UU Santa Fe hosts various art installations by local artists; these change bi-monthly. You will find on this page our featured artist(s).
Art on Barcelona is facilitated and curated by Virginia Asman.
Art on Barcelona is facilitated and curated by Virginia Asman.
Art on Barcelona
HumAnimal Exhibition: January-February, 2019
- Reception (free): Saturday, January 26, 4:30-7:30 pm
- Urban Way Performance: Saturday, January 26, at 5:20 pm
- Suggested donation for performance: $20/$10 students
Issa Nyaphaga, an African cartoonist and performance artist who finds resilience in a creative process by painting his body as a canvas, will team with gong bath artist Margerita Monleon De La Lluvia to perform “Urban Way” on January 26 at the Art On Barcelona Gallery at UU Santa Fe. The performance will be part of a reception for HumAnimal, an exhibition of Issa’s mixed media work on canvas, which seeks to answer the question this Santa Fe-based artist from a poor village in Africa has been asking through his creative work: Can music, art, humour and gong meditation save us?
HumAnimal features Issa Nyaphaga’s latest work created in Santa Fe which explores the limits of “Human madness.” He asks, “When birds migrate each season as they have been traveling for centuries, do they need a visa at the border?” Issa concludes that as civilization struggles with an unbalanced definition of who must be treated as human or not, humans become political animals, creating a real myth in their own mind. As generations pass, they mutate to be “HumAnimal,” preparing their kind for a declining civilization.
Issa Nyaphaga was born in Douala, Cameroon in 1967 and grew up in the rural African village of Nditam. His mother introduced him to traditional spiritual beliefs. When he was seven years old, she took him to live in Nditam, a small village of the Tikar people in the equatorial forest. The Tikar are primarily farmers, and he grew up close to the earth and nature. He went to a French school—the only one in the village—where the Bible was central to the curriculum. “Today, my thought is close to Buddhism,” he says. Issa has become a multimedia artist and human rights activist globally known as a political cartoonist and a critical thinker. He has collaborated with many well-known and established institutions and artists around the world. Issa’s artwork has inspired the human spirit of thousands of people in dozens of countries. Issa believes Art can save lives.
All proceeds from the exhibit and performance will benefit Radio Taboo, a solar-powered community radio station in Cameroon, West Africa broadcasting from the middle of the jungle to 1 million listeners in 10 languages. www.radiotaboo.org
Issa Nyaphaga’s Website: Hope International for Tikar People
Photo credit: Collaborative photography with Emily Schiffer Harlem/NY-2009.
Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.―Anne Frank