Benon lutaaya biography sample
Bio: Benon Lutaaya (born Dec-1985) is a Johannesburg-based, Ugandan-born artist. He holds a BFA with Education – Kyambogo University. He started his professional career in 2009 as a paper collage artist and only started to paint in 2011 on a residence programme in South Africa. He is a full time artist based at the Bag Factory Artists’ Studios in Newtown – Johannesburg. He is best known for his provocative, contemporary paper collage portraiture paintings, but he is also equally adept working with either acrylics or mixed media. He has participated in a number group and solo exhibitions both locally and internationally.
Benon finds inspiration for his work in his own autobiographical life experiences. He explores a myriad of issues relating to identity, child hardship, homelessness, isolation and fear. Therefore, in almost all his paintings, there’s a footprint or rather an element of his own self recognition. With each new artwork, for Benon, it’s a conscious effort to learn more. He constantly manipulates his medium to unearth new and unexpected creative destinations, while exploring the fragility and resilience of his subjects. He aims to capture the innermost essence of the mind of his subjects. His work depicts vulnerability and suggests a longing for protection. Although figurative in form, technique remains a central focus of his work.
Through line drawing, he deviates from the original photographic references he uses, creating new interpretations depending on his feelings and guided more by the marks he makes in the construction process; thereby generating new realities, emotions, twists, movement and angles. He combines both abstract and realist elements which visually create a rich and interesting tension in his work. How he manipulates his medium, allows for trails of infinite search, reconfiguration, and rediscovery to emerge, out of which comes a release of energy imbuing his work with life and raw simplicity.
Benon Lutaaya
MA V ByRobyn Sassenon CONTEMPLATIVE artist with soul: Benon Lutaaya. Photograph courtesy newvision.co.ug NOT EVERY VISUAL artist would be willing to admit the disheartening sense of dead ends and near misses that comes of muddling through ideas, before they get to submit an ‘offering’ to the world. It’s an admission of humanity and frailty in a world fraught with quick fixes, sensationalism, barbs and negativity. Ugandan-born artist, Benon Lutaaya, was. That sense of vulnerability was so central to his work ethic and his thinking. On April 19, he succumbed to brain cancer. He was 34. Lutaaya’s story is about the kind of meteorological rise to prominence that you find in fiction. By 2015, he was on top of his game and the recipient of numerous awards and acknowledgements, not only for the visual wisdom and freshness in his works, but also for his entrepreneurial spirit and his ability to simply be the face of young Africa. The year 2015 saw him crowned the Face of African youth foundation; the recipient of the Ambassadorial young award for the Adler Entrepreneurship Award in Germany; the young impact award in visual art for the Arts and Culture Trust, to name but a few. But he didn’t start this way. Material need forced him to rethink his approach to artmaking, and often the shards and crumbs of paper which he repurposed in his work were things that he had foraged from other people’s dust bins. Born in 1985 in Uganda, Lutaaya read for his bachelors degree in Fine Art at Kampala University with a major in Education. In 2010 he had developed the artistic muscle and the confidence to go professional in his work and in the following year, he was the recipient of the international residency award hosted by the Bag Factory in Newtown. And the proverbial die was cast. He fell in love with the country, its people, its dynamics, its will to reinvent itself. Between 2011 and 2019, he received m vulnerable Art statement Benon’s Profile. Benon Lutaaya is a Ugandan artist born 1985. He presently works and lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. He holds a BFA with Education from the Kyambogo University in Kampala, Uganda. He started his professional career in 2009 as a collage artist. And only started to paint in 2011 on a residency programme at the Bag Factory. Benon is regarded as one of the most exciting, improving and sought-after upcoming artists within the Joburg art scene. His work is increasingly becoming recognized and appreciated. His first SOLO show (November 2012) at the ROOM gallery in Johannesburg, prompted the documentation of his profile by Reuters TV. He has slowly attracted the attention of the top local and international media including, Reuters TV (2012), Mail and Guardian (2012), The Citizen (2012), Sowetan (2012), Business Day (2012), Finweek (2012) International Focus Country report magazine (2012), Kolaj Magazine in Canada (2012), Collagista in France (2011), African Elegant magazine in Uganda (201 . My View by Robyn Sassen and other writers
2012 – Acrylics on Newspaper – 57cm-x-42cm