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WELCOME
The National Gallery of Art has instituted a programme called African Regional Summit & Exhibition on Visual Arts (ARESUVA) with the set objective of promoting visual Arts as a strategy for achieving rapid economic development in the African region as envisioned in the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD).
Among others, the programme is designed to bring together leaders in business, politics, media, Government and the creative industry from African countries to discuss the key issues shaping the art and culture sector. The event will feature a symposium, networking amongst participants, workshop for artists and an exhibition.
Exhibition
The exhibition has been designed to be in one fold. Artists are invited from different African countries through their embassies in Nigeria and others directly through facilitators to participate in the exhibition.
A jury usually select quality art works from artists in Nigeria spread across generations of artists in the country and Nigerian artists in the Diaspora. These are added to works from other African Countries that equally go through jury.
Conference
For the conference, paper presentation is aimed at exposing the various business opportunities in the visual arts sub-sector. It features case studies from across the world by international speakers and panelists. The speakers are selected from practitioners to commentators and writers from different parts of Africa as well as outside the continent.
The 1st edition of ARESUVA was held from September 7-13, 2008 at the International Conference Centre, Abuja, Nigeria with the central theme Promoting the Visual Arts for Sustainable Economic Growth and Development in Africa.
For the exhibition, a total of 79 artists participated. That is, fifty two (52) Nigerian artists resident and practicing in Nigeria together with five (5) Nigerian artists in the Diaspora, and twenty two (22) artists from 16 African countries. One Hundred and Fifty Seven, out of the One Hundred and Seventy Seven art works that were collected, were exhibited. These were very creative art works. The entire presentation was professionally handled.
From the conference angle, 18 scholars were invited. They were asked to identify relevant topics of their choices based on the content of the letters that were written to them; as well as the content of the marketing brochure attached to their letters. The topics they chose addressed the challenges of professional artists and other stakeholders, and deliberate extensively on the importance and centrality of the visual art sub – sector in the economies of African countries. Eight scholars were able to make it to the event and presented well researched and thought provoking papers.
The quality of these papers as well as the scholars themselves saw the presence of huge crowd all through the event.The papers are presently being collated to be put in the appropriate format for publishing to be distributed during the next edition. The three day conference was chaired by able scholars who knew what to do and did it perfectly. On the whole, the conference was well organized.
This year edition is scheduled for November 19 – 21, at the same venue - International Conference Centre, Abuja, Nigeria with the theme The impact of the Visual Art Sub-sector on the African Economy. As usual, exhibition and conference will take prominence.
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