Opening: Monday, March 4, 2019
Venue: Goethe Institut – Nairobi
Time: 6 pm
Entry: Free
The exhibition will be opened at 6 pm, followed by a conversation with Sam Hopkins at 7pm.
About
GZ CALLING The exhibition GZ Calling (2017) by artist Sam Hopkins and David Lalé approaches the tangled China-Africa relationship from the embedded perspective of a private investigator surveilling the export markets of Guangzhou.
Find more information, here.
Opening: January 15, 2017
Venue: Goethe Institut, Auditorium
Time: 3 pm
Exhibition Dates: January 17-29, 2017
About
Perhaps one of the unforeseen consequences of Nairobi’s recent urban transformations has been the emergence of a bicycle subculture. To choose be a biker, as with any subculture, means to adopt an identity, a sense of belonging that runs counter to traditional, inherited identities such as gender or ethnicity. Nevertheless, whilst biking, and other subcultures, seem autonomous from traditional institutions of power, as a means of self-expression they are closely wedded to global capitalism, for which subcultures are simply another form of profit.Over the last two years Sam Hopkins and John Kamicha worked with strategies of collective filmmaking and collaborative re-enactment to explore what biking means for a group of bikers from Githurai. Here, cycling is less about keeping healthy or about getting from A to B and more about excess, a tendency distilled in the practice of hanging: cycling in the slipstream of trucks on the highway. The Bike Gang is a video installation that situates these moments of extreme athletic prowess within the deeper existential project of this subculture.
For the opening of the exhibition we will embark on a short group ride within Nairobi, so come with your bike.
Admission is free. #BikeGang
Opening: August 10, 2016
Venue: Circle Art Agency
Time: 6-9 pm
Until: August 19, 2016
In 1919, the Ugandan chief Semei Kakungulu circumcised himself and his family and declared them to be Jewish, hence founding the Abayudaya, the Ugandan Jewish community centred around Mbale, in Eastern Uganda. The community still exists and is one of a handful of African Jewish communities that are not Jewish through a hereditary connection to Israel, but through choosing to adopt a Jewish practice and belief system. Whilst in the 1920s the community followed a kind of syncretic form of Judaism, mixing the Old and New Testament together with elements from pre-Christian belief, the practice soon became aligned with mainstream Jewish customs. Today the community of approximately 3000 has an ordained Rabbi who conducts services in the synagogue and leads Torah study sessions with a group of Rabbinical students.
Once upon a Time (2013) is a four channel video installation by Marcel Odenbach and Sam Hopkins which features interviews with four of these Rabbinical students. Whilst of course, each narrative is highly personal and very individual, there is a certain coherence that emerges across all four stories. On the one hand, there seems to be this quest for a belief system that makes sense in an almost pragmatic, everyday way, but on the other hand, there is this powerful feeling of the existential nature of religion and of the spiritual resonance that Judaism has for these individuals.
Opening: January 15, 2015
Venue: Goethe-Institut, Auditorium
Time: 7 pm
Exhibition Dates: 16th January 2015 to 6th February 2015
Time: 1.00 – 6.00 pm
Entry: Free
Sam Hopkins was featured as one of the leading global thinkers of 2014 by the influencial US Foreign Policy Magazine
Grassroots Upgraded ¦ Reflections on Nairobi’s Eastlands
Exhibition
The exhibition is Slum-TV’s biggest Art project so far, filling the Nairobi Gallery with photographs, installations and video works. It presents a unique perspective of life in Nairobi’s Eastlands, challenging the stereotypes about life in the marginal areas of town and revealing a dynamic and bustling urban life.
More than anything else, this exhibition seeks to raise questions. Questions about how Nairobi is represented. Questions about an image that a city has, and how this can be shaped. Questions about who is creating this image, and what the relationship between images and power is. The camera used, “LOMO”, presents their own unique aesthetic: improvised, spontaneous and unconventional expression. The corresponding catalogue will be launched at the opening.
The exhibition is curated by Sam Hopkins.
It is a partnership of Africalia and Goethe-Institut in conjunction with the National Museums of Kenya.
Entry: Museum Charges (of Nairobi Gallery)!
Goethe-Institut Nairobi – +254-20-2224640 – prog@nairobi.goethe.org
Date: January 12, 2011
Venue: Goethe Institut
Time: 6pm
Entrance: Free
In Kenya and internationally, there are very few publications from East Africa in certain areas such as art catalogues and artists’ books as well as academic publishing. Only very few Kenyan artists have had a catalogue of their work, and only few Kenyan intellectuals working in the Humanities have had their major work published locally or, more likely, internationally. To fill this gap, Goethe Institut, together with their partner Native Intelligence, are starting their own book series. The series is dedicated to the protagonists of the East African artistic, activist and intellectual scenes. It focuses on Art and the Humanities – though not limited to these only. They will exclusively publish material that is not taken up by other publishers.
After having launched the first volume of the book series, dedicated to the group of female writers around AMKA, in June 2011, they are now launching three new books by the artists Peterson Kamwathi, Sam Hopkins and Ato Malinda.
The artists will be present at the book launch.
