Biography
As an artist, I try a lot of things but painting and print making make up the core of my practice and occupy most of my time.
I am interested in the daily happenings of the society that I live in; all the things that happen in my neighborhood from social to political event, all are engraved within my artistic eye. They then become abstract expressions of my feelings and ideas which I then depict on my prints or canvas with colors and images.
My work is very figurative and representative of a “typical daily life” and is most often satirical of our hypocritical culture found in our behavior as a society of “responsible citizens” during the day of outward expression while in truth we are a total opposite in our actual actions. For example politicians who in light of day preach of anti corruption while they do just the opposite.
I am also interested in the way politicians are painted in public while in private they have a totally opposite reality. These, are mainly driven by the political situation in my country; bad governance, cronyism, corruption etc or our lack of a clear identity as a result of being Africans strongly influenced by colonization, religion and global consumerism.
In my current body of work, I have chosen the theme “BlindFolded, 2014” to express my anxiety over the cultural of silence which I believe its present in Tanzanian society, work like ‘The whisper’’ that I created for BlindFolded Exhibition as a result of the post-poll Escrow corruption that rocked Tanzania in 2014, and this year’s exhibition “In-Transit” which is expected to be held September this year and deals with movement and the various journeys we make throughout our lives.
Gadi Ramadhani
