Iwalewahaus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Iwalewahaus, University of Bayreuth, is a place for the production and presentation of contemporary art. By doing exhibitions, academic research and teaching, by taking care of the collection and the archive as well as providing residencies for artists, recent developments in contemporary African and Diaspora culture are presented and refined together with artists and institutions. The Iwalewahaus collection comprises over 12,000 works of art, making it the largest institutional collection of contemporary African art in Europe. The mission of Iwalewahaus is to research, document and teach recent African culture. The focus is on visual arts, everyday culture, the media and music. The house provides space for lectures, conferences, concerts, film screenings and readings and is a vivid forum for artists, researchers, students of African studies and the interested public.[1]
Most of the Iwalewa-projects are developed in close cooperation with institutions from Africa and Europe and are supported by publications. The focus of the research is contemporary art, popular culture, the media - especially photography - as well as African modernity and museology.
The following projects are part of the research: Africa Screams – Das Böse in Kino, Kunst und Kult (2004); Black Paris (2006); Hidden Pages, Stolen Bodies (2009); Piga Picha! (2008/2010), Iwalewa - Quatre vues de l’Afrique contemporaine (2013), Al'umma Society Celebrating Life - Hausa Society of Northern Nigeria in two photography perspectives by Nina Fischer-Stephan & Mallam Mudi Yahaya (2023)[2] and Twins Seven Seven and his Yorùbá Universe (2024).[3]
The teaching at Iwalewahaus concentrates on four areas: art studies with reference to Africa, aspects of African popular culture, institutionalisation and interaction of art worlds and finally broader questions of the history of media and the study of visual culture. Since 2012 the practise based study program "Art and Curatorial Studies" has been offered as part of the master studies course "Culture and Society in Africa".[1]
Collection
Iwalewahaus maintains a collection of modern and contemporary visual arts from Africa, Asia and the Pacific Area that is unique within Germany. The main focus of the collection is Nigeria, but there are equally important artworks from Sudan, Mozambique, Tanzania, DR Congo, Haiti, India, Papua New Guinea and Australia. The collection is generally based on the collection of Ulli Beier, the founder of Iwalewahaus. The collection of paintings, especially those of the Oshogbo-school plus the collection of graphics with a focus on the Nigerian Nsukka-school is of international significance.[4] Apart from visual arts, the archive of Iwalewahaus hosts an extensive collection of contemporary African music, video film productions from Nigeria and Ghana and African textiles. The collection has recently been expanded by private donations like the collection Kleine-Gunk and the Kindermann collection. These extensions secure the collection’s status as the largest public collection of African contemporary art in Europe for the long term.[1]
Naming
The saying Iwalewa is borrowed from the language of the Yoruba, one of the three major ethnic groups in south-west Nigeria. Translated literally, Iwalewa means “character is beauty“. The term Iwa stands for the “good character“, although the original meaning of Iwa can be translated as “existence“.
We christened this house Iwalewa to present more than the exotic of alien cultures. We don’t want to limit our interest to the formal beauty of foreign artworks but try to grasp its real identity – its Iwa.
— Ulli Beier[5]
