Victor Mutelekesha Launches The Lusaka Contemporary Art Center in Zambia

The Lusaka Contemporary Art Center (LuCAC) is a new private foundation by artist Victor Mutelekesha to advancing contemporary Zambian arts. The Centre situated in New Chamba Valley hosts a gallery, library and artist residency. The LuCAC aims to facilitate and promote the production of new arts and culture knowledge around themes of decolonisation, relevant histories, contemporaneity etc. in Zambia, the region and internationally.

The inaugural exhibition Prospice, Kwacha! will run from 6th of January 2023 to 17th of December 2023 curated by Karen Reini.

The centre will be open to artists of all ages and most contemporary practices whose interests coincide with those of LuCAC. A special focus will be placed on nurturing emerging talent by encouraging self-awareness and respect, tolerance, critical thinking, and relentless interrogating of common histories. The centre will promote artistic literature (writing and publication) by documentation and curating of its activities to build a resource archive for subsequent generations.

The gallery at LuCAC will function as a laboratory for artistic experimentation, and the library will provide a space dedicated to research and the analysis of old and new knowledge and documentation. A social room will be cater to formal and informal talks and recordings. Finally, the centre will have two private spaces reserved for hosting visiting national and international artists invited to the centre to participate in activities relating to the core values.

Victor Mutelekesha is a Zambian artist living and working in Oslo Norway. He is the founder of the Lusaka Contemporary Art Centre and co-founder of the Livingstone office for Contemporary Art. Victor’s work has been included in several local and international group and solo exhibitions since 2004, including the Dakar Biennale, Havana Biennial, OpenART international ART symposium in Sweden, NSK State Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, Stavanger Museum, Kunstnerforbundet Gallery for Contemporary Art, Oslo, Gallery Palazio Tito, Venice, Italy and the Akershus kunstsenter in lillestrøm, Norway. Victor works with recurrent issues that influence the human condition, such as conflict arising from our own created divisive mechanism of identity and the unsubstantiated, unscientific prejudice towards any of those identities. His focus is also oriented towards expanding the confines of what diaspora, hybridity and identity itself would mean in order to dissipate conflict.