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Our collection of Rwandan Art
Still working on the All 55 African countries project and having watched Hotel Rwanda recently and at last, I have come up with a number of links for Rwanda but I could not find one Rwandan artist that I could chose to represent Rwanda in my project. I am sure that those artists are there right now, the Rwandan art tradition (cow dung painting) and so interesting visually. All I could really come up with was Our Collection of Rwandan Art by Baltiri at Webshots. Rwandan landscape below, by an unnamed artist:
I wish Baltiri would say a little bit more about the paintings on the webshots photo description. The collection is pretty good anyhow.
Another link goes to photographer Michal Ronnen Safdie, an Israeli, and her Rwanda: After 2002 gallery. Below is one of the photos in Michal's gallery:
And here goes the "caption" provided by Vision TV:
Last year Michal Ronnen Safdie travelled to Rwanda in order to record some of the pre Gacaca trials.
The photographs record the community partaking in the hearings; the interaction between the accuser and the accused;judges and children; the body language;the process od arrival and departure;
the sadness the anger and the intensity of silence.
Some of the images evoke directly the genocide while most are about the process of reconciliation,
how one might try and come to terms with the unbearable memory.
About Michal: Born in Jerusalem in 1951, she served in the Israel defense forces from 1970 to 1972. She afterwards studied sociology and anthropology in the Hebrew University. In 1978 she completed an MBA in Sociology at the Brandeis University. She became a know photographer in 1995 with a project of photography at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
Still about Rwanda, I need to say that after the genocide has been on the news it is amazing the amount of NGOs working in the country now. So many foreigners are now offering Rwanda what they failed to give in the past. It doesn't make for past mistakes but it is still good to see. I wonder if genocides can be prevented in other areas of the world though. An organization that I liked to learn about is the Aegis Trust: Confronting Genocide. Great work. Some films can be watched on their website.
Still about Hotel Rwanda, I must say I loved it, it is very convincing without being distasteful or too "emotional". Don Cheadle is a great actor and played the amazing Paul Rusesabagina (photo below) so well. For me, Hotel Rwanda is the ultimate evidence of what the entertainment industry should do for those "without a voice". I cannot say how much I appreciated it. Looking a bit further into the story, check out the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation, particularly the small notes about Rwanda on the leftside screen.
Still hoping to find that Rwandan painter...