Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

The Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW) in downtown Gainesville is proud to be working with the UF African Studies Center to bring the work of two esteemed African artists to the Gainesville public.

On Thursday, February 8, SAW will host a public installation presenting student comic & art work from Eastside High workshops, work about SAW and its history of teaching comics in Gainesville, and work by and words from three African artists. This will include the visual art of Didier Viodé, formerly a comic artist, the comics of a Congolese comic artist Papa Mfumu’eto, owned by UF’s Smathers Library, and the fiction of Fiston Mwanza, best known for prize-winning Tram 83. Didier Viodé, formerly a comics artist and now a painter from Benin, will speak with Hart about comic arts practices on a global scale and in everyday life from Africa to France to Florida & the USA to Congo.

Born in 1963, from an early age Papa Mfumu’eto began creating the comic art for which he has become widely known. From the late 1980s, he sold his handmade zines in large numbers in the streets and markets of Kinshasa, today one of Africa’s third most populated cities. The subjects of his comics range from politics, family relations, love, health, disease, sorcery, spirit mediums, life, death, ghosts, sorcerers, and the invisible. These rich stories reveal much about recent Kinshasa urban slang, dangers, elegance, and street culture. The collection also documents the materials and techniques he used to produce his BD comics. Two Gainesville comic artists, Tom Hart and Leela Corman of the Sequential Artists Workshop, “the premier place to study comics,” have been advisors and guides for this university project.

These two events, the Eastside High School visits and the Public Installation at the Sequential Artists Workshop, received generous funding from the City of Gainesville’s Office of Parks, Recreation & Cultural Affairs, UF’s Center for African Studies, and especially the UF Center for the Humanities & the Public Sphere.

Location: The Sequential Artists Workshop (710 SE 2nd Street)

This event is associated with the 17th Carter Conference of the Center for African Studies, Text Meets Image & Image Meets Text: Sequences & Assemblages, Out of Africa & Congo, this year devoted to sequential art forms, African arts, and the work of one Congolese comic artist.
For further information, contact UF Professor of History & African Studies, Nancy Rose Hunt (nrhunt@ufl.edu, 734 834 7902).