Portraits of Rwanda

The Blender Gallery presents Nikos Zikos’s personal photography exhibition titled “Portraits from Rwanda”.

This is a charity event aimed at supporting the work of the international non-governmental organization ActionAid. The inauguration of the “Portraits from Rwanda” exhibition will take place on Thursday, 31 May 2018, at 20:00. Nikos Zikos’ photographs consist mainly of black and white portraits of young members of the local community of Muvungu village, some capturing their difficult living conditions and others depicting touching moments of their fragile childhood innocence. Visitors will be able to purchase the photographs on display while all proceeds from the photographs sold will be donated to ActionAid towards their cause. The objective of the exhibition is to raise funds to build an elementary school hall in Muwungu Village, Rwanda, which the photographer visited during one of ActionAid’s solidarity expeditions. This is a cause that, with the help of the contributors and visitors of the exhibition, will offer Muvungu’s children the opportunity to continue their education and will provide them the hope for a better future!

ActionAid representatives, as well as the artist himself, will be present throughout the opening ceremony at The Blender Gallery and will be pleased to inform visitors about the exhibition and the actions of the organization in general.

A few words about ActionAid & Solidarity Trips : ActionAid is an independent, international organization that has been working since 1972, with over 15 million people in 45 countries for a world free from poverty and injustice. From 2010 Actionaid organizes “solidarity trips” in order to complete a project in the community where journey takes place and in order to show practical solidarity to people who happened to be born in the poorest and most marginalized parts of our planet. The solidarity trip to the village of Muvungu in Rwanda, took place in late February 2018. 47 Greek and Cypriot volunteers, staff and associates, travelled in order to build sanitary facilities in the primary school of the area. The school serves more than 600 students, many of whom walk miles every day to go to their classes. The school rooms, that are made of tree trunks and mud are now in very bad shape. In April one of them collapsed due to bad weather conditions. The kids were lucky, they weren’t there.