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October 24, 2012

Maizan Adam Maniku

“These images made by Maizan Adam Maniku are some of the very rare of its kind that can be found in the Maldives by an individual of Adam Maniku’s generation. Of course there are others of his generation who have produced abstract imagery using western techniques and vocabularies. But I find his work containing an intensely personal quality, which I have come across in very few other works except for in artists of a much later time. In this sense he was quite ahead of his time in his vision. And with hindsight, this is very clearly manifest in the thinking behind his pioneering cultural projects to counter the negative consequences of globalisation on the indigenous ways of life in the Maldives, especially on Maldivian crafts traditions. As far as I know, Adam Maniku is the only individual, and the organisation he found the only of its kind in the country that is making attempts to address issues of identity that has come about in the wake of globalisation.Adam Maniku has sustained a strong interest in the arts throughout his life. Although formally graduated as an economist in France, and given the fact that he spent nearly 3 decades working in the not particularly creative environment of the Maldives Finance Ministry (including several years as the GM of Maldives Monetary Authority and as Deputy Minister of Finance and Treasury), Adam Maniku is perhaps equally well-known, if not more, for his creative work. In 2000 he has established Creative Arts and Crafts Training Centre (CACTC) in the Maldives. The centre trains Maldivian youth in the fast disappearing traditions of Maldivian craft practices. CACTC also has a showroom HERITAGE in Male’ where products made by CACTC students are on display/sale.” By Mamduh Waheed

4:06pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/Zrs6txVt_lGn

(Notes: 7)