

Presentation starts at  2pm, tomorrow 15th May in the gallery space. Read more about the artists below.

Yukihiro Taguchi (video, animation, drawing and installation)

Born in 1980, in Osaka, Japan, currently lives and works in Berlin. He’s participated in exhibitions, residency programs and art projects all over the world such as Germany, Netherlands, France, Cuba and Maldives. He creates unique animation using techniques of stop motion with digital cameras in public places. In his works, existing daily commodities and things can move in a fantastic way, which transforms ordinary situations into the imaginative world. The production process itself contains elements of workshop and performance, intervening surrounding environment or human relationships, then making them different. He was awarded the excellent prize in the Japan Media Arts Festival (2008), solo exhibition in MAM Project 014 in Mori Art Museum(2011).http://yukihirotaguchi.com/

Shuta Hasunuma (contemporary music and installation)

Born in 1983, lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. Hasunuma has released a variety of music albums from both Japanese and abroad label. He composes and plays different genres of music from electronic music, live performance, movie BGM, to orchestral concert. He has joined Japanese and abroad major music festival, exhibitions in museum, fashion shows, art projects. In addition, he records surrounding sounds and movies using music recorder and video camera, editing or composing them into a piece of music, which could be called ‘site-specific’ music.  “Self Titled” and “OK Bamboo” from American label, Western Vinyl, “CC OO” from Japanese label, HEADZ. His solo exhibitions include “have a go at flying from music part3″(Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo: Bloomberg Pavilion, 2012) and “soundlike” (Asahi Art Aquare, 2013) http://www.shutahasunuma.com/

Miguel Luciano // Kenya // smARTpower

Those of you who were with us last year will remember the smARTpower project, for which we hosted the artist Miguel Luciano as he chased the winds across Kenya for 45 days, in ‘The Kite Project’. Working with our good friends and partners the Wajukuu Community Art Centre in Mukuru, Lunga Lunga, Miguel spent his days using art to fulfill more than one hundred children’s dreams of flying.

We hope this video will give you a taste of what a wonderful time we had, and the dramatic transformational power of public art.

Nai Ni Who? A Celebration of Nairobi Neighbourhoods, May 11-17 2013 @ Zone 2

Reblogged from Nairobi Now :: arts, culture and events:

Dates: May 11-17, 2013
Venues: Mater hospital, Railway Museum, Strathmore University, Mukuru Promotion Centre, Kenya Institute of Mass Communication & Technical University of Kenya
Zone 2 Hoods: The GoDown, Kaburini- RailGolf, NrbWest, SouthB/C, Mukuru- Railway- Muthurwa

http://www.nainiwho.com/

Art Exhibition: Onward Story by Haji Chilonga, May 11-24 2013 @ Banana Hill Art Gallery

Reblogged from Nairobi Now :: arts, culture and events: