Launching Mambila Art After 14 Months Of Deciding Its Focus
When we started out in 2019, Mujeeb, Yussuf and I had come together to build a platform to promote African arts, our focus being on visual arts. And because it was African, I was eager towards it. So we did the necessary things, built the platform, and formed a team, but we didn’t launch. Reason best known to us. We didn’t dissolve the team but the members reduced to three of us and we just moved on with our lives. Though, Mujeeb would always bring it up in our conversations.
And after we were inactive for close to 6 months or so, another member, Hammed Aleem, came on board and we set back to work on the platform. But midway, I became somewhat indifferent because there was a lot I was taking in at that time. And my indifference was evident that it was slowing us down and affecting the team. So, we went on another break. I must admit, these guys (Mujeeb, Yussuf, and Hammed) are super great with having patience. Or maybe because Mujeeb had that belief in me (he always says it to me though).
About three months after, around October, Mujeeb actually guilt-tripped me, and I felt I had done more than holding the team back, I had let them down. So, more like an introspect, plus being their tech guy, I started working again on the platform without them knowing. And when I got to a point that I felt it had started making sense, I informed them. It seemed the spirit was rejuvenated and we set to work again. Something we failed to achieve in about 14 months, was later brought to life in about 2 months. And this we have our MVP (mambilaart.com).
Our goal with Mambila Art is to give a home to African Arts. We realized that there has always been promotions about the literary art, but there’s no enough of promotions for its counterpart which is visual art. So, this drove us into creating Mambila Art, an online art platform that collects, stores, showcases and appreciates African Arts and Artists.
Aboard our team are great young Nigerian Artists; Mr. Waduud QING as our Editor/Reviewer for Painting, Iman Hassan as our Editor/Reviewer for Illustration, Hammed Aleem Babatunde as our Editor/Reviewer for Photography, Agbalaya Sodiq as our Editor/Reviewer for Drawing, and Ambali Abdulkabeer as our Editor for Critique and Interview.
Mambila Art accepts submissions in the following categories; Painting, Drawing, Illustration, Photography, and Critique on visual arts. You can check out our submission page for more information (mambilaart.com/submission).
We are working assiduously towards being the foremost platform that promotes African visual arts and we hope you’d walk with us in this journey of pushing African Arts beyond borders.
Thank you.
Malik Kolade,
Design & Team Lead,
Mambila Art.
