Valerie Asiimwe Amani
Valerie Asiimwe Amani is an interdisciplinary artist reading for a practice-led DPhil in Fine Art at The Ruskin School of Art and Christ Church College, University of Oxford. Her studies are funded by a Clarendon Scholarship.
Amani’s research delves into myth making and collective imagination as a tool for creating tangible realities. Her project aims to centralise African epistemologies as a lens in which to interpret the world and its various realities; specifically departing from the institutional knowledge perpetuated by ‘The Church’, ‘The Museum’ and ‘The Library’. Her research utilises artmaking, language and body as a means to excavate memories held within folklore, poetry and oral histories - interrogating the aesthetics of “the truth” in hopes of offering alternative ways to approach identity, community, destiny and origin.
Amani was the recipient of the 2021 Ashmolean Museum Vivien Leigh Prize and the 2022 Ingram Prize. Her work has been featured in Art Monthly and Hyperallergic and she has written contributions in The Architectural Review and Solitude Journal 3 (Akademie Schloss Solitude) amongst others.
She is also a contributing writer on Emergent Art Space, with a focus on emerging African artists; and has given various talks on contemporary African art including University of Edinburgh, Carleton University and The University of Johannesburg (SA).
Notable shows include To Dismantle a House, a solo performance at South London Gallery with the Roberts Institute of Art; Christian Nyampeta: Sometimes It Was Beautiful at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum through the BodaBoda lounge video art festival; The Powerhouse at Kunstmuseum Bonn; The Main Complaint at The Zeitz MOCCA; Holding Space at Hauser and Wirth London; and more recently Boundary Encounters at Modern Art Oxford.
