Four years of AtWork and a new website where you can now access and enjoy new interactive contents. Starting from today you can explore stories, relations, faces, pages, traces, colors, lights and shadows of more than 200 notebooks from the artists and young creative talents collected in 4 years of encounters, international exhibitions, workshops and journeys.
Dakar, Abidjan, Kampala, Cairo, Modena have been the key chapters of this journey that started in 2012 at the intersection of art, creativity, geography and education.
It gave birth to a new world map, where the borders, instead of being the unsurmountable walls, became a space of a special encounter.
Together with Simon Njami, our partner, advisor, prominent curator and an indispensable journey companion, we have started AtWork, moved by the desire to contribute to creating a new generation of pan-African thinkers able to participate actively in building their own present.
We have created the space where a community was born, a community that continues to grow, where the young people from different cultures, together, face their contradictions, challenges, conflicts, posing questions and finding solutions, constantly evolving their attitudes, personalities and artistic practices.
Instead of imposing a certain form of knowledge acquisition, AtWork provides the participants with a toolbox that they can use to construct and deconstruct the reality that surrounds them, transforming them into the architects of the future “at work”.
Putting the human, personal and experiential aspect at its core AtWork aims first and foremost to stimulate the critical thinking among the participants.
AtWork is a way to think and approach the reality, that is expressed in a process that has three key moments: the workshop, the exhibition and the community. The process that every time touches a different context with a different topic.
At the end of each workshop each participant personalizes a Moleskine notebook, which fixes the process of self-reflection and collective discussion in an art piece.
The notebooks are thus the living testimony of the innovative creative process potential and become part of lettera27’s artist notebooks collection, where the artworks of the established artists live next to the students’ pieces, reflecting AtWork horizontal and anti-hierarchical approach.
In these four years, we have created material and immaterial spaces, where the debate and the exchange between the curators, artists and students allowed to create an international artistic network that found its home in AtWork community. Co-creation, sustainability and replicability of the experience and the cross-disciplinary approach become the key elements of this ever- growing community that is transforming into an interactive and living organism.
The new AtWork website that we are presenting you today reflects the experiences of 10 workshops, 196 students, 385 on-line community members from 30 countries. All of which in 3 languages.
For the first time it will be possible to leaf through all the notebooks produced by the students during the last four years and the ones donated to us by the artists, sharing together this ever-expanding journey.
It will also be an opportunity to have a first-hand proof that through the innovative educational practices art and culture can play a key role in transforming the society.
Claude Bunny Massassa is a contemporary artist from Gabon. She created Bunny Studio in 2016, a start-up dedicated to photography production, which became DWABI Studio in 2021. As an artist, she has represented Gabon in many international exhibitions in Senegal, Uganda, France, the United States, and Italy. In her art, she denounces social stigmas around issues of identity and mental health, and explores themes of traditions and myths.
Executive Director Kimberly Aceves- Iñiguez has been passionately committed for over 20 years to social justice organizing and advocacy efforts that bring voice and power to youth, LGBTQ people, people of color, and working-class communities in the Bay Area. Before coming on as the Executive Director for RYSE, Kimberly served as the Executive Director for Youth Together, the founding organization of the RYSE Center.
Kanwarpal Dhaliwal is one of the co-founders of RYSE and currently acts as the Associate Director. She supports and guides the implementation and integration of healing-centered practices, grounded in racial justice and liberation, and also develops, promotes, and advocates for policies, investments, practices, and research that enliven healing, justice, and liberation. Kanwarpal believes that the purpose of her work and life is to contribute to movements, communities, and legacies of liberation that honor the ancestors who fought for her existence and survival, and to forge a world that is just and gentle for future generations.
Sagal Ali is the founder and executive director of SAF. After a few years in her career in heritage protection in the cultural sector, she decided to develop the initiative to directly support young creatives in Somalia by launching her own foundation. She hopes to bridge the social gaps and inequalities women face in Somalia, both in society and in the arts scene.
Co-founders Catherine Dunga and Marleen Palmaers created Kitambo to bridge the gap between the African diaspora in Colombia and the narratives from the continent. From Kinshasa and Antwerp respectively, they work to connect African artists from the continent and their peers from the Colombian diaspora.
Martha Kazungu is a curator, art Historian and Founder of Njabala Foundation, an organization that curates periodic exhibitions and organizes a public program of activities to create a safe space for female artists to thrive and blossom.
Alicia Hansen is a photographer and teacher from New York. She founded NYC SALT in 2008 and, beyond teaching valuable creative skills to her students, has developed a long-term support system to uplift them through school and into their early artistic careers.
