Visual art in Tanzania has historically been characterised by indigenous mediums including sculpture, beadwork, and textile. Around the 60s, a painting style named after its founder Edward Said Tingatinga emerged and took centre stage as the country’s most notable art style. Tingatinga birthed an era of tourist-oriented paintings that depicted people, wildlife, and nature, often in two-dimensional shapes and bright colours. The seeds for the burgeoning contemporary art scene that we presently enjoy were arguably planted in the early 2000s. The emergence of centres like Nafasi Art Space, as well as existing spaces like Dar es Salaam Centre for Architectural Heritage (DARCH) and National Museum and House of Culture keenly hosting exhibitions by young visual artists, played a crucial role in improving participation and access to visual art. Also, the willingness of young artists to cut through the status quo, even when audiences were far less receptive than they are now, has certainly shifted the needle towards a more expansive art scene. Now, Tanzanian art workers are merging technique with innovation and imagination to come up with bodies of work that are distinctive, compelling, and thought-provoking. Most notably, the contemporary Tanzanian scene is characterized by the use of mixed media, and a preference for inward exploration of our identities, communities, and histories, over the outward gaze.
Here is a list of 10 current standout visual artists:
1. Valerie Asiimwe Amani
Valerie’s work explores the body, language, and space. The content of her art is always relational- she is always drawing connections (or interrogating the lack thereof) between people and their bodies, their communities, their histories as well as the systems that govern them. She often uses metaphors to explore grand themes like displacement, beauty, and belonging. Owing to her poetry background, her work has a rich storytelling quality to it. Valerie’s art pieces span in scale from long rolls of fabric sewn together, draping high and wide across space, to intimate pieces hosted in smaller frames.
2. Sabi John
Sabi is a visual artist and poet whose art is an invitation into her interiority. Her work often depicts the emotional, physical, and spiritual state she is in, and in this way, can be quite intimate. Her collection titled ‘Emerged From My Slumber Way Too Early,’ exhibited at Nafasi Art Space, shines in its use of juxtaposition of colour and technique to illustrate tension in the state of being. As Sabi embraces this tension between the real and the abstract, seen and unseen, as well as the outer and inner worlds, she invites audiences to think about the tension in their innermost thoughts and feelings.
3. Amani Abeid
Amani’s artistic sensibilities are versatile. In his early days, he garnered the nickname “the coffee guy,” from his use of the medium in his art. Nowadays his most recognizable pieces of art are his paintings, which often feature human figures depicted ethereally with a fluorescent colour palette. You will also likely see the use of patterns so precise they mimic print, incorporated in his art. Gadi’s work is often a response to social injustices he has witnessed. Some of his most memorable work speaks to the injustice Tanzanians experienced at the hands of colonisers. Whether through depicting the coffee plantations where his forefathers were forced to work for low wages, or the remains of wachaga that were taken to Germany, he aims to keep these memories alive and unconcealed.
4. Turakelle Gyindo
Turakelle’s art often takes the form of paintings, installations, and live performances. She explores various themes including womanhood, the environment, and community, as they show up in everyday life. Her recent exhibition “Mwanagu Kua Nkutume,” hosted at Alliance Française in Dar es Salaam, experiments with coffee, a mosquito net, and a dodoki- all recognizable materials to Tanzanians. Turakelle rejects the expectation to make art that is didactic and instead centres feelings- her own and those of the audience when engaging with her art.
5. Arafa Hamadi
Arafa is a multi-disciplinary visual and installation artist whose work takes on both physical and digital forms and deals with both the ephemeral and the enduring. They aim to create fully immersive experiences with their art, sometimes through the sheer scale of their pieces and other times through their penchant for elaborate storytelling. The ethos of a lot of their work is the relationship between queerness and space. Their titular exhibition titled ‘Kujiona Series’ was an exploration of the Swahili coast culture (having been based in cities on the coast of East Africa) as it informs identity and queerness.
6. Rehema Chachage
Rehema’s visual art is an invitation to ritual, oral traditions, and other nontraditional forms of archiving as forms of transgenerational conversation. Often drawing nontraditional archiving practices from her family history, Rehema works to legitimise these practices not only as ways of knowing but also as catalysts for questioning normative narratives of our histories. For instance, in one of her works titled ‘Yee Kididi Kiziha (It is Indeed Pleasing),’ she features a score sung often by her matrilineal family features, as she unpacks ideas of tradition, community, and origin that the song represents, as well as challenges. She uses multiple mediums including photography, text, and physical installation- sometimes altogether- to engage with these conversations. A multihyphenate, Rehema is also a writer, and researcher and has held various leadership positions including Arts Manager at Nafasi Art Space.
7. Mwandale Mwanyekwa a.k.a Big Mama
Mwandale is the 5th generation woman sculptor in her family. Hailing from the Makonde people, sculpting is medium indigenous to her ancestors. She merges traditional Makonde sculpting techniques with a modern approach on art, to craft pieces that represent life. Themes like cultural norms show up frequently in her work, particularly through motherhood. Her art has a sensual quality; wood is expertly manipulated into figures with smoothly curved lines, sometimes intertwined with other figures. Mwandale’s art shows a clear reverence to trees- and nature by extension- as seen by her constant acknowledgment of the connection between her woodwork and the environment that has made it possible.
8. Gadi Ramadhani
Gadi wears many hats; he is an artist, educator, curator, and as of October 2023, founder of KokoTen, a visual art studio and community. Whilst he experiments with varying mediums, charcoal, and monotype printmaking are his preferred ones. He is one of the few artists who is not only proficient in printmaking but is at the forefront of keeping the technique alive in contemporary Tanzanian art. Gadi’s art is often an accurate looking glass into his politics, exploring themes like the lived experiences of Tanzanian women, civic engagement through voter rights, our notions of community, as well as oppression in Tanzania’s history.
9. Theresia Massawe
Theresia’s art is largely characterised by its cubist influence as seen by the asymmetrical qualities of the figures she paints, except for the spellbinding, elusive eyes that are a staple in her work. Her art is often adorned by a vibrant earthy colour pallet. The pieces exhibited at her debut solo show hosted by the Dar es Salaam Centre for Architectural Heritage (DARCH) focus on relationships, most notably the one we have with memory. Questions of how we remember our feelings, our loved ones, and our surroundings reverberate in her art.
10. Nickson Kimaro
Nickson is a printmaker and illustrator whose art merges the fundamentals of traditional mediums, and the finesse of the digital space. Newspapers, khangas, album covers and comic books are all templates that frequently inform his work. Nickson’s art is often in conversation with varying aspects of the environment and culture around him. His first solo exhibition titled ‘Perceptions’ spoke to the master narratives and news we consume, and his most recent exhibition (in collaboration with fellow illustrator Frank Rogan) titled ‘ESCAPE ROUTES,’ is an immersive exploration of escaping as not just a physical, but also a mental and emotional endeavour.
About Author
Karen Chalamilla is a researcher and writer with a keen interest in African art and (pop)culture. Her work explores art in all its forms, against political and identity considerations including race, gender, sexuality, and class.