Artist Serge Alain Nitegeka became a refugee of the Rwandan genocide in 1994 at age 11, when he began a years-long odyssey through multiple African nations, eventually arriving in South Africa, where he remains to this day. During his years in transit, Nitegeka began to create art – first while attending high school in Kenya, where he learned to “make do”, as he put it, a theme the rings throughout his artistic output, and then later though higher education in South Africa.
Nitegeka engages singularly with the genocide, using almost completely abstract, minimalistic means to do so. His paintings and sculptures are dominated by just a few colors – he started with just black, white and red, eventually adding others such as blue, teal, green and gold. These hues are poured into mostly textureless, abstract shapes, making for art that can come across as quite flinty yet also fluid and even dreamlike. They are works that are hard to pin down.
