The Kampala Art Biennale 2016: Expressions of Global Urbanisation and Motion.
With its second Art Biennale, Kampala is quickly evolving and becoming one of the most attractive destinations for contemporary art
September 16th, 2016
The second edition of the Kampala Art Biennale KAB2016 is finally putting Kampala, Uganda on the map of international contemporary art. Its aim is to promote emerging African and international artists and to encourage cross-cultural exchanges and collaborations.
Produced and organized by the Kampala Arts Trust, The Kampala Art Biennale is one of the collective’s way to “make art an integral part of Kampala’s urban culture in order to put it on par with other artistic metropoles across the world’’. The Kampala Arts Trust is a private collective of over a hundred visual and performance artists living and working within the Ugandan capital.
The Trust is run and managed by a board of specialists in the fields of art, design, project management, market and communication as well as finance and law. The Trust works to empower and inspire artists to participate in the development of Kampala city as well as to promote art education and appreciation as a tool for social change in schools and communities.
For this edition of Kampala Art Biennale, the independent Cameroonian curator Elise Atangana proposes a theme centred around the «SEVEN HILLS» of Kampala. Emerging and established artists alike are invited to explore and express the urban fabric of Kampala, which has been sprawling wildly across the seven hills upon which it was first built. The aim of this year’s edition is to bring artists from Africa and beyond to work with local Ugandan artists to share their experience around phenomena common to them all - urbanisation and migration.
Aside from exploring the local phenomena of urbanisation, the 2016 Biennale will introduce The Art Education Programme in order to encourage Kampala’s youth to think critically, creatively and find new solutions to ever-increasing challenges that the city faces. Through art education and appreciation, the Kampala Biennale aims to mediate between different artistic mediums, people, cultures and ways of life. The KAB16 is dedicated to acknowledge Africa’s artistic heritage, but also to enter it into dialogue with the multitude of artistic forms across the world.