Date/Time
Date(s) - September 10, 2016 - December 16, 2016
10:00 am - 6:00 pm

Location
Gregory Allicar Museum of Art, University Center for the Arts

September 10 – December 16, 2016 |  Robert W. Hoffert Learning Center

Africa meets Africa (AmA) was founded 15 years ago, first aiming to document aging master artists and their work in rural southern Africa, many of whom have passed since the onset of the project.  These artists described their working method – the relationship between eye, hand, thinking, and counting – leading to a learning methodology now yielding positive results in rural high school arts and math classrooms. Africa meets Africa is a long-term knowledge exchange between rural southern African custodians of heritage, traditional and local government bodies, and the interdisciplinary AmA team of academic consultants. The Africa meets Africa project finds pragmatic solutions to learning problems in the South African classroom by looking to a diversity of local knowledge systems, as articulated in the skilled hands of rural artists.

Exquisite objects, made for everyday use according to inherited styles of beadwork, weaving, pottery and homestead painting, reveal an astonishing integrity of design and innovation with contemporary materials and forms. And yet, the iconic master artists of rural southern Africa, national treasures, share great concern that their skill might not survive beyond their own generation.

Africa meets Africa brings these artists’ knowledge into the classroom, integrating visual arts, history and mathematics. For example, students do geometry with their hands, as they make beadwork and weave according to inherited southern African styles. In this exhibition cultural expression is contextualized in relation to past and present needs.