1-2 October 2016
I had my second experience with Ange Mukeza‘s work at the #Tribe16 International Art Festival in Bermondsey. The two-days event, organized by Chrom-Art, involved over 120 international and UK-based artists from the world of contemporary art, music, dance and performance. The ‘living exhibition’ was held in a beautiful Victorian warehouse spanning over three floors and five different areas. I loved that place and the contrast with the modern Shard close to it.
Ange was working at the third floor, besides other ‘interactive’ artists. For this occasion, she decided to focus on children and give them the possibility to participate. She confessed how much she enjoy working with children mostly because “they are not scared of anything, even though you have to control them!”
Differently from before, this time she had divided the canvas with asymmetric frames, to differentiate the composition and create different landscapes.
Previous Ange’s artwork was also exposed at the festival. The first painting, located at the same floor, was produced during another Art Festival called ArtRooms 2016 at the Melia White House hotel. This was a collaboration just between Ange and an adult audience.
Other two paintings, located at the second floor, were also a product of interaction between the artist and adult audience. The first, entitled #Beyond the Image, was produced at the Espacio Gallery in Shoreditch. The second, was the material result of a great event at the Nomadic community gardens, which I have previously described in this blog.
Those paintings (and more others) are part of a series called WonderWorld, which is a direct collaboration between Ange and the public. Ange’s objective is to involve the audience to leave a personal mark, a contribution to the canvas, in order to share the performance of creating art work.
As she explained, she started this new interactive approach mostly because she felt bored to work alone in a studio and she was looking for a more dynamic experience. Her goal is to find a lively dialogue with the audience, without omitting her own contribution.