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Reviving a Traditional Art Form in Rwanda after Genocide

Imigongo art is known for its raised black and white patterns. LUIS TATO / AFP
Imigongo art is known for its raised black and white patterns. LUIS TATO / AFP
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Reviving a Traditional Art Form in Rwanda after Genocide

Imigongo art is known for its raised black and white patterns. LUIS TATO / AFP
Imigongo art is known for its raised black and white patterns. LUIS TATO / AFP

A 200-year-old Tutsi art form made with cow dung, Rwanda's imigongo painting tradition has experienced a revival in the Great Lakes nation three decades after the 1994 genocide, becoming a symbol of culture and unity.
Known for its raised black and white patterns, imigongo is widely believed to have been invented by a Tutsi prince in the 19th century, AFP said.
Prince Kakira mixed cow dung and ash to create a material which he used to paint three-dimensional patterns on the walls of his palace in eastern Rwanda's Gisaka kingdom.
The tradition was named after "umugongo", the Kinyarwanda word for "spine", owing to its curved lines, and became popular among rural households where women would use dung and natural pigments made with soil, clay and aloe sap to decorate their homes.
Basirice Uwamariya, founder of the Kakira Imigongo Cooperative in eastern Kirehe district, told AFP she started making art when she was 15.
But the 1994 genocide targeting the Tutsi minority nearly wiped out the tradition, with almost all 15 members of Uwamariya's cooperative killed in a bloodbath that claimed around 800,000 lives across Rwanda, including moderate Hutus.
She lost her husband and multiple relatives, leaving her to fend for herself and her two sons.
"I lived in darkness, in silence," the 53-year-old said, recalling the loneliness that pushed her to revive the cooperative in 1996 and invite other genocide survivors to join her.
Since then, imigongo has evolved.
Traditional patterns exist side by side with modern designs featuring various colors. Natural pigments have been replaced by commercial paints.
Imigongo designs have made their way to upmarket studios and fashion boutiques, adorning garments and wooden artifacts alike, with a market that includes foreigners and Rwandans.
According to Theoneste Nizeyimana, manager of Azizi Life Studio in the capital Kigali, the tradition was once largely limited to eastern Rwanda.
"But after the genocide destroyed everything... people started thinking about how they can bring back their culture. Today, imigongo is appreciated by all Rwandans, not just Tutsi," he told AFP.
"Imigongo is something that brings people together," he said, pointing out that the Kigali boutique and studio holds painting classes for students whose ages range from four to 75 years old.
It also makes business sense, he said, with its instantly recognizable patterns helping to market "made in Rwanda" designs around the world.

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Culture

Private Museums Bolster Cultural Tourism in Qassim Region

A prominent example is the private museum of Abdullah Al-Suhaibani, an expert with over 40 years of experience in gemstones and minerals - SPA
A prominent example is the private museum of Abdullah Al-Suhaibani, an expert with over 40 years of experience in gemstones and minerals - SPA
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Private Museums Bolster Cultural Tourism in Qassim Region

A prominent example is the private museum of Abdullah Al-Suhaibani, an expert with over 40 years of experience in gemstones and minerals - SPA
A prominent example is the private museum of Abdullah Al-Suhaibani, an expert with over 40 years of experience in gemstones and minerals - SPA

Qassim Region is witnessing a significant rise in private museums, as individual collectors transform personal passions into vital cultural projects. These museums serve as a living memory for the community, preserving rare artifacts, historical documents, antique weapons, and vintage collections that document critical stages of the region's history. By connecting the present with its roots, these sites strengthen national identity and provide essential research resources for scholars and tourists alike, SPA reported.

A prominent example is the private museum of Abdullah Al-Suhaibani, an expert with over 40 years of experience in gemstones and minerals.

His collection features rare agates, fossils from ancient geological eras, and unique rock formations discovered throughout the Kingdom.

The museum acts as a scientific platform, promoting geology and field research while educating the community on the Kingdom’s diverse natural resources and mineral wealth.

Located near Al-Khabra Historical Village, these private initiatives have become key cultural landmarks in Riyadh Al-Khabra Governorate. Their growth aligns with Saudi Vision 2030 goals to develop cultural and scientific tourism, support local content, and position the Kingdom’s heritage and natural sites as premier global destinations.

Culture

Saudi Arabia Showcases Literary Diversity at 2026 Rabat International Book Fair

‏The Saudi pavilion brings together a range of government entities and cultural institutions - SPA
‏The Saudi pavilion brings together a range of government entities and cultural institutions - SPA
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Saudi Arabia Showcases Literary Diversity at 2026 Rabat International Book Fair

‏The Saudi pavilion brings together a range of government entities and cultural institutions - SPA
‏The Saudi pavilion brings together a range of government entities and cultural institutions - SPA

The Literature, Publishing and Translation Commission launched the Saudi pavilion at the 2026 International Publishing and Book Fair in Rabat, which continues through May 10.

‏Commission CEO Dr. Abdullatif Alwasel affirmed that the Kingdom’s participation in the event embodies the deep historical ties between Saudi Arabia and Morocco while showcasing a diverse, contemporary cultural movement driven by Saudi Vision 2030.

“Saudi Arabia’s participation at the 2026 International Publishing and Book Fair emphasizes the Kingdom’s commitment to spotlighting publishers and the creative literary sector, which continues to go from strength to strength,” Alwasel said, SPA reported.

‏He added: “The Saudi pavilion is an opportunity to invite people from every corner of the world to experience Saudi culture and diverse literary works, showcase unique Saudi talent and creative thinking, while facilitating cultural exchange and engaging discussions.”

‏The Saudi pavilion brings together a range of government entities and cultural institutions, led by the Literature, Publishing and Translation Commission, highlighting the integrated approach of the Kingdom’s cultural environment.

‏As part of the pavilion, the commission has organized a series of topical panel discussions, poetry evenings, and workshops featuring Saudi writers and creative thinkers, encouraging discussions on key issues relating to the literature, publishing and translation sector and its impact on Arab and global conversations.

‏The participation at the 31st International Publishing and Book Fair event reaffirms the Kingdom’s efforts towards platforming local talent and enhancing collaboration and cultural exchange.

Culture

Georg Baselitz, the German Painter Who Turned Postwar Art Upside Down, Dies at 88

German artist Georg Baselitz attends the opening of his exhibition "The Heroes" (Die Helden) at the Staedel museum in Frankfurt, Germany June 29, 2016. (Reuters)
German artist Georg Baselitz attends the opening of his exhibition "The Heroes" (Die Helden) at the Staedel museum in Frankfurt, Germany June 29, 2016. (Reuters)
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Georg Baselitz, the German Painter Who Turned Postwar Art Upside Down, Dies at 88

German artist Georg Baselitz attends the opening of his exhibition "The Heroes" (Die Helden) at the Staedel museum in Frankfurt, Germany June 29, 2016. (Reuters)
German artist Georg Baselitz attends the opening of his exhibition "The Heroes" (Die Helden) at the Staedel museum in Frankfurt, Germany June 29, 2016. (Reuters)

Georg Baselitz liked to insist — sometimes as a taunt, ‌sometimes as a shield — that he did not know how to paint. That he had "no talent".

Rejected at 17 by the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, he talked his way into an academy in East Berlin only to be expelled two semesters later for "sociopolitical immaturity".

"I was stupid," he recalled. "I was uneducated, but I was a rebel."

From that rebellion, Baselitz forged a career that made the child of Nazi Germany, schooled under Soviet communism, into one of the defining artists of postwar Germany.

The painter and sculptor, known for his depictions of raw bodies and inverted landscapes, has died at the age of 88, Germany's Die Welt newspaper reported on Thursday. No cause of death was given.

A REBEL SHAPED BY TWO DICTATORSHIPS

Georg Baselitz was born Hans-Georg Bruno Kern on January 23, 1938, in the Saxon village of Deutschbaselitz, a name he later adopted.

His father, a village schoolteacher and Nazi Party member, recorded Hans-Georg's birth in his diary. Inexplicably, he recorded the birth of none of his other four children, the Sächsische Zeitung daily reported in 2018.

After the war, ‌his father was ‌barred from teaching. Baselitz's mother took over his duties at the school.

Baselitz spent his childhood ‌amid ⁠the unforgiving discipline of ⁠Nazi Germany, and his adolescence amid the rubble and ideological re-education of the country's Soviet occupation zone.

"I was born into a destroyed order, a destroyed landscape, a destroyed people, a destroyed society," he later recalled. "And I didn't want to reestablish an order: I had seen enough of so-called order. I was forced to question everything, to be 'naive', to start again."

After he was expelled from the East Berlin academy, he moved to West Berlin, where he finished his studies and absorbed modernism in a way that felt, he said, like a sudden intake of oxygen.

He recalled the shock of first seeing works by Jackson Pollock and other abstract expressionists — evidence, in his telling, that ⁠the United States had a serious culture despite what he had been taught.

But rather than ‌imitate an American style, Baselitz turned back to German sources, drawing on expressionism, ‌folk traditions and imagery often dismissed by critics as ugly or even "degenerate".

SCANDAL AS A CALLING CARD

At a 1963 solo show in Berlin, authorities ‌seized two of his paintings on obscenity grounds. The episode made Baselitz famous.

The early pictures, marked by raw bodies, stunted masculinity and abrasive humor, were widely seen as provocation.

Supporters and museum curators have also framed them as a blunt report on postwar German life: damaged, compromised and struggling to find a new footing.

That sensibility carried into his mid-1960s "Heroes" paintings, which presented hulking, battered figures that looked less like victors than survivors ‌stumbling out of a defeated national myth.

But Baselitz's most recognizable works came in 1969, when he began painting motifs upside down.

After earlier experiments that fractured or partially inverted figures, he ⁠produced fully inverted works including "The ⁠Wood on Its Head" and "The Man by the Tree".

He did not simply flip finished images, he composed and painted them inverted from the start.

That approach altered how viewers read his works. By disrupting recognition, it forced attention onto the mechanics of painting — its color, balance and composition.

"An object painted upside down is suitable for painting because it is unsuitable as an object," Baselitz said.

The inversions made Baselitz an international figure in the 1970s and 1980s, as the market and institutions that once treated him as scandalous increasingly positioned him as a pillar of European postwar art.

His public reputation, however, did not settle into quiet respectability.

He repeatedly sparked backlash with remarks about female painters, including a widely reported claim that women "don't paint very well".

He also confronted the limits Germany's history places on gesture and imagery: a wooden sculpture shown at the 1980 Venice Biennale was widely read as evoking a Nazi salute, a reading he denied.

He was married to Johanna Elke Kretzschmar, known as Elke, with whom he had two sons.

In later life, Baselitz painted huge canvases from his wheelchair and moved his brushes and paints in a rolling cart.

"The sensible thing, in my situation, would naturally be to say: 'I stick to small formats'," he told Spanish newspaper El Pais at age 87. "But of course I don't do what's sensible. What's right for me is the nonsensical."