“Art is life. Without it I can’t breathe.” The German-Kenyan artist Syowia Kyambi introduces herself with this strong statement in a YouTube video from the Bavarian Ministry of Science. However, she no longer has to apply there. She has now been appointed Bavaria’s first top female professor at an art college and will soon be taking on a visiting professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg.
Syowia Kyambi, born in Nairobi in 1979, studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Transart Institute at Plymouth University. She is considered to be well connected and an artist with entrepreneurial experience. She works interdisciplinary and combines video art, drawing, sound and photography with performance art. Topics such as sexuality, gender, racism and postcolonial structures, identity and memory are the focus of her work. Topics that she examines from the perspective of the so-called Global South. Last year, Kyambi represented Kenya at the Venice Biennale.
With this appointment, Syowia Kyambi is taking on a pioneering role. The visiting professorship was awarded as part of the Top Professorship Program (SPP) as part of the Bavarian High-Tech Agenda. This program enables research professorships for outstanding national and international personalities. At art colleges, the SPP is designed as a program for visiting professorships for which art colleges can apply. The decision as to which internationally renowned personality will be appointed is made by the respective university itself. In total, around 43 million euros are earmarked for the top professorship program at all three types of universities in the years 2021 to 2023.