African Studies Gallery
The African Studies Gallery has set itself the goal of offering the Israeli public new and varied ways of looking at the different African cultures and their artistic richness. The gallery functions as a non selling gallery. Without a permanent collection, but with in-depth exhibitions, it is the only exhibition space in Israel that presents both traditional and contemporary African work.
As a not-for-profit organisation, the gallery does not need to adapt its choices to an accepted Western art market tastes and conventions. It brings to Western audiences original African work that reflects artistic expression, styles that are also relevant to Africans themselves, and serves as a platform to expose African artists who have not yet been exhibited in the West.
The curatorship in the gallery seeks to offer mediation between different and equal cultures. Attempting to place African creativity within a living context can stimulate critical thinking that challenges common assumptions about the continent, its inhabitants and their cultural heritage. The exhibitions in the gallery seek to raise questions about art, modernism, authenticity and even the question of who is an artist. In doing so, the gallery serves as a laboratory for presenting and examining ideas no less than the works of art themselves, and offers the kind of reading which, unlike ethnography frozen in time, produces art history.
Accordingly, the gallery encourages collaborations between Israeli and African artists, promotes mutual learning by supporting academic research, student exchanges and preserving traditional creative techniques and styles. This approach that supports projects and promotes creative skills, encourages women of African origin to learn and create in order to make a living. Residency scholarships for independent artists, are an integral part of the gallery's activities.