Thapong launches artist engagement initiative
Spira Tlhankane | Friday April 26, 2019 12:29
This is an inaugural and historic creative arts project that aims to establish and empower young emerging artists between the ages of 18-35 in the production of new creative and innovative work that will reach out to new audiences.
As part of the project’s unfolding plan, three individual artists will each be awarded P30,000 towards development and production of new artworks for the exhibition, which need not be confined to the gallery space as there is room to explore public spaces just as well.
The projects in the end will integrate and function as a collective unit. The project code-named ‘Echoes of [Un] Silenced Voices’ #EchoesUV was influenced by every day living and it will offer new insight into looking at or interpreting things.
“It is the curator’s desire that the artistic processes highlight the breaking out from the cocoon of self-containment, limitations to assuming a position of creative authority. The artists’ expressive voice ought to be heard,” read a press release from Arts Connect BW.
According to the press release, #EchoesUV will usher in a new dawn, a new beginning that offers to redress to some of the challenges that local artists face.
“We have, as a team leading this project, appropriated the aforementioned multi-facetted theme with its ambiguities as it speaks of both suppression and freedom (being silenced and unsilenced),” Tumie Thuthuka from Art Connect BW said.
He added that on behalf of local artists, they are acknowledging this development and appreciate the British Council #SouthernAfricaArts as well as Thapong Visual Arts for making this happen. “It is through their generosity and support that this will be realised.
In the end, we implore other entities to follow suit in support of the local creative arts industry so that it indeed becomes ‘a vehicle for sustainable development’,” he said.