There will be a meeting for those interested in the African Activist Association at UCLA and the Ufahamu graduate student journal.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
10383 Bunche Hall
10th floor
UCLA campus
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Agenda topics:

• Editors needed for Ufahamu – come join the staff and learn/share the wonders of editing
• Northern Lights gallery exhibition  – now through February 1 (see below for info)
• Film screenings/film series
• AAA conference on (De)Constructing Urbanities: Opportunities and Challenges in African Cities

Any time you’re on campus, stop by the Northern Lights/North Campus eatery and check out the AAA exhibition.

To promote discourse on the ways that Africa and its people are portrayed through Western media, AAA is announcing an exhibit entitled:

Capturing a Continent: Historical and Contemporary Images of Africa

• Now through Friday, February 1, 2008
• Northern Lights Gallery, UCLA campus (North Campus eatery)
• 7 AM – 7:30 PM, Monday through Thursday; 7 AM – 7 PM, Friday (closed Saturday and Sunday)

• This exhibit explores the complex and often subjective relationship that the West has with Africa.  The peoples and cultures of Africa are often portrayed as symbols of the West’s own yearning for exotica and as examples of how the downtrodden live. The West has long characterized Africa as “The Dark Continent,” a land of strange and ferocious animals, a land of mysterious and alien cultures, a land of exoticism and primitivism.  This dichotomy of Africa as a land of mystery and poverty has been imprinted on the Western consciousness.

•  Capturing a Continent: Historical and Contemporary Images of Africa consists of images taken from popular media that utilize this (mis)perception of Africa to add an aura of mystique.  Juxtaposed to these images from the Western perspective is the photography of Willis Okech Oyugi, a Kenyan photographer and UCLA History PhD student.  Instead of the people, wildlife, and landscape of Kenya as a background for Western play, his photography places them in the forefront of the viewer’s focus.

• This exhibit invites you to challenge your own perceptions of Africa and its peoples. It also provides a space for your reactions and comments about the images and their various portrayals of Africa.

Cost : Free and open to the public; pay station and all-day parking available.

www.international.ucla.edu/africa

Sponsor(s): African Activist Association at UCLA.