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111 ChApter 4 An Artist’s Notes on the Triangle Workshops, Zambia and South Africa namubiru rose kirumira and sidney littlefield kasfir African contemporary artists are often portrayed as individuals who are caught up in the dynamics of art formation spaces, sociocultural movements , and forces of globalization—as well as new discourses of artistic experience. Workshops in particular have been significant formative spaces in artists’ endeavors to become versatile in a globalizing environment (Deliss 1995; Kirumira 2008; Sanyal 2002). It is worth observing that several types of workshops that include long-term (three-month) residencies, short-term (twoweek ) workshops, and symposia have existed in Africa for some time; many were begun by colonial patrons. Publications such as catalogs produced by the Triangle Art Trust, and articles by Court (1992) and Richards (1998) have given varied, if limited, accounts of the status of art workshops in Africa. Murray, Picton, and Loder (2005) argue that the condition of being an artist in Africa is a condition of continuous transition. In the same vein, for over fifty years, African workshops have presented themselves in a continuous transition from artist’s colonies, communities, and craft villages to international workshops. A revealing example of what has changed in the African workshop scenario since 1985 is the introduction and spread of the so-called Triangle Workshops, originated by the British art collector and entrepreneur Robert Loder and sculptor Sir Anthony Caro in 1982. The initial triangle was the familiar one of the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom; but three years later the first African Triangle Workshop, Thupelo, was organized in South Africa by artists David Koloane and Bill Ainslie. In the years that followed, more than eight hundred artists have taken part in Triangle-sponsored workshops in fourteen African countries (Kirumira 2008:134), making them by far the most widespread and heavily attended workshops for contemporary artists in those countries, primarily in eastern and southern Africa. Workshop activities during this period collated synergies of those African visual artists to organize and participate in a workshop environment and then turn it into an all-inclusive and effective formation space. In Kirumira (2008), the types of training and artist interaction that occur in the Triangle workshops are examined from the perspective of a past participant 112 nAmubIru rose kIrumIrA And sIdney lIttleFIeld kAsFIr and observer. one of the questions that motivated the study is how informal learning spaces such as workshops compare to and enhance the formal space of the classroom in an artist’s formation (figs. 4.1 and 4.2). This concerned the learning intentions of the artists, procedures, outcomes, and achievements—in effect, enabling globalizing workshops. one obvious difference is that in the Triangle workshops there is no instructor and no syllabus or set goals. An equally striking difference from formal training however is in the makeup of the artist group. In a university art school such as that at Makerere, everyone is young and impressionable and possesses the academic credentials to enter a first-rate university, often from an elite secondary school where there were art classes. In the Triangle workshops, by contrast, everyone is already a practicing artist: some are up and coming, others are already in mid-career, and a few are mature artists (Kirumira 2008:193). This aspect is very important to the Triangle model grounded in the diversity of the artists selected for the workshop in terms of working experience and how that experience translates into sharing and benefiting from the opportunity—each artist becomes both a learner and teacher. African artists, because of this change, have been motivated into taking a new and active role as managers and curators of their own works, critiquing themselves and work, handling business within the workshops and responding to new developments in artistic practice—thus encouraging versatility on the global scene. By design, roughly half the participants are from the host country and half are from elsewhere: an important ingredient in the notion of learning through a brief but intense encounter with the unfamiliar. “Elsewhere” refers primarily to other African countries, although there is a sprinkling of participants from the United States and the United Kingdom, upholding a strong Anglophone bias (only one has been held in a Francophone country on the African continent —Tenq, in Senegal, in 1995). Many are academically trained, particularly those from outside Africa, but the African participants (who comprise more than 80 percent) are more mixed (see tables 4.1 and 4.2). In the two...

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