An art gallery with a difference

‘MAKERESEMESE LETUKA

MASERU – An art gallery experience brought emerging, established and master artists under one roof to give superior visual imagination. The Winter Art Gallery was held at Machache Hardware Center last week, where a couple of artists exhibited their portrait and landscape art work. The main reason for hosting such an event was to uplift upcoming artists so that they reach at least National level and even reach International level if possible and also hoping to build and strengthening the arts and entertainment Industry in Lesotho.

In an interview with the organizer of the event, Thabang Tsatsi said the art gallery experience was one of its own, with an exhibition visual art, decorative art, applied art and crafts; the atmosphere was lovely, people came along and socialized and artists came together and learned a thing or two from better performing artists. “What made the event an extraordinary one is the fact that we as the youth came together and created something to benefit us all. We were not expecting a lot of people as this is our first event and our brand is not even known by many people, but a fair amount of people showed up. It was a room full of positive vibes and beautiful faces,” he said.

However, some of the challenges they faced included low ticket sales that led to a small budget, hence they were unable to hire some of the equipment. But that did not stop the team from bringing everyone together, having fun games and interactions and artists learning new ways to improve their drawings and ways to market themselves on media. “It was our first time hosting an event of such nature henceforward we plan to host different shows not just art galleries because we want to revive the spirit of hard work and determination in all Basotho youth to be goal orientated so that our country progresses because only the youth can do that.

I do feel like I achieved all that I had planned for the event even more, because our mission was just to introduce art to a broader audience and interact with some of the most influential people in the country and our brand in now known by a few more people and we plan to take it to international levels,” he stated. He further emphasized that the reason there were no awards to best art work owners was because they want to promote unity amongst themselves, even though awards do motivate people to do more; but they felt that it is better when artists come together and build each other to reach better heights because he believes giving feels better than taking all the time.

One of the artists who exhibited their art work, Tšepo Mofana said, the gallery was the best experience because he got to learn a few tactics from his fellow colleagues as this was his first exhibition and it gave him confidence when the audience loved some of his work. There were no international artists present but there were several national artists, being the likes of Uncle Donze, Tlhox Kose, Tp Lepitlah, Thabang Mud, Chere Mongangane and many more.