ALERT: LAST DAY - Our East African Women's Auction Closes January 16 at 9pm
CALABAR GALLERY HARLEM: 2504 Frederick Douglass Blvd, New York, NY 10030. 646-964-5062 Website: Calabar Gallery and Instagram page (please follow us here too).
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Welcome to CALABAR GALLERY. We showcase contemporary African Artists and African Diaspora artists globally. Based in Harlem, work featured is inspired and influenced by black African culture globally with a focus on dynamic ideas about art and society.
Ibadan,
running splash of rust
and gold-flung and scattered
among seven hills like broken
china in the sun.
- J. P. Clark
As a child, I grew up reading African writers - Kofi Awoonor, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Flora Nwapa, John Pepper Clarke, Bessie Head, Cyprian Ekwensi, Sefi Atta, Kenneth Kauanda, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Ama Ata Aidoo, Gabriel Okara, Buchi Emecheta and many more.
The Ibadan poem of J. P. Clark who passed away last year was and still is my favorite. I am re-reading a book by Flora Nwapa and another by Buchi Emecheta. I was lucky to have been born in Nigeria when these books were a normal part of my school literature class and required reading. I can say, I read about more than 300 books between the age of 10 and 15.
Have you checked out our East African Women Artists Auction? There are 30 amazing pieces of art, several are must buys from these women artists. Visit this auction here and please share it with a friend too: https://calabargallery.com/auctions/. Please feel free to add other pieces and shop our gallery at https://calabargallery.com.
Stay healthy, safe and spread the word about our gallery. We are asking each of you to share our email with 3 friends - and ask them to SIGN UP HERE.
Atim
Atim Annette Oton
Curator and Gallery Director
Our East African Women Artists Auction ends January 16, 2021.
We have 30 pieces of artwork from East African Women Artists. The auction will feature emerging and mid-career East African Women Artists: painters, photographers to fiber artists, provocative and dynamic work. Preview it here: https://calabargallery.com/auctions/ and you can BUY IT NOW.
I RECOMMEND YOU BUY THE FOLLOWING 7 EAST AFRICAN ARTISTS:
1. Liberatha Alibalio
2. Mary Ogembo
3. Mulenga J. Mulenga
4. P. Wamaitha
5. Moira Bushkimani
6. Florin Iki Mmaka
7. Esther Kantono
This week, we begin a strategic relationship with Kenyan Artist Evans Mbugua to sell his work directly to our buyers and collectors. If you do not know his work - we are pleased to introduce him to you. We have a limited number of pieces - these two large pieces are now available. It will be sold only via this email only - so please reach out to us at info@calabargallery.com
Evans Mbugua was born in 1979 in Nairobi, Kenya. He lives and works in Paris, France. His artistic vocabulary is richly colorful and aims to foreground differences and similarities through the use of repeated pictograms. Recently Mbugua created a body of works at Atelier Le Grand Village – a studio that focuses on stone lithography. "The portraits I paint represent people who are close to me in one way or another. They can be long term relationships or individuals I’ve just met in different places and with whom I spent some pleasant moments. I simply want to keep a memory of these encounters which then constitutes an archive of the best moments of my life. For the portrait, I always start with a dot and it is an accumulation of dots that will vibrate together so that the portrait can be seen on the plexiglass. The starting dot represents an individual and it is the accumulation of these dots that will create the portrait."
I am now open to doing speaking engagements, so please send us your inquiries to info@calabargallery.com
Atim Annette Oton, Curator, Art Fundraiser, Strategist, and Entrepreneur, Director, Calabar Gallery and Art Consulting Director, The Creative Side and Nigerian-born, American and British educated designer turned Curator.
Atim Annette Oton is an art curator, gallerist, art and design fundraiser, visionary thinker, strategist, and entrepreneur whose expertise is in art and design education, exhibition curation and design, and retail with over 25 years of experience. She has raised over $3 million dollars for art and design institutions as well as several International nonprofits. She has raising funds for Bronx River Arts Center, Mind-Builders Creative Arts Center and Amref Health Africa through art initiatives like auctions.
Please feel free to recommend me- we are available to speak virtually about Art and Galleries in the midst of Covid-19 - at info@calabargallery.com
WHAT'S NEW: CaFA ART FAIR in BARBADOS in March 2021
Join us virtually in Barbados in March 2021.
CALABAR GALLERY will be at CAFA ART FAIR 2021.
CAFA Art Fair will be hosted virtually from March 10– March 24, 2021 with invited galleries and artists.
We begin 2021 in preparation for CAFA Art Fair in Barbados from March 10– March 24, 2021 by launching our new series:
ART TALK: DIALOGUES WITH ARTISTS
A Series by Calabar Gallery, New York
We will be featuring artists this January until March, 2021:
Danielle Scott
Mario Joyce Belyusar
Musah Swallah
Sonia E. Barrett
Elan Cardiz
Alexandre Kyungu
Donchellee Fulwood
Mulenga J. Mulenga
The series will feature curator Atim Annette Oton @AtimAnnetteOton in weekly conversations with these 8 artists who will be presenting at CaFa Art Fair.
Artists will be talking about their work, processes and projects from their home based and studio locations in New Jersey, New York, Washington D.C, London, Kinshasa and Lusaka.
CaFA ART FAIR: We talk with ALEXANDRE KYUNGU MWILAMBWE
ART TALK: DIALOGUES WITH ARTISTS A Series by Calabar Gallery, New York
ALEXANDRE KYUNGU MWILAMBWE
A Talk With Curator Atim Annette Oton
Alexandre Kyungu Mwilambwe lives and works in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. He is co-founder of the group Vision Total (vi.to) and works in collaboration with Kin Art Studio (KAS). He has participated in several group exhibitions and residency artist in his country and abroad. Alexandre Kyungu Mwilambwe: the imaginary between mapping and scarification of the body, he combines painting, drawing, sculpture and installation in his practice as an artist. However, his work explores all ideas of migration and identity, borders and space, signs and symbols. His art practice focuses on issues related to urban space, exploring parallels between urban mapping and body scarification. The medium of choice is the “door”, which he attributes to being synonymous with openness, encounter and discovery in an increasingly universal society. His work functions as a “cartographic essay” in which he attempts to construct a new and global world while merging and juxtaposing maps of different cities and the scarification of the body. It is a way for him to question identity, the city and its cartography, to erase borders between peoples and to give birth to a unique territory in the imaginary space of his work.
Black Artists in their Own Realm:Ideas, Materials and Techniques is an exhibition focused on exploring what ways Black Artists globally are working ideas from concept to processing, using materials and techniques to evolve artwork.
The exhibition will showcase a group of African, Caribbean and African American Artists whose work dig deep into ideas, materials and technique innovatively and philosophically curated by Atim Annette Oton of Calabar Gallery. It may be online based on the state of Covid-19.
Please send us your most captivating work that responds directly to the call and we are looking for work under $5000. Please send 3 to 5 images with title, year, medium, and size to info@calabargallery.com with a short bio and a short description about each work as it relates to Ideas, Materials and Techniques.
CALABAR GALLERY as a teaching and information place for art.
We continue this year working hard on our very private Calabar Gallery Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/calabargallery/ and now we are opening it up for you to join. Once you apply and respond to 3 questions, you will join a daily feed of art and cultural articles. This newsletter is free and you can share it but please ask your friends to SIGN UP HERE.
