Virtual gallery at Gravitart goes 3D

Although she came to Kenya to work as a professional architect in 2014, Veronica Paradinas Duro's background in fine art inspired her to look for local artists and learn more about what is happening here in the visual arts.

What she found was a fragmented community of creatives scattered across Nairobi. It made her think about what skills she had to offer to the local art scene. And that is how the virtual art gallery, www.gravitartgallery.com was born.

"I wanted to give local artists more exposure to a wider audience," says Veronica who initially set up a website in 2016.

"I wanted to create a bridge between East Africa and the wider world to debunk the myth that there is no contemporary art in this part of the planet," she adds.

Initially committed to only keeping GravitArt virtual, Veronica launched the Gallery with a 'Pop-Up' exhibition at the Saffron Spa in Nairobi's Westlands in 2017.

Since then, she has had several pop-up shows, one at the Ikigai gallery in Westlands, another at Kobo Trust in Kilimani, several in Peponi Gardens, and she even curated one entitled '16 Artists' in Kogelo during Barack Obama's visit to Kenya in 2018.

Currently, GravitArt has three 'exhibitions' running at once. One is on the website where one can see artworks, including bios, by East African artists whose works have been curated by Veronica. These include artists from Kenya and Uganda as well as from Sudan, Ethiopia, Benin, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Then there is what she calls the physical exhibition at her art space in Peponi Gardens which is only open for private viewing.

In other words, on request one can see artworks by a whole range of Kenyans, from Shabu Mwangi, Peter Elungat, Michael Soi, Boniface Maina, and Onyis Martin to Elias Mung'ora, Paul Onditi, Nedia Were, Patrick Kinuthia, Ehoodi Kichapi, and Lincoln Mwangi.

There are also a rich variety of Sudanese artists featured at the Gardens, like Salah El Mur, Ahmed Abushariaa, and the Kenya-based El Tayeb Dawelbait. Among the Egyptians are Souad Abdel Rasoul, Mohamed Rabie, and Walid Taher.

She also has many Ethiopian and Ugandan artists as well as several artists' works from Nigeria, Benin, and Congo. And her online gallery keeps growing.

One of the most fascinating features of GravitArt's virtual exhibitions is Veronica's introduction of a 'three-dimensional' gallery of solo artists. Currently, the works of the acclaimed veteran Sudanese artist Rashid Diab are online in an exhibition that enables the viewer to click her way all around the corners to see every part of this 3D show.

"As an architecture student in Spain [at the European University of Madrid], I had to familiarise myself with various 3D programmes," Veronica recalls.

It is this skill that enabled her to create an online platform where she can customise every 'room' in her gallery. That means she can not only 'hang' the artworks of Diab, but also create content like his biography which is easily accessible with one click. Another click enables one to zoom in on any artwork to see it more clearly.

Diab has exhibited in Kenya before. He is considered one of Sudan's leading painters. But this show enables one to quickly learn that Diab not only has a doctorate in painting and etching but also taught art for nine years while living in Spain for more than 20 years.

He also returned to Khartoum in 1999 to create his own Art Centre as a means of advancing the study of Sudanese art and lending support to young artists.

"Rashid left Sudan on a scholarship to study abroad because he found there was no art department in his country that could teach him about the history of Sudanese art," says Veronica.

"He returned to develop Sudan's artistic culture through working with the thousands of young artists who get no support from the government," she adds, observing that Sudan has 580 different nationalities (tribes), all of which have their languages, traditions, and cultures; yet most have not yet been documented.

Diab says the desert is a primary source of inspiration. So are the women who appear in groups in many of his works. A minimalist who often leaves much of his canvas plain and pearly white, that plainness serves as a backdrop for seeing strong, resilient women migrating from place to place in the desert, keeping their cultures alive in the process.