SWAHILI • autumn language workshops
On November and December, the Museum of African Art organizes the Swahili Autumn Language Workshops for adults (16+), guided by Marija Panić, PhD and Rose Muthoni Thumbi.
The Museum of African Art announced the enrolment in the autumn Swahili - language workshops on October.
Autumn workshops last from November 7th to December 26th 2020. The workshops are intended for beginners. Eventually, each student will be qualified for basic communication in Swahili.
There is a Swahili proverb: MTU NI WATU, which means A PERSON IS PEOPLE.
Swahili is constantly being changed by its speakers who continually develop the language by including words borrowed from other languages. Arabic, Hindi, Gujarati, Persian and, more recently, English are the most noted contributors. However, there are traces of Portuguese and German, not to mention the contributions made by local languages. In a way, Swahili is a reflection of all the connections that have, in a long historical period, been created among different peoples!
As a language, Swahili presents no serious difficulties for Serbian speakers: the language is more or less written as it is spoken and uses the same ‘continental’ vowel sound system found in Serbian. For those who are interested in learning this language for personal development, travelling or communication with business partners in Africa, Swahili is the right choice! Swahili-language workshops will enable participants to learn basic words and phrases in an engaging and interactive way.
The Autumn Swahili Workshop 2020 will be guided by:
Rose Muthoni Thumbi
Student at the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade.
Born in Nakuru in Kenya, a country in which 51 million people live, 42 ethnical groups who have their native languages, but Swahili is the language spoken by 15 million Kenyans. After independence, the Kenyan government adopted the Swahili as a national language to unite different ethnical groups.
She speaks English, Swahili, Serbian, Chinese, French and local Kenyan language - Kikuyu. Rose loves sports and plays table tennis. She also likes to read novels.
As a native speaker and lecturer in Swahili language workshops at the Museum of African Art, Rose has been participating since 2020.
Marija Panić, PhD
Works as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Philology and Arts (University of Kragujevac), where she teaches French literature and culture.
As a linguist she has always been interested in Swahili and it is with great enthusiam that she started learning it in 2015 at Swahili Language Workshops at the Museum of African Arts in Belgrade. She is very interested in African arts and literature and in the mutual infleunce of African and European cultures.
As a language teacher Marija has taught French, Italian and English at language courses, at grammar school, at British international school and at the faculty.
She has been teaching Swahili at the MAA from 2018.
For more information about the workshop contact:
e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
phone: 011/ 2651 654, 011/ 2651 269
Click here to find out more about Swahili Language Workshops.
The MAA at the Solidarity Spores exhibition in South Korea!
Exhibition Solidarity Spores
15.5-25.10.2020.
Asia Cultural Centre
Directed by Sungwon Kim
Curated by Bojana Piškur, Vali Mahlouji / Archaeology of the Final Decade, Seonghee Kim, Sulki and Min / Tetsuya Goto, Dongjin Seo, Sungwon Kim
Excerpt from the official Asia Cultural Centre site:
The Asia Culture Center (ACC) has been presenting a new vision for the future by examining Asia’s histories and cultures through artistic practices within the global context. With growing interest in ASEAN countries and their expanding role in the global arena alongside Korea, China and Japan, new definitions of community and new hopes of solidarity are possible for Asia in the 21st century. In this context, the Asia Culture Center presents a special international exhibition Solidarity Spores, which explores dynamic traces left by artistic practices by touching on the themes of the “Non-Aligned Movement,” “community” and “solidarity.” The exhibition sheds new light on the history of the Non-Aligned Movement and the accompanying cultural and artistic practices; in doing so, it asks how the spirit of solidarity can liberate us from division and conflict resulting from neoliberal globalization. Through visual manifestations of historical time and space that younger generations have not experienced before, artistic practices featured in the exhibition instill hopes and possibilities for a new world order, equality and communal history.
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The Cultural Heritage of Topčider
A tour organized by the Museum of African Art, memorial House of King Peter and Heritage House
Since the 19th century the urban planning of Topčider (one of Belgrade's many hills) was envisioned as a city oasis, with numerous parks, picnic spots, large areas of forest and greenery. Hidden within it are numerous villas, summer houses and art studios built at the beginning of the 20th century. Through the “Cultural Heritage of Topčider” tour we will reveal different cultural institutions. During this tour, you can visit Museum of African Art, the memorial House of King Peter, Archive of Yugoslavia, Heritage House – the Legacy of Petar Lubarda, Museum Vespa Serbia, House of Olga Jančić and Public Aquarium and Tropicarium Belgrade. To get an impression about the tour, visit this link.
Walking and talking with you, are art historians Ana Knežević, Museum of African Art curator & Ivana Zatežić, Heritage House associate.
Join our trek of discovery of the cultural Heritage of Topčider Hill!
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Museum working hours are daily (7 days a week) from 10 am to 6 pm for individual visitors who are able to view the permanent display and the thematic exhibition “Hunting culture – the Donso in Bamanа tradition”.
