SOUTH AFRICAN ART IN NEW YORK

With Performa 2017 with its focus on South Africa in full swing in New York City this week there is much African art to see and not to miss. No need here to pay for a 14 hours plane fare to Joburg to discover the works of some of the most creative talents in Africa. All have an international presence and have been shown extensively in Biennales, museums and fairs.

Photographer and visual activist Zanele Muholi who is best known internationally for her ongoing portrait series Faces and Phases which captures LGBTQI life in her native South Africa will be participating in a series of conversations with other artists and writers. She will be exhibiting publicly her photographs, perform with local and Africa based musicians and organizing with black LBGTQI communities throughout the burroughs.

Multidisciplinary artist Mohau Modisakeng (b.1986, Soweto, South Africa) is choreographing a street procession called ZION of 20 dancers in Harlem Saturday November 11 from 1 to 7pm. As Performa describes it, each dancer will be carrying “an array of personal possessions, various pieces of baggage, and furniture via an exodus choreography of walking, running, jumping, falling, leaning, and sitting – enacting the blistered legacy of segregation, violent displacement, colonialism and apartheid coursing through South African history.” Modisakeng was one of two artists shown at the South Africa Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale where he showed his video Passage. More recently, and further expanding on the same theme of displacement he put together a striking performance in Cape Town that I was lucky to see during my visit to Cape Town. While Modisakeng privileges a poetic aesthetic in all his works there is no equivocation as to the intensity and urgency of his message.

Nicholas Hlobo (b. 1975, Cape Town) whose studio I was privileged to see in Cape Town is presenting umBhovuzo: The Parable of the Sower at the Harlem Parish on November 18 and 19. He is challenging expectations of sexuality and identity within Xhosa culture. Here men clad in dresses and working with cotton and silk at sewing machines point to issues of domesticity, labor and globalization. It is useful to know that much of Hlobo’s work involves fabric and materials such as leather, silk, ribbon and sowing and all of it is done by him and male attendants.

Tracey Rose, (b.1974, Durban, South Africa) a seminal figure in post-apartheid contemporary art, has her video work in the AFROGLOSSIA Film Program at 32 2^nd Avenue.

Four short films created by the NEST COLLECTIVE from Nairobi are also included in AFROGLOSSIA. I met up with Jim Chuchu and Dr. Njoki Ngumi of The Nest Collective when I was recently in Nairobi. Jim is a visual artist (photographer and video artist) and Njoki a medical doctor who in 2012 joined together with 10 other like-minded individuals to create new content and support creative endeavors. They explore through film, music, fashion, the visual arts and literature modern identities, re-imagine the past and re-mix their futures. Their first important ground breaking production was a critically- acclaimed queer anthology film Stories of Our Lives which was screened in over 80 countries. However it is banned in Kenya. They are presenting this time a new production: We Need Prayers : This One Went to Market which questions the ways the global art industry frames African art.

They also recently came out with a new fashion book ‘Not African Enough’ that challenges the narrow expectations of what African design looks like. I am impressed by the quality of the work and I like their forward focus. See you there on Sunday, November 12 th at 6:45 pm at 32 Second Avenue !

Unfortunately I was not able to see William Kentridge’s performance Ursonate . It got booked pretty quickly. The good news: he is coming back in 2018 at the Park Armory.

On the other hand I did get to see South African artist Kemang Wa Lehure’s production I cut my skin to liberate the splinter with theater director Chuma Sopotela at the Connelly theater last weekend.

Wa Lehulere’s installation not only claimed the stage but also spilled over into most of the theater.   It became quickly clear that the order of things was being inverted. On the stage, ceramic dogs were positioned amidst musical stands and mysterious signaling hands and faced the parterre where Wa Lehulere had arranged his sculptural instruments and where the sound performance was going to take place. I recognized the wooden and metal sculptures that I had seen just a month before in his studio in Cape Town. There was the wooden pyramid with its glass tube that functioned as a traveling tunnel for messages in glass bottles; the bird houses which reference the first female black artist in South Africa, the wooden school desk that point to Wa Lehulere’s school years when he chose to not speak Afrikaan: This was then his first act of protest against apartheid.

And again the ceramic dogs which appear in most of his installations these days. During the visit at the studio he explained their link to mythology: if you took sleep from a dog’s eye you could see into the spiritual world. They are for him metaphors for the past, for memory. In addition those kinds of dogs are attack and guard dogs in South Africa. By including them he points again to what happened during apartheid. Black people were forbidden to own dogs and if they did, the dogs were killed.

To the sound of drums, of make-do strings and wind instruments, Wa Lehulere and his female protagonist seemed to be enacting a story as well as engaging in child play. He pushed a wheel with two crutches just like I had just seen a little boy play in Kenya out in the desert town of Merti.

I hope you take advantage of this wonderful opportunity at our doorstep if you live in New York City.

I just came back from two weeks in Paris and London where I checked out the extensive showing of African art. I am just amazed how the showing of Contemporary African art has taken off in Europe and in particular Paris. The efforts of curators, gallerists, collectors, and institutions are bearing fruits.

Paris is changing. It is home to an increasing amount of people from North and Sub- Sahara Africa. As a result there is a concerted effort to share African art and culture with a broader audience. Going beyond the exclusive art fairs and museums African art is made accessible at the Parc de La Villette with an exhibition “ Afrique Capitales” that partially spilled into the park with its large scale photographic works and where the admission was only 5 euros!

Furthermore recognizing at once the increased relevance/impact of African culture in a society that includes a growing proportion of people of African origin and the creative potential of a collaboration/fusion of Western and African fashion, the department store, the Galeries Lafayette, hosted under the title “Africa Now” a series of artistic events .

It asked the Nigerian photographer Lakin Ogubanwo to design the department store window displays. I was quite thrilled to see that he had been selected and that his work was going to be exposed so broadly. Lakin started his photographic career in fashion so he brings to the task at hand his sleek sense of style, and colorful palette. He combines and layers his stylish photographic and video work, with the recent fashion lines by designers who have been inspired by African prints (wax, batik, kasai).

This is not the ravaged and poor Africa but a colorful and exotic Africa. Some would say that it further promotes an essentialist vision of Africa at the detriment of a more nuanced and diverse reality. Obviously it is true – how could people of 54 countries all be the same – however we are in the world of consumerism, branding and fashion. Simple ideas sell better than complex realities. Furthermore, Lakin lives in vibrant and chaotic Lagos and conveys here his experience of the creativity he sees in his city where many African and other cultures coexists.

On the first floor art gallery of the department store Marie- Ann Yemsi curated an art exhibit “ Le Jour qui vient” – a lovely poetic title – of emerging contemporary African artists works. It favored video and photographic works and mixed media installations.

Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze wonderfully playful drawing on paper was the exception to the rule. Gone are traditional materials such as paint. Materials and images are recycled, rearranged, layered.

Turiya Magadlela stretches women’s tights across the canvases creating colorful grids, Igshaan Adams uses string, rope, beads, found fabric like curtain tassels to create a majestic tapestry that makes me think of a wall of foliage.

Clay Apenouvon drapes black plastic along the wall and lets it spill like black oil onto the floor seemingly oozing out into black puddles, which morph into plastic garbage bags. Frances Goodman uses the yellow hood of a BMW as her canvas. Color and material matter. They mean something and yet that meaning shifts as the material is reused in a different context. Ideas, materials, people circulate reflecting migratory patterns, a questioning and breakdown of traditional classifications , a more global world and a continuously shifting landscape.

The romantic and exotic idea of the “African Landscape” considered a colonial legacy, is challenged in two photographic works. Monica De Miranda proposes the jungle landscape but hers is interrupted, one might say ruptured into three disconnected parts. Mohau Modisakeng’s photographs from the Bophirima series places him wearing a horse’s headgear walking through an asphalt landscape. It is stark and foreboding and speaks of the long history of violence in South Africa.  Mohau is showing at the Venice Biennale and I am looking forward to seeing his work there.

Under the Galeries Lafayette’ vaulted glass roof  hung Joel Andrianomearisoa‘s black banners which unfortunately I did not see.

We landed in Joburg at the crack of dawn after a 15 hours flight, which while long was stress free! Listening to some of the other people we met up with at Joburg who had taken at least 24 hours to get there our journey looked like a piece of cake! This was the first time I was taking my boyfriend to Joburg so I was making sure to limit the hurdles. We met up with Diane and Chuck Frankel who were there with members of the Getty photography council. Diane was introducing them to the Joburg art scene. It is good to know that the Getty is interested in exploring the work of photographers from the African continent!

The next few days were filled with art visits much of them organized by Diane.

While Joburg can seem miles away from everything some of the main galleries there are showing artists that have a worldwide presence.

We stopped at the Goodman gallery on Jan Smutts avenue to see Liza Lou’s beautiful new exhibition called Canvas. Liza Lou is a California American artist who became known for her beaded life –size replica of a suburban kitchen.  She subsequently moved to Durban, South Africa where she is producing a body of work, which is more minimalist. The surface of the “painting” is the subject of this exhibition.  Liza’s works are made solely out of beads. Local Zulu women weave bands of identical off-white beads that Liza provides for them. She then sows the bands together in a unique pattern that integrates the ruptures, pockmarks, and streaks that stain the surface of the bands and are the marks of the weavers’ lives. The resulting “canvases” inspire a quiet and meditative response much like Rothko’s dark canvases in the Rothko chapel. To fully take the effect in I had to sit down and let my eyes slowly adjust so that I could became aware of all the nuances of color in these monochromatic works. Indeed her beaded canvases call for slowing down, taking in the moment, letting things unfold gradually, and challenges one to sit with oneself. There is no big bang or wow. The beauty lies in the holding of the image and gradually feeling whole.

Her more recent work shows her loosening up her grip and letting in a tiny bit of mayhem in her structured design. I loved that piece too.

That evening David Brodie gave us a tour of Serge Alain Nitegeka show at Michael Stevenson gallery. At the entrance of the gallery I ran into Nandipha Mntambo looking FABULOUS. Wearing her hair long and braided she had totally changed style and was presenting a more feminine version of herself. Wearing muted make up, sheathed in a slim-fitting dress and perched on high heels she exuded happiness and confidence. She was just as thrilled to see Diane and I. We had not seen her since our time together last fall in San Francisco.

We then all made our way through the first room of the gallery, which had been reduced to a narrow pathway. Nitegeka had carved out the space with big black sheets of cardboard restricting our space and movements, in other words constricting our freedom. I felt constricted and aware of trying to keep my balance as I walked through the narrow path. Nitegeka considers himself a sculptor of objects and of space and is well known for his installations. However this particular exhibition Into the Black included mostly of painted wooden panels.  It was clear from the geometric forms painted on crates that space was a major concern.

The most powerful piece to me here was the triptych in the second room. Broad black diagonals defined the surface plane while also obstructing our view of the fictive space in the “painting”.  The black bands become obstacles in the path of the indeterminate figures trying to make their way through a fictive space behind the bands. I felt a sense of constrictive power as well as a feeling of struggle. At once abstract and figurative the triptych conveys in formal terms the anguish and struggle of the migrant.

A tall, handsome and elegantly dressed young man, Serge spoke to us about his work. While his concerns here are the exploration of formal and philosophical blackness he speaks also of his experience of escaping the terrible situation in Burundi and moving to South Africa and of the challenges he encountered along the way. I did not like everything I saw but the caliber of the work and his ability to convey through formal means his experience without being literal is impressive and very effective. He also shows at Marianne Boesky in the USA.

Later that evening during a casual dinner at a local haunt I had a wonderful talk with a very smart and talented young artist who works mostly with photography: Mame-Diarra Niang. I checked out her work, which is being shown this month at the Stevenson gallery in Cape Town and I liked it. Creating mostly urban landscapes Mame is expressing her dismay at how much certain places she has known in Africa while she was growing up are losing their specificity and flavor and becoming sterile.  Her views become abstract spaces and instead of transporting us into another world we are lead to look back into oneself.

On the photography front, my main focus, we met Jodi Bieber who came to talk to us at the Goodman Gallery about her work and in particular her latest series: Real Beauty and Quiet and Soweto. Real Beauty and Quiet are series of portraits of anonymous people who agreed to pose in their homes. In Real Beauty the women pose in their underwear and chose the setting. Here Jodi is challenging the media’s idea of what is real beauty by capturing on camera the pride of these multi shaped women from all age groups.

In Quiet she aims to give us an alternative view of masculinity: the men she photographs are posing in moments of vulnerability.

In Soweto she captures on her camera how life really is in the township of Soweto; not the image of a poor community riddled with violence but of a town where people from all walks of life, rich and poor, live, work and play well beyond the township’s history of struggle with apartheid. I could remember my first time in Soweto arriving with my own preconceived notion and being surprised to see the variety of housing ranging from rudimentary housing to spacious mansions with gardens.

Diane arranged for us to make a quick stop at the fashion designer Marianne Fassler’s home and shop. Marianne is a hoot and her very personal collection of South African art is an expression of her temperament: eclectic, colorful, fun, adventurous. She collects with her husband but he acknowledges that he mostly differs to her taste, as she is the creative one!

No minimalism here; instead there is a focus on crafts, imagination, color, and shapes. We left with big smiles on our faces. Her fun loving, inclusive and generous nature was such a booster!

This was a lead up to the Joburg fair, which was a bustling affair, at least the night of the opening. It was good to see a lot of youngish South African looking to buy art and being quite involved with the dealers. Portia Zvavahera was the star of the fair having won the 2014 FNB Art Prize. A young painter from Zimbabwe Portia lives in Harare and is a mother and a wife when she is not painting. Her expressionist canvases which combine textile-like printed patterns with an almost child like way of painting, are inspired by her dreams and speak of her experience with marriage, childbirth and parental love.

Her figures brightly clad are set against richly colored backgrounds. They consistently adopt postures that convey deep emotion tempered in a way by the child like way of painting, which allows us some detachment to what is being depicted and witnessed. Portia clearly loves color and I very much like the way she incorporates those decorative patterns with the otherwise loose wash.

William Kentridge was signing his latest book – 2^nd Hand Reading – at the Goodman gallery.  Each typed page has one of his many drawings printed on it. I bought a copy since I am into buying artist books these days! Much cheaper than buying an original of each!

While waiting for my book I lingered in front of Kuzanai Chiurai’s photograph called Moyo. An absolutely stunning picture it brings up in me a mix of emotion. I felt mesmerized by the deep sorrow and accusation inherent in the young woman’s gaze and deeply moved, yet the bleeding corpse made me at the same time slightly recoil. A beautiful young woman holds the bleeding body of a young man. The formal composition references the classical composition of the Pieta but here the scene is set in a lush jungle and lit by an artificial light that suggest divine lighting. This image comes from his film Moyo and makes reference to the public acts of violence and in particular the Marikana strike: the wildcat strike in the South African Leonmin mine which resulted in many workers death. The title means Air and the image captures the moment in death when the air or spirit leaves the body. He incites the viewers to mourn.

Chiurai, born and raised in Zimbabwe experienced first hand the violence of the Mugabe regime. Now living and working in South Africa his mixed media work tackles the political and social issues that concern his world.

I love this other image, which is part of a body of work called The State of the Nation. In highly theatrical and provocative images he critiques the corrupt ways African revolutionary leaders have dealt with their newfound powers. Intent in sparking a conversation with the African youth in their context he creates images that are dark and brash in their imagery and humor.

Fighting my way through the crowd – it certainly was not like that two years ago – I stopped at Brundyn + Gonsales to look at Mohau Modisakeng’s new photographs that had been part of a large installation for his debut solo exhibition “Ditaola” at Brundyn + . As with his earlier work, Mohau’s images refer to some mysterious ritual whereby he addresses his concerns with South Africa’s tortuous and violent history and current times while delving into personal memories. In this particular instance it is the memory of his mother recounting her dreams. Mohau has a penchant for the symbolic and the theatrical and in these photographs his body becomes the means by which he constructs narratives that address his personal and political concerns.

Set against a green background wearing a pleated animal skin kilt, he stands like an archetypal warrior holding a gun, a symbol of violence and a dove, symbol of peace. The dove departs spraying white dust and returns in other images. Is this a meditation on the precariousness of peace? I feel I am witnessing a mysterious ritual to which I have only small inklings.

Totally different in tenor and style, I liked also at Brundyn +, Jody Paulsen’s bright and colorful wall hangings and photographs. Paulsen is fascinated with fashion and commodity culture ie: branding, clichés in advertising. He is able to mix quite effectively African and European influences in his eclectic vision. I particularly liked his photographs of figures against patterned fabrics. While they were not portraits they certainly referenced the traditional African Studio portrait now turned into a pop version of itself and hollowed out of its original intent.

I was in the mood for fun obviously that day since my eye and mind got mesmerized with Cristina de Middel installation “The Afronauts”. A body of work that includes photographs, drawings, and sculptures, The Afronauts mixes facts and fiction to tell the story of Zambia’s 1964 space project. Cristina is a half -Spanish, half-Belgian photojournalist turned artist who got inspired by the optimism of this story. It is a refreshing antidote to the troubled image one has of the continent. Following Zambia’s independence in 1964, Edward Makuka Nkoloso, the founder and sole member of Zambia’s National Academy of Science, Space Research initiated a mission to send the first African astronauts to Mars. It came to nothing but I love that Nkoloso believed that he could and even tried! I love this capacity to dream and hope!

I had seen part of the work in Arles the previous year and was thrilled to see it again. This time I talked to the artist, and bought her book.

Walking to the bar to get my glass of rose wine I stopped in shock ( at first) when I saw two sets of couples, naked – two men and two women – each couple holding a mirror between them and moving around the mirror as if in some kind of contest. This dance Ritual Resist was choreographed by artist Kendell Geers.  ” A man and a woman engaged in the martial art of vanity. Neither can see the other and both struggle against their own reflection in a square mirror.” K-G. Why shock? Mainly because I was not expecting this. Many of us obviously were captivated abut some reason no pictures were taken or at least posted anywhere!

I was charmed by Namsa Leuba’s fashion photographs exhibited by LagosPhoto ( part of the festival).  Bright, cheeky, witty and technically brilliant her images focus on African identity perceived by Western eyes. She recontextualises African artifacts to fit a western perspective and in doing so challenges both cultures preconceived ideas of the other.

Another artist to follow is Patrick Willocq whose work was shown at the Arles Photo Festival ( Les Rencontres d’Arles). A few booths were showing his work.

Photography is an important medium in South Africa and particularly in Joburg. The famous photographer David Goldblatt started the Market Photo Workshop in 1989 and artists like Jodi Bieber made their start at the workshop. We went to visit it and met some of the young artists there. See next post.

After four days going around Joburg where one does little walking since it is so spread out I was looking forward to going on many bush walks in Zambia, our next destination. I also needed to hear the sounds of the bush. However I was not relishing a 4 am wake up call to catch a 6:30am flight to Lusaka. The rest of the group stayed in Joburg a few more days before going down to Cape Town for more art viewing.