#ivuka

Kigali's first large scale mural comes to life, with a cause

Getting the artwork up onto the 16 meter building had all the makings of a good comedy. At our first encounter with the wall we were introduced to the shoddy looking and swerving scaffolding that, besides the safety implication, took us as far as the skirt of our intore warrior.  After scouring much of the city, the team eventually came across the lesser-spotted cherry picker that would extend its long neck and bucket to the top of the wall. For added fun, the driver came with his foot  a in cast. 

Kurema, Kureba, Kwiga- to Create, to See, to Learn

We were invited by the wonderful people from the Kurema project to be a part of the first large-scale mural in Kigali, to be painted in honour of World Aids Day coming up on the 1st of December. Specifically, the project will aim to address the issues around the stigma of those living with or affected by HIV at a personal and community level. The first part of our mission is to work with the local artists of Ivuka to co-create a design that will help represent this message. The message needs to be clear and culturally relevant.  In the workshop, the artists taught us about traditional intore warriors and dancers of Rwanda and other symbols of strength and community. 

We’ve arrived in the land of a thousand hills and the Vuka Arts studio in Kigali will be our new home for the next week. Open studio spaces look over lush green hills, and there is constant life with the Rwandan dance troupe singing and drumming.The walls are draped with magnificent art and sculptures made from waste materials. The studio has played an important role in developing a platform for local art, and for many artists, an opportunity to create a positive life for themselves.

Sometimes all it takes is a bit of color to spark an idea. 

This project was born out of a desire to hear more talk in the air and see more color on the walls in the land of a thousand hills.  After meeting a group of the talented and passionate artists of Ivuka Arts Kigali on a sunny day in August, it felt silly to not do something with the exciting sense of inspired energy they shared with me. So I went back. Again. And again. And again. And each time found more and more artists producing, creating, and diving head first into their work - and eager and willing to talk to me about my just-barely formed ideas of doing a public art project in Kigali.  After a series of meetings it became clearer and clearer that, although many people said we couldn’t do it and that no one would let us, we were going to take art out of the studio and make something of value for the community.  We talked about issues of concern to young adults in Kigali: malnutrition, illiteracy, prostitution, environmental degradation, and underemployment to name but a few.  But it was the fact that when HIV and AIDS came up, a young man said “it's not really an issue here anymore.” When I asked if these artists had known anyone living with HIV, they told me, “not really.” “Do you talk to your friends about HIV?” “No."  This came as a very sharp surprise: knowing how many successes the Government had had in fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic and how very public those successes have been, one would think that young people would be playing an active role in such activities, and that their lives would be more immediately impacted by the epidemic. To think that young people, living in the capital (where the HIV seroprevalence is approx. 7%), were not thinking, talking, or hearing about the realities of the disease within their community, really shocked me. It seemed like a very reasonable objective, then, to try and create a new way to think, talk, and share information and opinions, and to learn more about the realities of HIV within Rwanda. And pretty quickly it seemed like everyone really wanted to do everything they could to get that conversation started, as soon as possible.

And so, over the next 6 weeks we talked about how public  art, and street art in particular could be used to raise people's attention and engage the community in a new way. We met with experts to learn more about the diseases of HIV and AIDS. We made partnerships with some of the key stakeholders in the Government and in Civil Society in Rwanda who work tirelessly to bring services to people living with and affected by HIV and AIDS, and to learn who we could collaborate with to make a new project come to life. We explored Kigali looking for walls where we could share messages and ideas.

And we developed a plan to create, to see, and to learn...