Kiboko Projects, an organization from the US, will present “Faces of Youth”, an exhibition of art produced through collaborations between secondary schools in New York City, Kisumu, Kenya, South Africa and St. Petersburg at the Alexey Sergienko Flat, Kazanskaya Street, 12 St. Petersburg on June 11th at 6:00 PM. Kiboko Projects, a non profit organization, has been sponsoring workshops, exhibitions and cultural exchange programs for youth and adults since 1999. It strives to enable dialogue between people in different areas of the world, using a wide range of creative media. This dialogue is the first step toward an understanding of each other. Over the last ten years, Kiboko Projects has implemented a cultural exchange and workshop program between students in New York City, Russia, and Kenya. Through masks, photodiaries, and videos that they’ve created and exchanged, the students have been able to share with each other an unfiltered glimpse into each others’ lives. The teens begin to tell their stories using masks designed with messages to their counterparts. They use still and video cameras to capture and document their families, communities, and important issues in their lives. Each resulting collection of designed masks, hard bound photo-diaries, and video filmed and narrated by the students, is exhibited for the general community and presented to their counterparts for their perusal and their response. Video conferencing has recently been added to the workshops, where all the youth are able to communicate with each other in real time. In February 2010, students from Gym 209 participated in such an exchange with the students from secondary schools in NYC and in Kisumu, Kenya. In workshops, student groups created a collection of work using maskmaking, photography, video and creative writing. The masks provided a means for students to explore their thoughts and feelings as well as to convey social, cultural and political messages through their design. In addition, video conferencing allowed each of the student groups to share their ideas and designs they had created. In all three countries, students chose and researched specific topics for discussion. Those topics were the ones that they took photographs of and wrote their books about, then discussed via the video conference. Topics included politics, health, and social issues. Through this exhibition, we get a glimpse of the concerns affecting youth in the US, Africa and Russia today. In September, the exhibition will travel to Velikiy Novgorod for an installation at The Dialogue Center. A group of youth from Velikiy Novgorod will have a similar chance to respond to the work done by the Americans and Africans. They will be able to share their ideas using web conferencing and similar groups in schools in the US and Africa.
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