Display of talent through paintings

There is a great inspiration one feels when you visit this place, with an assortment of beautiful art pieces hanging on the walls of the art gallery and others placed on the ground.“Inganzo Art Gallery an inspiration for anybody who steps into this place,” says Epa Binamungu, the gallery’s founder and director.Located in Kacyiru, a suburb of Kigali City, Inganzo boasts rich work of talent displays that indeed gives great room of inspiration. The gallery is a display of various paintings made of beads, sand, backcloth, oil and other materials which all bring out a good visual artistic composition. The gallery, which started in May 2002 at the Kigali Business Centre (KBC), has grown into a magnificent display to date.“There wasn’t any gallery in Kigali at that time; if one needed to see displays, they had at least to find them in hotels, which was certainly expensive to most people. So starting it up was bringing art closer to the people,” says Binamungu. The renowned local artist says that through an association called ‘Isoko Art Rwanda’, local artists meet and discuss matters concerning the Rwandan art as well as various experience in the same field.Every year, Inganzo Art Gallery organises three or four exhibitions.In an interview, Binamungu told The New Times that this year’s exhibition will be held at Inganzo’s new relocation in Masaka in November. “Normally when an exhibition is carried out, various people come together and share ideas on art,” he explains.“This gives us an idea and a feedback of how people view and interpret art.” The paintings mostly reveal nature, life and social activities among people. “With painting, it’s the environment that gives you what to do, a solution,” he says.The gallery faces a major challenge of lack of enough space which they hope will be solved sooner than later.Also, art has not generally been recognized as a talent by most people, he says. “Today many musicians will be sponsored unlike the painters.” But Binamungu says that the public has begun to understand and appreciate art, unlike in the beginning. He adds that, as artists, they are also able to take Rwandan art beyond the country. In that context, Binamungu has participated in various art exhibitions in countries such as Burundi, US, Belgium, German and Switzerland.

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Display of talent through paintings