Independent Curators International supports the work of curators to help create stronger art communities through experimentation, collaboration, and international engagement.

Independent Curators International supports the work of curators to help create stronger art communities through experimentation, collaboration, and international engagement.

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Mentorship Program for East African Curators

Clockwise from top left: Sarah Waiswa, Nicole Remus, Nafkot Gebeyehu, Wairimũ Nduba, Maria Olivia Nakato, Turakella Editha Gyindo.


PROGRAM DATES: JANUARY-JUNE 2025

Clockwise from top left: Sarah Waiswa, Nicole Remus, Nafkot Gebeyehu, Wairimũ Nduba, Maria Olivia Nakato, Turakella Editha Gyindo.

ICI, in partnership with Njabala Foundation and AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions, is offering a 6-month mentorship program for emerging female-identifying curators based in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, themed “Curating as multiplying mediation and access to culture.” 

The mentorship aims to support emerging arts workers by creating a platform to develop their practice, gain resources, enhance research and discourse, and engage with established curators from East Africa and beyond. Offering opportunities to develop tools and actions to raise awareness about gender issues in the East African context, the program will support a new generation of cultural workers sensitive to the place of women artists and augment the agency of female-identifying artists, curators, and educators in the region and globally.

Over the course of the program, each participant will meet with their mentor monthly between January and June 2025 to workshop a proposal for an exhibition or similar project and to receive individual feedback on their curatorial practice. Mentorship sessions will take place virtually, though participants will be invited to Kampala, Uganda for a midpoint, in-person group meeting to connect with the other participants and mentors. 

Participants
Nafkot Gebeyehu

Nafkot Gebeyehu is a documentary photographer and journalist with a passion for storytelling.

Turakella Editha Gyindo

Turakella (Tura) is an art curator and multidisciplinary artist based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Maria Olivia Nakato

Maria Olivia Nakato is an emerging curator with Muumba Collective.

Wairimũ Nduba

Wairimũ Nduba is a Kenyan multidisciplinary creative whose practice is rooted and guided by African sonic principles which hold music to be a site of communal gathering, healing, joy, and beauty.

Nicole Remus

Nicole Remus (b. 1995) is an interdisciplinary creative practitioner (self-taught Visual Artist, Curator/Scenographer, Graduate Architect, and Poet) from Jinja, Uganda.

Sarah Waiswa

Sarah Waiswa is a Ugandan-born, Kenya-based award winning documentary and portrait photographer with an interest in exploring the New African Identity on the continent.

Mentors
Ba Taonga Julia Kaunda-Kaseka

Ba Taonga Julia Kaunda-Kaseka is the founding director of Modzi Arts and a multidisciplinary curator.

Rose Jepkorir Kiptum

Jepkorir Rose is a curator based in Nairobi.

Fadzai Veronica Muchemwa

Fadzai Veronica Muchemwa is a researcher, writer, and curator residing in Harare and is currently the Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe.

Portia Malatjie

Portia Malatjie is a Senior Lecturer in Art History and Discourse of Art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town.

Georgina Maxim

Georgina Maxim is an artist, curator, initiator of the collective Village Unhu in Harare, Zimbabwe and studied African Verbal and Visual Arts at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. 

Nantume Violet

Nantume Violet is the initiator of the collective and independent art space UNDER GROUND in Kampala, Uganda.


About Njabala Foundation
The Njabala Foundation is a not-for-profit organization based in Uganda and founded in 2021 by Ugandan curator Martha Kazungu to facilitate visibility for women artists in Africa and its diaspora through exhibitions, research, mentorship, and community engagement. https://njabala.com/

About AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research & Exhibitions
AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research & Exhibitions is an NGO created in 2014 that works towards making women artists of the 18th to 21st centuries visible by producing and sharing free bilingual (French/English) content about their work on its website, organizing events and editing its own printed publications. 
https://awarewomenartists.com/en/