As the Gihanga Institute of Contemporary Art opens in Kigali, Rwanda’s first independent, non-profit contemporary art institute sets the stage for a new cultural moment. Moving through its inaugural exhibition, Inuma: A Bird Shall Carry the Voice, Cynthia Butare follows an opening night from dusk into day, tracing how architecture, artwork, and conversation come together to create space for new and evolving ideas.
Before Night Falls
Saturday, 5.30pm. Kigali, Rwanda. The night has not yet come down.
I arrive early, wanting a moment to take it in and photograph whilst there’s still light, before the evening settles. The streets of Kimihurura. The cobblestone road. That sound, wheels hitting stones, the rattle we all recognise. Whenever there’s an opening, an event, something pulling people together, this is where you end up. The sound tells you nearly there.
The area itself pulses with energy. Restaurants, clubs, interior design spaces, cafés, cocktail bars, a lot popping up, reflecting the contemporary life of Kigali. And now, within this energy, the Gihanga Institute of Contemporary Art (GICA), Rwanda’s first independent, non-profit contemporary art institute, founded by Kami Gahiga and Kaneza Schaal. Built through collective effort, GICA brings a new institutional model to Rwanda’s cultural landscape. It joins other initiatives such as Rwanda Arts Initiative, also here in Kimihurura, as part of a broader creative ecosystem taking shape across the city and country. A place for creative practice to find its ground, where ideas can circulate, deepen, stay.
The Institute’s Architecture
You barely notice it from the main road. A narrow path, down to a gate, and behind the leaves, a three-level concrete structure. Designed by architect Amin Gafaranga, a key collaborator and partner in GICA’s formation, the building is open and porous enough that once inside, the boundary between inside and outside almost fades.
Aïssa Dione, a Senegalese textile designer and master weaver, travelled to Kigali for the opening. Standing in the space, she reflects on something rare where architecture, design, and creative practice come together with real thoughtfulness.
“There is a purity in the architecture which is fundamental in order to present an artwork. It’s very adapted to art. That’s important.”
Naoki Nakatani co-founded Space Un, an exhibition space in Tokyo dedicated to contemporary art and spatial research. Standing here, he reflects on what having infrastructure means.
“Having a place, a space, is already an elevated system.”
Having a dedicated site where ideas can be hosted and shared. The building raises the conditions in which creative practice can exist. It does so by simply existing.
Entering the Exhibition
Once inside, the first thing you see is a work by Cedric Mizero. A human-like presence stands there. A head and hands emerge, whilst the rest of the body is suggested through draped, weathered fabric, almost the sisal texture used in our basket-weaving. The fabric gathers and falls, worn and lived-in, giving the impression of a figure that feels human without being literal, standing at the threshold, meeting you before the rest of the exhibition opens up.
Just beyond it, a concrete path leads to a wall. There’s the exhibition title, Inuma: A Bird Shall Carry the Voice, curated by Kami Gahiga and coordinated by Nelson Niyakire. Text about transmission, about voices and memories moving across time and distance. The wall blocks what’s behind.
Moving past the wall, Christian Nyampeta’s charcoal drawings line the walls. Marks that feel closer to sketches than finished works. The drawings open questions about how art is made rather than asserting answers. At the centre of the room, a white table holds zines. You’re invited to look at the drawings, handle the zines, read them.
You continue forward. Francis Offman’s work spreads across the floor, books propped by metal callipers, whilst pictures occupy the walls. Francis Offman and Kaneza Schaal in dialogue. You look down as much as across.
You look closer at the callipers. They’re instruments Belgian colonisers used in the early twentieth century to measure facial features and classify Rwandan people into racial groups, a racist process that contributed to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. The books, including Bibles, rest on these tools of violence.
Kaneza Schaal’s photographs examine invisible technologies, secrets, and how knowledge is transmitted or withheld. Her work investigates the fallacy that visibility offers protection. The dialogue between the two asks what it means when bodies are made visible, when measurement becomes a tool of control. Meaning emerges between these two planes. Material weight below, perceptual uncertainty above.
Then the exhibition goes down. Stairs mark a clear shift, taking you deeper, from thinking to sensing. Down here, Sanaa Gateja’s fibrous forms anchor the space. Mosaic-like compositions where each material retains its own narrative, woven into abstract forms that connect ancestral craft to contemporary concerns.
From here, the space opens in two directions, two opposing modes. One way leads to Féline Ntabangana’s work, bursts of colour urgent and gestural, transforming personal and collective wounds into spaces of resilience. The other leads to Innocent Nkurunziza’s large abstract paintings on barkcloth, surfaces made from Moraceae tree bark and layered with earth, clay, mud, and natural pigment. The works carry spiritual symbolism, anatomical motifs, and references to the land, drawing viewers into meditative states.
The artists work with materials, movements, pictures, memories, carrying messages that might otherwise disappear. Words and feelings travel through what is made. The work keeps important ideas and memories alive, passing them forward, something ongoing and carried onward.
The Room Fills
By the time I finish walking through the exhibition, the institute is full. It is now 7.30pm.
People gather across rooms and levels. We find ourselves back in the first room, where Christian Nyampeta’s charcoal drawings hold ideas in formation. The white table at the centre becomes a natural gathering point. Welcoming words, remarks, conversation about to take shape, ideas moving from looking into speaking.
The room is packed. Guests from across the world have travelled specifically to be here, from Morocco, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. Among them are people from institutions and platforms such as 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, MACAAL in Marrakech, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Yale School of Architecture, the Norval Foundation, Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Efie Gallery, and Space Un in Tokyo.
The room shifts. Voices drop. People move with more intention, more awareness, respecting the space they’re in. Nearly everyone speaks in low voices, almost whispering.
When Kami Gahiga and Kaneza Schaal step forward to welcome everyone, they speak warmly, taking their time to thank each person for being there. This follows remarks by Sandrine Umutoni, Rwanda’s Minister of State for Youth and Arts, who names the evening as a significant moment, placing what is unfolding within a broader cultural context.
A panel discussion follows with the artists, moderated by Sandra Muteteri Heremans, bringing them into conversation. The exchange offers glimpses into process. How the works came to be, how questions remain open. The room leans in.
To the Rooftop
From there, the space opens upward. We move up from the exhibition to the rooftop level. By now it is 9pm.
First through a room at the top, one large window giving to the rooftop, where one of Abdoulaye Konaté’s iconic works hangs, Le Papillon bleu (2016), deep blue indigo, orphanage, red, completely different from the pieces by the other artists in the exhibition. A deep blue couch faces it. Then out to the rooftop itself, concrete platform opening to the city beyond. Kigali’s business district climbs the hills across the view, banks, hotels, offices threading light across the slopes. The view reflects that cosmopolitan energy back.
The evening finds its beat here. Plants and flowers clustered through the concrete, bright green against grey, divide the rooftop into corners. Bar in one, high tables in another, DJ K’ru at the far end. People settle into these pockets. Some in the windowed room, others gathering at the bar, around the high tables, near the music. Wine poured tableside, cocktails circulating, small plates making their way through, and conversations open up naturally. Fred Rwaka’s curation shows in how effortlessly it all unfolds.
Laughter, hugs, numbers swapped. People are still on the work, what they saw, what it means, what they’re still turning over, even as conversations loosen and they move between the bar, the tables, the windowed room, back outside. Some drift back downstairs, retracing the exhibition. The night settles in, and the rooftop holds its energy. No one’s in a hurry to leave.
The Next Day
Sunday, 11am. I return to GICA in daylight. The opening was last night, but the work stays. Three months for people to come, to see, to return. Light moves through the space, showing what the night had hidden. The boundary between inside and outside feels even thinner now, leaves, light, air all mixing. The building breathes with the surroundings.
I move through the building again, going down to the lowest level where Sanaa Gateja’s work anchors the space. I find Kami Gahiga there, standing near the fibrous forms. We start talking. I ask her how it feels, seeing it all come together after months of work.
‘We need these spaces of dignity for our artists and our contemporaries. For me, it’s a part of the soul of a country and of a community.’
She talks about the institute’s thinking. From the beginning, she says, the goal is to create a space that listens to Rwandans first, to the local scene, whilst remaining open to the continent and international dialogue. Beginning with Rwandan artists was deliberate. Future exhibitions will bring Rwandan artists into conversation with the continent and beyond.
She reflects on how the opening came together. Other models within Rwanda’s creative ecosystem have been and remain important, she notes, including Rwanda Arts Initiative, which supported the temporary importation of artworks for the opening, alongside collective effort and support from multiple directions. Also, public and private actors both contributed, Rwandair among them, alongside local businesses such as Kivu noir, whose coffee boxes became lasting mementos for international visitors, and Virunga Beer, who contributed beer for the opening. These gestures illustrate how businesses can support cultural initiatives in ways both practical and symbolic..
As we’re talking, Kaneza Schaal comes by. She reflects on what it meant to see art and ideas from Rwanda framed in Rwanda, whilst resonating outward.
‘I feel proud to serve what I believe are the best possibilities for this extraordinary country that I am fortunate enough to call home.’
She talks about this first exhibition. All the artists are Rwandan. Many of them are shown in major museums globally, but they’ve never been exhibited together. What matters, she says, is what it means for them to be in conversation together here, in a frame set by Rwanda itself.
The institute, she explains, is already built from an intricate network of cultural producers and thinkers who have made this possible. Going forward, GICA can be a meeting ground, a catalyst, a support for the entire ecosystem here.
‘That is the prayer,’ she says.
After our conversation, I continue moving through the space, down through the lower level and then back up again, drawn once more towards the light. When I reach the rooftop, the city comes back into view. In the daytime, the city takes on another personality, lit fully under the sun. Brunch is set out, and people gather again, but it’s also time for goodbyes for those who travelled for this. Fred Rwaka curated this too, making sure the goodbye felt as considered as the welcome.
The couch that had been filled the night before, people leaning in, exchanging ideas, talking late into the evening, is filled again now. Some of the same guests are there, continuing
conversations, sharing impressions, returning to questions raised the night before. Ideas circulate easily.
Among them is Justin Garrett Moore. I ask him what this moment represents. He talks about culture as part of how a society builds itself, as foundation rather than afterthought. Rwanda is already present globally through its MICE industry, conferences, ecotourism, sport. He wants to see culture operating alongside those forces. Artists need to be where meaning is made and futures are decided, part of those conversations from the start.
‘Artists are workers. Artists are generators. Artists are creators.’
For him, the arts help us understand where we come from and what connects us, but they’re also part of shaping what comes next. He points at the institute, at the conversations still going, at the work on the walls. That both public institutions and private businesses have backed GICA reflects how culture is increasingly understood as part of the country’s infrastructure. Rwanda isn’t trying to catch up to something defined elsewhere. It’s about owning the narrative, being part of the global conversation about where we’re all headed.
‘That’s happening right here.’
I look around the rooftop. Conversations continue. Brunch plates are cleared. People drift between the couch and the tables. The exhibition is still being discussed, revisited, carried into new exchanges. The opening was Saturday night. This is Sunday. And the institute is already doing what it set out to do, which is to make space for ideas to circulate, deepen, and be sustained over time.
All images are Cynthia’s own.
