Spherique Indian Ocean Art Project
Planhotel Group is pleased to announce the opening of the new Spherique Indian Ocean Art Gallery at Diamonds Thudufushi Beach & Water Villas.
After the official launch of Spherique Indian Ocean Art Project on 23rd July 2011 at the Diamonds La Gemma dell’Est, this new addition expands to art lovers the chance to admire paintings created by some of the most talented artists from the Indian Ocean region.
Planhotel Group is proud to sponsor and support the synergy between Art and Hospitality, Art is a real passion for the Planhotel guests, we are delighted to present these works and allow our guests to discover the talent of the artists from this part of the world.
The launch of the exhibition’s second installation is a timely anticipation of the opening of a dynamic, interactive, and innovative way of exhibiting with artists performing live.
Starting from this winter season Diamonds La Gemma dell'Est will host Kenyan artists performing live and Diamonds Thudufushi Beach & Water Villas will host Corrado Cohen Luria, a painter who has long studied and experimented in the figurative arts. His favorite media are watercolors and oils, but he also works with egg tempera, pencil, silver point and china ink, using various canvases and backgrounds, such as nautical charts, musical scores, rice paper, boards, creating special chromatic and material effects.
The artist always draws his inspirations from real life, marine and landscapes, sailing yachts as well as nudes and still life, suggesting a link with French Impressionists and Italian Macchiaioli.
He paints in the ”motif”, in his atelier overlooking the splendid bay of Portofino. He also spends periods working in Venice, New-York and the Swiss Alps. He is keen in making most of his colors and supports in his atelier.
He is a member of “Bottega delle Arti“ in Milan, society of artists inspired by the European traditions of figurative painting.
His works can be found in private collections in Italy and most European countries, as well as Japan, Australia, Canada, South Africa and the USA. In Italy his works can be viewed at Galleria Bolzani, Corso Matteotti 2, Milan; Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Portofino and at his studio at Viale Baratta 14, Portofino; Galleria Il Vernissage, Castello Santa Margherita Ligure; Bellagio Museo degli Strumenti per la Navigazione.
In the USA at the “Phyllis Lucas Gallery“, 98 Second Avenue, New-York.
In Belgium at the “Royal Belgium Yacht Club” at Ghent.
The Artist lives and works in Portofino, Italy.
The Spherique Indian Ocean Art Project opens in Zanzibar.
23rd July - 23rd September: an exhibition by artists from 6 different countries.
The exhibition of artists from Zanzibar, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Maldives and Sri Lanka officially opened to the public on 23rd July at the Diamonds La Gemma dell’Est Resort. This unique event marks the launch of the Spherique Indian Ocean Art Project, an ambitious initiative that plans to involve all 26 countries from around the Indian Ocean by 2015 and organise travelling exhibitions which will culminate in a final event in Malé, in the Republic of Maldives.
I have to be grateful to the holy ONE, and perhaps to more than one person on earth, if at this point of my life I was inspired to devote my interest to ART.
Since I started working on this project my life has taken on new hues of colour and I have been able to give free rein to my passion for art, especially painting which has fascinated me since I was a young boy.
I can still see myself as a six-year-old contemplating the rupestrian carvings in Africa or when I was slightly older strolling past the paintings in the corridors of exhibitions by Sanguineti, Incegnieri or Putzolu, which were usually held in the Italian Club in Asmara.
These memories probably nurtured my love of strong shades and bright colours coupled with the dusty, dappled hues of the desert which I now see in the artwork by painters from countries around the Indian Ocean. When I look at works by artists from Zanzibar, Kenya and Tanzania, I am immediately transported amidst smells and magical ambiences to a time when my young, innocent eyes led me through the East African savannah or along riverbeds in the Eritrean lowlands in which only sand flowed for ten months of the year or in the wild, dense forests of Ethiopia.
I see entire valleys full of tiny yellow flowers as far as the eye can see which are tinged with such bright, vibrant colours at sunset that they bring to mind a volcano on the verge of eruption or an immense cauldron in which God is dramatically melting all the gold in the world.
These are the colours that give me the belief and the passion to carry out the “Spherique Indian Ocean Art Project” while my memories conjure up feelings that grant me the desire and drive to succeed with this extremely ambitious project.
So far everyone to whom I have shown this project has been captivated, offering their help and expressing their complete approval.
This exhibition in Zanzibar features artists from the Maldives, Kenya, Uganda, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Zanzibar and was preceded by an exhibition of artists from Kenya, which was held in Malindi in January. It will be followed by a very important event designed to truly launch the project. In addition to exhibiting works of art at this event, we would also like to invite artists from the Seychelles, Mauritius, South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Our goal is for the 2015 event to encompass all countries from in and around the Indian Ocean and invite all the artists who are exhibiting their works of art to attend.
The final goal of the “Spherique Indian Ocean Art Project” is to promote the teaching of art and to support artists from all these countries, many of which may not be rich but their certainly enjoy an incredible wealth of talent and colours.
Finally, I would like to thank you for attending this event and also ask you to remove the contact lenses that your social position and society in general has accustomed you to wearing over the years. I invite you to stroll through the works of art and see them through the same eyes you had when you were six-years-old so you can enjoy every brushstroke and fully understand what they intend to express.
I hope you enjoy the experience.
Carlo Cipolini
Spherique Indian Ocean Art Project
Information and Contacts: planhotel@planhotel.com
Artists
Adrian Nduma - Kenya
| Colour, beauty and abstraction are Adrian Nduma’s pillars - art for the sake of art. The former banker holds a degree in fine art from Kenyatta University. Having focused on full-time painting ten years ago, Nduma’s style is consistently evolving. With a background in graphics applied in advertising he portrays a unique discipline in composition, form and colour. He has worked with many companies in Kenya developing graphics for their advertising campaigns... |
View here Adrian Nduma profile and works:
Afzal Shaafiu Hasan (Afu) - Maldives
| Afzal Shaafiu Hasan (Afu) has proved to be a leading figure in the Maldivian art scene over the past decade. He has participated in many exhibitions in the Maldives as well as in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Mauritius and onboard the famed cruise liner ‘The World’. His paintings have been housed in foreign embassies, private collections, and major hotels as well as in the permanent collection of the National Art Gallery of the Maldives... |
View here Afu profile and works:
Chilonga Haji - Tanzania
| Haji Chilonga is a self-taught artist born on 24th January 1969 in Masasi in the Mtwara region, which is located in the southern part of Tanzania. His father’s side of the family were traditional blacksmiths while his mother’s side were potters. Chilonga has come a long way. At the beginning of his career Chilonga started by painting commercial signs and portraits, he then moved on to realism and has become an established painter and sculptor with a personalised style... |
View here Chilonga Haji profile and works:
Fide - Tanzania
| Phidelice Gervacy, a self-taught artist, was born on 7th January 1982 in the Kilimanjaro region. He has participated in numerous art exhibitions and workshops. In September 2002 he took part in an art workshop at the University of Dar es Salaam organized by Els Waijers from the Netherlands. In 2006 he participated in an art workshop at TCC Chang’ombe in Dar es Salaam and in the Vipaji foundation workshop which was organized by Zachariah Mbutha from Nairobi Kenya... |
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Hassan Kadudu - Zanzibar
| This 40-year-old from Zanzibar Island started experimenting with art at the age of 6. Kadudu’s interest led him to study fine art at the Zanzibar School and batik. In 1992 he accepted a teaching position at Nyumba ya Sanaa (institute of art). Kadudu is currently working on a project with UNICEF, designing Sara comic books to help the children of Tanzania learn English. Kadudu is a volunteer art teacher at the local hospital... |
View here Hassan Kadudu profile and works:
Hassan Ziyad - Maldives
| Hassan Ziyad began to seriously consider a career in the visual arts in the late 1990s. Leaving school after grade 7, the only formal art education he had was the lessons he was given in the art class at school. In the mid-1990s, Ziyad, together with a friend who was also involved in the production of souvenirs, submitted one of his paintings to a charity art exhibition and competition organized by a primary school in Malé where Ziyad’s wife worked... |
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Huda Aishath - Maldives
| “At a very young age I developed a fascination for the impact of various colour combinations and nature. Influenced by my artistic mother, I started painting around that time. My art continues the fascination for nature with vivid colours, light and reflections. I work with watercolour, acrylic, oil and mixed media. I have tried and experimented with different techniques and found out that the bold strokes of oil and acrylic on canvas is something I will never get bored of... |
View here Huda Aishath profile and works:
Jak Katarikawe - Uganda
| Born in 1940 in Kigezi, Kabale, Southern Uganda, Jak Katarikawe never had formal schooling. Self taught, he received early stimulus from his mother, who painted the walls of houses. Discovered by Prof. Cook from Makerere University, he had his first exhibition at the Nommo Gallery, Kampala (1973), and also in Denmark, Germany, Kenya, Nigeria, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, United Kingdom and USA... |
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Kaafiri Kariuki - Kenya
| Nicholas Kariuki, a father of three, was born on 4th February 1973 in the slums of Nyahururu, Maina village in the Rift Valley to a Christian and Muslim father. He grew up with many unanswered questions as to which of them was in the “right religion”. He still bears the burden of religion with his pseudonym name ‘Kaafiri’, which loosely interpreted in English, means pagan. His drawing started as an escape from his environment whilst in primary school and he did cartoons and played music in high school to entertain... |
View here Kaafiri Kariuki profile and works:
Saada Juma Mussa - Zanzibar
| A specialist of henna painting, Saada was trained in different arts at the Institute of Arts in Mwanakwerekwe, Zanzibar in 1989. She was born in 1968. Henna painting, tattooing hands and legs on women, is widely practiced along the Indian Ocean coasts. As a result of Tingatinga influences among others, the art form has found its way to canvas and other wearable fabrics in Tanzania... |
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Sanjeewa Kumara - Colombo
| “ My art is fun and I prefer to call my works ‘pictures’ rather than paintings. My pictures reveal the radical ambiguity of fantasy. The uncanny, the fantastic, the marvellous, the hesitation, the supernatural, and the uncertainty are very important to my work. The language of my visual texts is where (y)our desire is placed. Mixing various with popular and unpopular historical elements and combining them as a visual pastiche, I try to synchronize them into my own unique visual language which I would like to call ‘Non western-western art’... |
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Sebastian Kiarie - Kenya
| Kiarie is one of the most respected and collected artists in the region. Born in 1971, the self-taught artist developed his artistic talent at a young age and pursued this interest throughout his elementary and tertiary schooling. But it was other Ngecha artists, including the legendary Wanyu Brush and Sane Wadu, who heightened his interest in mainstream art in early 1990s... |
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Vaijra Gunawardena - Colombo
| “ My works are focused on my need to intersect body and place, memory and fact, and to re-examine human histories, cultural conditions, and events. I use bright colours and paint with oil, acrylics and any medium in a predominately Neo-Expressionist style which is close to Art Brut and Graffiti images. I have developed artistic space and form with different scales on the same background. “My metaphors opens work of symbolic systems has into a new kind of psychodynamic composition.”... |
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Yassir Ali - Kenya
| A fine art graduate of Sudan University for Science and Technology, Yassir Ali is inspired by Nubian culture, motifs and colours. A key aspect about his works is the consistent endeavour to capture ‘systematic beauty’. His work is greatly influenced by textile design work which has led to his easily recognizable ‘miniature paintings within a painting’ style. He encourages dialogue between the audience and his artworks with a challenge to ‘see beneath the beauty’... |
View here Yassir Ali profile and works:
