Born in 1974 in Njombe, Tanzania, Cloud Chatanda is a visual artist specialising in illustration and paintings. The second child from a family of eight of the late captain and soldier, Augustino Chatanda, his family was reluctant in allowing him to pursue an art career, but with encouragement from his teachers and fellow peers in school, he started doing illustrations and finally took the leap into working as an artist full time.

Chatanda received his artistic training from Kinondoni Young Artist (KYA) in 1990. His large-scale hand drawings of daily life in Tanzania are portrayed from his daydreams and the imaginary worlds he creates. His illustrations have been used in Tanzania in several schoolbooks, magazines and newspapers, social campaign and comics.

He has exhibited his works at National Museum of Tanzania, Nafasi Art Space and Alliance Française in Tanzania and at Circle Art gallery in Kenya. He has also participated in the East African Biennale. Chatanda has accepted residencies at Kuona Trust in Nairobi and Zku in Berlin. In 2013 Chatanda won the Best AC cartoon award amongst other awards.

We are delighted Cloud is with us in 2024 to be part of the British launch of Africomics, a massive anthology of comics, the culmination of an exciting comics project in 2022 involving 17 countries in Subsaharan Africa. 17 participants participated in workshops in Ghana and from these, 14 stories were created which tackle issues of colonialism in very different ways.

CLOUD CHATANDA ONLINE

Instagram: @cloud_chatanda

Facebook: chatanda

More about Africomics: goethe.de/prj/afc/en/index.html