Rwanda’s art industry is showing signs of growth with local paint artists now gaining new art skills at their disposal as they prepare to adopt ‘Ebru’, a traditional art that has a significant place in Turkish art history.

Also known as paper marbling, Ebru is in its nature the art of creating colorful patterns by sprinkling and brushing colour pigments onto a pan of oily water and then transferring the patterns to paper or fabric.

It has been at the heart of Turkish art for over the past 700 years and is now recognised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Turkish paint artist Abdulvahap Ertekin travelled to Kigali last week not only to visit Rwanda but to also share the art of marbling with Rwandan artists who currently work at Ipfundo Art Gallery.

The artist, who works at Ebru Artist in Istanbul, has been doing the popular kind of art in Turkey for the past 11 years.

Before sticking to paper marbling, Ertekin was a painter which he believes helped him to quickly switch to Ebru.

"When you know how to paint, it makes it easy to learn this kind of art,” he told The New Times in an interview.

Whenever he danced or played with water, the artist discovered he could do so many things with water.

"It is so funny to play in water and play with colors and when I started to look at some objects like trees, animal’s, portraits... I told myself that I could do very different things with water,” he recalls.

"This is a unique art that people always like to have experience in,” he added.

Ertekin travelled to many countries doing exhibitions and giving training on paper marbling with artists across the globe. Rwanda was his seventeenth destination of training and the third African country that he trained and gave lectures about the art after Tunisia and Sudan.

It took Ertekin only two days to make local artists fall in love with Ebru after a workshop session that led them to expand their art expertise to the art.

Their demonstration at Ipfundo Art Gallery last week impressed the artist himself and the members of the Turkish community in Rwanda led by Turkish envoy to Rwanda Burcu Cevik, who was also in attendance.

"These young artists have great potential and I appreciate their appetite to learn Turkish Art. Marbling is unique because it’s part of nature and the products used are from nature that art serves. It is always possible to produce, making use of this technique to produce something unique and I hope to see more Rwandan artists using this marbling technique in their art work,” said the envoy.

According to Serge Maniraguha, a lead artist at Ipfudo Art Gallery, Rwandan artists are ready to import the new marbling technique to their Rwandan art and hopes more artists will be able to learn the technique and become pioneers like Ertekin.

It, however, requires bringing the materials from Turkey so the trained artists continue to practice more about Ebru.

"It was really a nice experience learning Ebru because it always produces unique artworks. The remaining issue is finding the materials so we can keep sharpening our skills and go deep into it,” said paint artist Thierry Muhirwa, one of trained artists.

The making of Ebru

Known as marbling, the designs and effects include flowers, foliage, ornamentation, latticework, mosques and moons, and are used for decoration in the traditional art of bookbinding.

The practitioner uses natural methods to extract colours from natural pigments, which are then mixed with a few drops of ox-gall, a kind of natural acid, before sprinkling and brushing the colours onto a preparation of condensed liquid, where they float and form swirling patterns.

Ebru artists, apprentices and practitioners consider their art to be an integral part of their traditional culture, identity and lifestyle.

Their knowledge and skills, as well as the philosophy behind this art, are transmitted orally and through informal practical training within master-apprentice relationships.

Achieving basic skills in Ebru takes at least two years. The tradition is practised without barriers of age, gender or ethnicity, and plays a significant role in the empowerment of women and the improvement of community relationships.

The collective art of Ebru encourages dialogue through friendly conversation, reinforces social ties and strengthens relations between individuals and communities.

According to UNESCO, Ebru was inscribed in 2014 on the representative list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.