ARTS: Rwandese Arts on Display

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Jean Baptiste Kayigamba

BUTARE, Jul 23 1996 (IPS) - From his hotel annex miniature art museum, Jean Baptiste Sebukangaga is trying to make Rwandan art known, both at home and abroad.

The 61-year-old Sebukangaga, himself one of the country’s greatest artists, has called on the government and others to assist in this effort. “There have been many exhibitions of Rwandese arts in Dakar (Senegal), and even in Japan,” he said.

But it is a pity, he added, that generally there is little international attention for the country’s arts. There is “even no significant representation of our art in such famous museums like Tervuren (Belgium) or the Smithsonian (the United States).”

In his own Beaux Arts Hotel, the walls are decorated with various scenes of traditional life, which attest to the hotelier’s love of art. He made numerous works of ceramics, sculpture and painting himself, “too many to remember”.

He says his talent was born out of frustration, as white priests during the era of Belgian colonisation refused him normal schooling in 1951, because they said he was too old to study.

“I was 16 then, but because of a mistake made by a clerk on my baptism card making me older than I was, I was chased from the school of priests of Kabgayi.

“I really wanted to become a priest. I wanted it sincerely. But one morning I was given back my school fees by our superior, who then urged me to go back to the village to cultivate banana, and coffee, because he said, in so doing I could become rich,” he recalled.

He was helped by a friend in the white clergy to enter the Kabgayi School of Crafts, run by Bishop Andrew Perraudin, known as the architect of the 1959 Hutu revolution that overthrew Tutsi monarchy rule.

But he was not very happy there. “We were reduced to making the statues of the Virgin, nothing more.”

Sebukangaga’s then went on to the ‘Academie des Beaux Arts’ of Kinshasa, after winning a contest on “perspective and geometric forms”. He studied at the academy between 1955 and 1959.

“There I sharpened my talent in ceramics, but got also the opportunity to embrace painting and sculpture,” he said.

Political upheavals in 1959 prevented Sebukangaga from taking up a scholarship to the United Kingdom, granted to him by the Tutsi monarch King Mutara III Rudahigwa in acknowledgement of his great talent. He also narrowly escaped the pogroms that swept Rwanda in the 1960s.

“I will never forget the magnanimity of this monarch,” he confided, explaining that the news of the King’s poisoning in Bujumbura — Bishop Perraudin became the prime suspect — broke his heart.

He later painted a portrait of King Rudahigwa, and his wife, Queen Rosalia Gicanda, who was killed during the 1994 genocide.

Sebukangaga, a Tutsi, survived many attempts to eliminate him. His memory is also rife with the unfriendly comments by Hutu leaders who disparaged the works he had produced, saying that they glorified “Tutsi” beauty and the pastoralist culture.

The artist’s fame heightened in 1969, when he moved to Butare National Pedagogical Institute (IPN) to teach ceramics and promote cultural activities. He made his name among the Canadian lecturers at the nearby University Camps, who were keen on his works.

Since then, the artist has decorated many important buildings in the country, including the Central Bank, the Rwandan Bank of Development, and the National Parliament House.

In 1973, he carved a piece of art depicting a Rwandan traditional musician, Sebatunzi, playing his cithara (string instrument) for about 150,000 francs (3,000 dollars at the time). The piece landed at the State House.

Sebukangaga’s small office in Beaux Arts Hotel is just too small an exhibition for his rich talent. “All one wishes to know about Rwandese culture is there,” one westerner in the hotel commented.

The artist often depicts animals in his works, especially birds, antelopes, cows and crested cranes. “There are elements of which fine traits and forms lure the artist. Nature itself inspires,” Sebukangaga pointed out.

Another source of inspiration is everyday Rwandan life, he added. “Rwandese realities are of utmost importance in my works. However, this artistic inspiration must be transformed according to my own analysis.”

Despite the fact that Sebukangaga is getting older and has problems with one of his eyes, he does not intent to give up working.

When IPS visited, he had just shaped a one metre-long scene of traditional dancers – ‘Intore’ – out of clay.

The ‘Intore’ dance is an exclusive cultural hallmark of the ancient Rwanda Kingdom. It is a traditional battle dance, in which the men wear a wig made of threads of sisal, which fall behind their shoulders. They hold a shield in their left hand, and a spear in the right.

The dancers wear three strings of pearls, one around the neck, and two others forming an “x” on the chest. The men dance according to well-established beat patterns, accompanied by drums, and vocal instruments carved from bamboo trees, and cow horns.

For this scene alone, the artist expects a fabulous sum of 2.5 million francs (8,300 dollars) from the Swiss Cooperation Agency in Kigali, which ordered the piece of work to decorate the school of magistrates in Nyanza (south Rwanda), which it funds.