ITALIA DOCET | Laboratorium - Collateral Event of the 56. International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia May – October 2015

We are honoured and delighted that 5 AABRU ARTISTS– Chidi Kwubiri, Edosa Ogiugo, Kolade Oshinowo, Samuel Ovraiti and Revati Sharma Singh.are a part of an initial group of participants at ITALIA DOCET | Laboratorium - one of the Collateral Events of the 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia. They will present their own personal form of expression - to generate a great movement of ideas gathered from different environments – ideas that today, as in the past, are able to come together and be exchanged. The core of the programme is a free circulation of ideas of the Participants, in relationship with a humanistic common base, which become osmotic in relation to the subjective viewpoints and to a dialogue with the spectators.

The project has developed a method capable of presenting the transmission of experiences from one system to another in a cosmopolitan environment. The source of inspiration is Raffaello Sanzio's cartoon of the School of Athens - interpreted as a base, motherboard that lens itself to a variety of interpretation, allowing contemporary artists to add to and provide a modern day interpretation of distinctive elements. The same elements, different artists, other audiences.

The work has a social and global identity, where the individual poetic is made available to the programme, in a sort of modern-day agora through a collective manner.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Chidi Kwubiri, Edosa Ogiugo, Kolade Oshinowo, Revati Sharma Singh, Sam Ovraiti, Federico Guida, Agostino Arrivabene, Vanni Cuoghi, Pierpaolo Curti, Ilaria Del Monte, Fulvio Di Piazza, Fabrizio Dusi, Tamara Ferioli, Alessandro Papetti, Simone Pellegrini, Dany Vescovi, Roberto Coda Zabetta

Each artist worked on the fragment of the "motherboard" with their own technique and portrayed someone from their country that embodies typical values and spirit of Humanism and Renaissance in terms of innovation in his/her work or being a role model, teacher or inspiration to them and others.

Project Director: Leonardo Rotatori

Venue: Palazzo Barbarigo Minotto, FondamentaDuodo o Barbarigo - S. Marco 2504 –Venezia

Aabru Artists Participants and their Fragments

CHIDI KWUBIRI* (Nigeria and Germany)

Title: 'Radiance'

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Fragment Base: Plato and Aristotle Plato and Aristotle were 2 of the most influential Greek philosophers that the world has had.

Artist Work: Nelson Mandela and Malala Yousafzai With his passionate fight against apartheid, Mandela defended the principles of social equality, constitutional legitimacy and a consensus of mutual respect and tolerance, while Malala contributes significantly to making the scientific results, art theories and philosophical concepts of equality and tolerance more accessible to the world, especially women and girls. She risks her life fighting for what she believes in.

*Backed by Tulsi Chanrai Foundation

EDOSA OGIUGO (Nigeria)

Title: 'A Statesman'

Medium: Oil on canvas

Fragment Base: Socrates One of the most important classical Greek philosophers.

Artist Work: Bishop Desmond Tutu A great African icon and a social right activates whose contributions to contemporary human history are inspiring and life changing for many.

KOLADE OSHINOWO (Nigeria)

Title: 'The Philosopher'

Medium: Mixed media (discarded fabric pieces collage, painted over first with acrylic and later oil paint).

Fragment Base: Orphism A set of religious beliefs and practices originating in the ancient Greek and the Hellenistic world (painting of Freda Inghirami - the papal librarian).

Artist Work: Professor Wole Soyinka A Nigerian nationally and internationally renowned teacher, author, poet and playwright who was born 80 years ago. He is an icon and symbol of national unity in Nigeria. Apart from his intellectual prowess, he has endeared himself to many people around the world because of his open condemnation of man’s inhumanity to man, injustice, corruption, recklessness and profligacy on the part of any government.

REVATI SHARMA SINGH (India and UK)

Fragment Base: Master and Scholar An example of dialogical teaching, considered essential in ancient times, when writing was secondary to oral education.

Title: '1915 – 2015 His garden, one hundred years later'

Medium: Mixed media (found objects, resin, dried flowers, twigs, rope, wires, cloth, grain, glass, nails, wood, rice paper and paint)

Artist Work: Rabindranath Tagore One of India's most famous and prolific poet, writer, song composer, novelist, playwright, essayist and painter. Author of the poem The Gardener,1915:

Who are you, reader, reading my poems a hundred years hence? I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds...

Title: 'The powers of the mind are like the rays of the sun when they are concentrated they illuminate' Medium: Mixed media (14 carat gold grains embossed with words, multiple canvases of different dimensions and depths and acrylic on canvas and wood)

Artist Work: Sri Ramakrishna and his student Swami Vivekananda The abstract rendering of their spread of knowledge akin to light or fire once again comes at a crucial time when innocents are being harmed in the name of religion.

SAMUEL OVRAITI (Nigeria)

Title: 'ABAMI – EDA' (Fela Anikulapo Kuti) – Meaning in Yorba language: Spirit Being

Medium: Oil on canvas

Fragment Base: Socrates One of the most important classical Greek philosophers.

Artist Work: Fela Anikulapo Kuti A musician, composer, human rights activist, and political maverick whose simple rhythm and down to earth lyrics mostly rendered in pidgin English tackle the ignorance of both the rulers and the ruled on the ingredient of good governance in Nigeria. His lifestyle was simple devoid of all the need to validate one's self by material possessions or artificial embellishments achieved by acts of corruption