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Meeting ID: 826 5751 6062
Passcode: 923595

Join us for a reading group on selected texts published in the Cold War period. Curator Martha Kazungu and artist Beatrice Wanjiku will lead a session focusing on excerpts of early issues of Transition magazine which was founded in 1961, and partially funded by the Congress for Cultural Freedom. They will explore women artists’ and authors’ contributions to the magazine, with a reading from Rebecca Njau’s The Scar, published in March 1963.

Transition, a journal for the arts, culture and society was founded in Kampala, Uganda by editor Rajat Neogy. It served as a major literary platform of East African writers and intellectuals during the Cold War and has remained a leading forum of intellectual debate in the Africa diasporas.

Martha Kazungu  is a Ugandan curator and art historian currently living in Hamburg and working at MARKK Museum am Rothenbaum. She was assistant curator for the Kampala Art Biennale curated by Elise Atangana in 2016, and Feedback: Art Africa and the 1980s curated by Smooth Ugochukwu at Iwalewahaus, Bayreuth in 2018. Kazungu’s current project Njabala works to create safe spaces for female artists to blossom. More about Martha Kazungu

Beatrice Wanjiku (b 1978) received her diploma from Nairobi’s Buruburu Institute of Fine Arts in 2000 and lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya. Her recent exhibitions include Kesho Kutwa, The Nairobi National Museum 2021, IL Dubbio, La Biennale Venezia, Cinema, VR Expanded 2021. She is a recipient of the UNESCO Aschberg Bursary (2013); Lava Thomas and Peter Danzig Fellowship Award (2013); Robert Sterling Clarke Foundation Fellowship (2011); Alliance Francaise’s and Goethe-Institut’s Most Promising Female Artist Award (2006). More about Beatrice Wanjiku

Image 1: Research Hub in Fehras Publishing Practices – Borrowed Faces: Future Recall. Courtesy of Nicola Grey.
Image 2: Portrait of Martha Kazungu. Courtesy of the artist.
Image 3: Portrait of Beatrice Wanjiku. Courtesy of the artist.