Odile Gakire Katese: Making art & reinventing culture with women

Summary

Rwandan artist Odile Gakire Katese was born and raised in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and ‘returned’ to Rwanda in 1996. There she studied at the National University of Rwanda and worked as an actress with Koulsy Lamko, a Chadian writer and director. She went to France and trained in theatre with Jacques Lecoq and at Le Samovar, then came back to Rwanda in 2003 where she worked as assistant artistic director at the University Centre of Arts and Drama (UCAD) until 2011, under the direction of Aimable Twahirwa, and then of Jean-Marie Kayishema. In 2012 she created her company, Rwanda Professional Dreamers, with whom she works in the performing arts, particularly in music, theatre and writing. Her current project, Mumataha, involves the creation of two music albums and a theatre piece based on letters from a former project, The Book of Life, in which survivors and perpetrators wrote to people whom they lost or killed during the genocide.

Her artistic work was her point of entry into Rwandan culture, which she had to learn when she arrived from the DRC. Looking back at her trajectory and evolution over the past ten years, it becomes apparent how her position as an artist, who was also a returnee and a woman, has led her to approach Rwandan culture and arts with critical care and curiosity. This has resulted in a corpus of artistic work that speaks to the realities of contemporary Rwanda. Her body of work from 2003 until today2 includes three plays: Iryo Nabonye(What I Saw(2004) as co-writer/co-director), Des Espoirs(Hopes(2005) as writer), and Ngwino Ubeho(Come and Be Alive(2009) as writer/director). It also includes the writing workshops of The Book of Life(2009, as facilitator); the albums and concerts of Mumataha(2012, 2014, as producer); and the drumming troupe Ingoma Nshya which she created in 2004 and has promoted ever since. As the assistant director of UCAD she organized a series of international workshops, called ‘Arts Azimuts’, in theatre, music and dance from 2003 to 2007. In 2008 she turned the annual workshops into the first international festival of performing arts in Rwanda.