During the 1990s, South Africa underwent major social and political changes. While the country’s 1996 post-apartheid constitution was the first in the world to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation, the LGBTQIA+ community remains a target for violence and prejudice to this day. In the early series Only Half the Picture Muholi aimed at depicting the complexities of gender and sexuality for the individuals of the queer community.

The collection includes moments of love and intimacy as well intense images alluding to traumatic events in the lives of the participants. Muholi also began an ongoing visual archive of portraits, Faces and Phases, which commemorates and celebrates black lesbians, transgender people and gender non-conforming individuals. Each participant looks directly at the camera, challenging the viewer to hold their gaze, while individual testimonies capture their stories. The images and testimonies form a living and growing archive of this community in South Africa and beyond.

The exhibition will include several other key series of works, including Brave Beauties, which celebrates empowered non-binary people and trans women, many of whom have won Miss Gay Beauty pageants, and Being, a series of tender images of couples which challenge stereotypes and taboos. Images like Melissa Mbambo, Durban also attempt to reclaim public spaces for black and queer communities, such as a beach in Durban which was racially segregated during apartheid. Within these series, Muholi tells collective as well as individual stories. They challenge preconceived notions of deviance and victimhood, encourage viewers to address their own misconceptions, and create a shared sense of understanding and solidarity.

More recently, Muholi has begun an acclaimed series of dramatic self-portraits entitled Somnyama Ngonyama (‘Hail the Dark Lioness’ in Zulu). Turning the camera on themself, the artist adopts different poses, characters and archetypes to address issues of race and representation. From scouring pads and latex gloves to rubber tires and cable ties, everyday materials are transformed into politically loaded props and costumes. The resulting images explore themes of labour, racism, Eurocentrism and sexual politics, often commenting on events in South Africa’s history and Muholi’s experiences as a South African black queer person traveling abroad. By enhancing the contrast in the photographs, Muholi also emphasises the darkness of their skin tone, reclaiming their blackness with pride and re-asserting its beauty.

Zanele Muholi is co-curated by Yasufumi Nakamori, Senior Curator and Sarah Allen, Assistant Curator with Kerryn Greenberg, Head of International Collection Exhibitions, Tate and formerly Curator, Tate Modern. The exhibition is organised by Tate Modern in collaboration with the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, Gropius Bau in Berlin and Bildmuseet at Umeå University. It will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue and a programme of talks and events in the gallery.

Zanele Muholi

Tate Modern , London, United Kingdom

5 November 2020 – 7 March 2021

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1 – Black Refractions Highlights From The Studio Museum In Harlem, 2019

An authoritative guide to one of the world’s most important collections of African-American art, with works by artists from Romare Bearden to Kehinde Wiley. The artists featured in Black Refractions, including Kerry James Marshall, Faith Ringgold, Nari Ward, Norman Lewis, Wangechi Mutu, and Lorna Simpson, are drawn from the renowned collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem. Through exhibitions, public programs, artist residencies, and bold acquisitions, this pioneering institution has served as a nexus for artists of African descent locally, nationally, and internationally since its founding in 1968. Rather than aim to construct a single history of “black art,” Black Refractions emphasizes a plurality of narratives and approaches, traced through 125 works in all media from the 1930s to the present.

An essay by Connie Choi and entries by Eliza A. Butler, Akili Tommasino, Taylor Aldridge, Larry Ossei Mensah, Daniela Fifi, and other luminaries contextualize the works and provide detailed commentary. A dialogue between Thelma Golden, Connie Choi, and Kellie Jones draws out themes and challenges in collecting and exhibiting modern and contemporary art by artists of African descent. More than a document of a particular institution’s trailblazing path, or catalytic role in the development of American appreciation for art of the African diaspora, this volume is a compendium of a vital art tradition. Definitely an excellent book to read or reread during this period of Covid-19.

2 – Zanele Muholi, Somnyama Ngonyama

Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness includes 100 self-portraits created by one of the most powerful visual activists of our time. In each of the images, Muholi drafts material props from her immediate environment in an effort to reflect her journey, explore her own image and possibilities as a black woman in today’s global society, and – most important – to speak emphatically in response to contemporary and historical racisms. As she states, ‘I am producing this photographic document to encourage people to be brave enough to occupy spaces, brave enough to create without fear of being vilified … To teach people about our history, to re-think what history is all about, to re-claim it for ourselves, to encourage people to use artistic tools such as cameras as weapons to fight back’.

More than 20 curators, poets and authors offer written contributions that draw out the layers of meaning and possible readings to accompany select images. They include Renée Mussai, Unoma Azuah, Milisuthando Bongela, Ama Josephine Budge, Cheryl Clarke, Fariba Derakhshani, Andiswa Dlamini, Christine Eyene, Tamar Garb, Thelma Golden, Sophie Hackett, M Neelika Jayawardane, Peace Kiguwa, Mapula Lehong, Sindiwe Magona, Napo ‘Popo’ Masheane, Hlonipha Mokoena, Jackie Mondi, Pumelela ‘Push’ Nqelenga, Oluremi C Onabanjo, Ruti Talmor, Christie van Zyl, Carla Williams and Deborah Willis. Powerfully arresting, this collection is as much a manifesto of resistance as it is an autobiographical, artistic statement. Definitely an excellent book to read or reread during this period of Covid-19.

3 – Kwame Brathwaite: Black Is Beautiful

In the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, Kwame Brathwaite used his photography to popularize the political slogan “Black Is Beautiful.” This monograph―the first ever dedicated to Brathwaite’s remarkable career―tells the story of a key, but under-recognized, figure of the second Harlem Renaissance.

Inspired by the writings of activist and black nationalist Marcus Garvey, Brathwaite, along with his older brother, Elombe Brath, founded the African Jazz Arts Society and Studios (AJASS) and the Grandassa Models (1962). AJASS was a collective of artists, playwrights, designers, and dancers; Grandassa Models was a modeling agency for black women, founded to challenge white beauty standards.

From stunning studio portraits of the Grandassa Models to behind-the-scenes images of Harlem’s artistic community, including Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln, and Miles Davis, this book offers a long-overdue exploration of Brathwaite’s life and work. Probably a beautiful art book to read or reread during this Covid-19 period and beyond.

4 – Making Africa by the late Okwui Enwezor

“The future belongs to Africa, because it seems to have happened everywhere else already”—Okwui Enwezor

“Making Africa” takes a fresh look at African design. For the first time, we have a book that focuses on creative accomplishments on the continent, without being obsessed with the usual tropes of recycling, humanitarian design or traditional crafts. Instead, “Making Africa” shows a new generation of designers who use their work as a tool for economic, political and social change and therefore also to create a new future for the continent. Their creative output defies all definitions of genres – crossing over classical fields such as furniture design, product design and typography to encompass digital media, art, photography, architecture and film.

A large section of the catalogue is dedicated to documenting work by over 120 protagonists of Africa’s new creative epoch – including Cyrus Kabiru, Cheick Diallo, Mário Macilau, Francis Kéré, David Adjaye, Kunlé Adeyemi, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Robin Rhode, Alaforu Sikoki, Selly Raby Kan and many more. The historical and theoretical background is explored in essays and discussions with Okwui Enwezor, Koyo Kouoh, Edgar Pieterse and Amelie Klein, among others. These are complemented by statements from around 70 other experts from Africa, who met at interviews and think tanks in cities such as Cape Town, Johannesburg, Lagos, Dakar, Nairobi and Cairo.

This is a book about the future of Africa and about a new, more open way of understanding design – which means it is also a book about what design can achieve in the 21st century.

5 –  The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion by Antwaun Sargent

In The New Black Vanguard: The featuring of the Black figure and Black runway and cover models in the media and art has been one marker of increasingly inclusive fashion and art communities. More critically, however, the contemporary visual vocabulary around beauty and the body has been reinfused with new vitality and substance thanks to an increase in powerful images authored by an international community of Black photographers. In a richly illustrated essay, Sargent opens up the conversation around the role of the Black body in the marketplace; the cross-pollination between art, fashion, and culture in constructing an image; and the institutional barriers that have historically been an impediment to Black photographers participating more fully in the fashion (and art) industries. 

Fifteen artist portfolios feature the brightest contemporary fashion photographers, including Tyler Mitchell, the first Black photographer hired to shoot a cover story for American Vogue; Campbell Addy, founder of the Nii Agency and journal; and Nadine Ijewere, whose early series title, The Misrepresentation of Representation, says it all. Alongside a series of conversations between generations, their images and stories chart the history of inclusion, and exclusion, in the creation of the commercial Black image, while simultaneously proposing a brilliantly reenvisioned future. Photographs by Campbell Addy, Arielle Bobb-Willis, Micaiah Carter, Awol Erizku, Nadine Ijewere, Quil Lemons, Namsa Leuba, Renell Medrano, Tyler Mitchell, Jamal Nxedlana, Daniel Obasi, Ruth Ossai, Adrienne Raquel, Dana Scruggs, and Stephen Tayo and including conversations with Shaniqwa Jarvis, Mickalene Thomas, and Deborah Willis are featured. Definitely an excellent book to read or reread during this period of Covid-19.

6 – A new republic by Kehinde Wiley

Filled with reproductions of Kehinde Wiley’s bold, colorful, and monumental work, this book encompasses the artist’s various series of paintings as well as his sculptural work which boldly explore ideas about race, power, and tradition. Celebrated for his classically styled paintings that depict African American men in heroic poses, Kehinde Wiley is among the expanding ranks of prominent black artists such as Sanford Biggers, Yinka Shonibare, Mickalene Thomas, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye who are reworking art history and questioning its depictions of people of color.

Co-published with the Brooklyn Museum of Art for the major touring retrospective, this volume surveys Kehinde Wiley’s career from 2001 to the present. It includes early portraits of the men Wiley observed on Harlem’s streets, and which laid the foundation for his acclaimed reworkings of Old Master paintings by Titian, van Dyke, Manet, and others, in which he replaces historical subjects with young African American men in contemporary attire: puffy jackets, sneakers, hoodies, and baseball caps.

Also included is a generous selection from Wiley’s ongoing World Stage project; several of his enormous Down paintings; striking male portrait busts in bronze; and examples from the artist’s new series of stained glass windows. Accompanying the illustrations are essays that introduce readers to the arc of Wiley’s career, its critical reception, and ongoing evolution. Definitely an excellent book to read or reread during this period of Covid-19.

7 – Contemporary African Art since 1980 by the late Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu

Contemporary African Art Since 1980 is the first major survey of the work of contemporary African artists from diverse situations, locations, and generations who work either in or outside of Africa, but whose practices engage and occupy the social and cultural complexities of the continent since the past 30 years. Its frame of analysis is absorbed with historical transitions: from the end of the postcolonial utopias of the sixties during the 1980s to the geopolitical, economic, technological, and cultural shifts incited by globalization. This book is both narrower in focus in the periods it reflects on, and specific in the ground it covers. It begins by addressing the tumultuous landscape of contemporary Africa, examining landmarks and narratives, exploring divergent systems of representation, and interrogating the ways artists have responded to change and have incorporated new aesthetic principles and artistic concepts, images and imaginaries to deal with such changes.

Organized in chronological order, the book covers all major artistic mediums: painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, installation, drawing, collage. It also covers aesthetic forms and genres, from conceptual to formalist, abstract to figurative practices. Moving between discursive and theoretical registers, the principal questions the book analyzes are: what and when is contemporary African art? Who might be included in the framing of such a conceptual identity? It also addresses the question of globalization and contemporary African art.

The book thus provides an occasion to examine through close reading and visual analysis how artistic concerns produce major themes. The main claim of this book is that contemporary African art can be best understood by examining the tension between the period of great political changes of the era of decolonization that enabled new and exciting imaginations of the future to be formulated, and the slow, skeptical, and social decline marked by the era of neo-liberalism and Structural Adjustment programs of the 1980s. These issues are addressed in chapters covering the themes of “Politics, Culture, Critique,” “Memory and Archive,” “Abstraction, Figuration and Subjectivity,” and “The Body, Gender and Sexuality.” Definitely an excellent art book to read or reread during this period of Covid-19.

8 – African Textiles Today

African Textiles Today illustrates how African history is read, told, and recorded in cloth. All artifacts or works of art hold within them stories that range far beyond the time of their creation or the lifetime of their creator, and African textiles are patterned with these hidden histories. In Africa, cloth may be used to memorialize or commemorate something – an event, a person, a political cause – which in other parts of the world might be written down in detail or recorded by a plaque or monument. History in Africa can be read, told, and recorded in cloth.

Making and trading numerous types of cloth have been vital elements in African life and culture for at least two millennia, linking different parts of the continent with each other and the rest of the world. Africa’s long engagement with the peoples of the Mediterranean and the islands of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans provides a story of change and continuity. African Textiles Today shows how ideas, techniques, materials, and markets have adapted and flourished, and how the dynamic traditions in African textiles have provided inspiration for the continent’s foremost contemporary artists and photographers. With a concluding chapter discussing the impact of African designs across the world, the book offers a fascinating insight into the living history of Africa. It is definitely a good art book to read or reread during this period of Covid-19.

9 – Mickalene Thomas I Can ́t See You Without Me 

Presenting paintings of some of the artist’s key models and muses, I Can’t See You Without Me illuminates the work of Brooklyn painter Mickalene Thomas (born 1971). Culling from art history and popular culture, Thomas creates scintillating portraits that deconstruct the highly charged connections between sitter, artist and viewer.

Whether depicted as classically composed 19th-century odalisques, Afro-adorned vixens of blaxploitation films or as a powerful maternal figure yearning for social mobility, the recurring models in Thomas’ compositions (almost exclusively women of color) convey a spirit of strength and self-confidence. Across this archetypal array, it is both their contradictions and kinships that make the black female body such fertile terrain for the artist’s ongoing investigations. By casting herself, her late mother and other formidable women in her life as models, muses and collaborators, Thomas particularizes her distinctive oeuvre of portraiture. Focused yet expansive, the catalog both reasserts and further contextualizes issues of identity, sexuality and agency in Thomas’ work that have only become more nuanced and palpable over time. Probably an excellent art book to read or reread during this Covid-19 period and beyond.

10 –  Recent Histories : Contemporary African Photography and Video Art from the Walther Collection 

Recent Histories: Contemporary African Photography and Video Art from The Walther Collection is an art book that unites the perspectives of 14 contemporary artists of African descent, who investigate social identity, questions of belonging, and an array of sociopolitical concerns—including migration, lineage, the legacies of colonialism and Calvinism, and local custom—as well as personal experiences in Africa and the African diaspora.

By highlighting specific creative approaches and studying the sites and collective platforms that enable these practices, this book examines the critical mass that has gathered across generations of African image-makers and lens-based artists. In accentuating different perspectives within this generation and considering the infrastructures that often link them, Recent Histories provides a point of entry to engage critically with current practices, and opens up considerations about how to conceptualize the frameworks of contemporary African photography and video art. Probably one of the best art book to read or reread during this Covid-19 period.

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An abstract woman painted in black sits on top of a red goat. She wears a delicate lace top while on her head are stitched together leather straps that hang down like hair. The work, entitled The Journey (2020) by DRC-born Cape Town-based artist Patrick Bongoy, becomes more interesting when we see that she is depicted with the same hooves as the goat. It was displayed on the wall of Ebony/Curated, a gallery with branches in Franschhoek and Cape Town, during the eighth edition of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair. The work, made with hessian, acrylic and rubber inner tubes, portrays the artist’s signature whimsical world that explores themes of migration, alienation and loss of one’s homeland. Also a fashion designer, Bongoy’s work speaks directly to today’s global state of environmental crisis. “My work speaks in response to the global reality of literal and figurative environmental pollution,” he says. Hard to miss after his startling sculpture of a figure at this year’s inaugural Stellenbosch Triennale of a man made in disused rubber hunched over as if trying to free himself from the confines of a pieces of fabric. The piece, which sold in the range of $6,000 and $10,000, was indicative of a strong presence of socio-political work at the fair, challenging present and past ideas of identity and historical narratives as the African continent jets into a new future.

The eighth edition of Investec Cape Town Art Fair returned to its home at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, with a new mission to endow the fair with a stronger African focus. “This is an international art fair where we bring in galleries from Europe and the US but we tried this year to focus more on galleries from the African continent,” said fair director Laura Vicenti. 

Out of the fair’s 107 exhibitors this year, 49 galleries were from the African continent and 58 were international, underlining a greater emphasis on the local. In previous years European blue-chip galleries such as Perrotin and Galerie Templon participated. Such names were replaced this year with new galleries from North Africa and the Middle East, including Lawrie Shabibi from Dubai, Galerie Veronique Rieffel from Ivory Coast and Tunisian Yosr Ben Ammar Gallery and AGORGI, among others. In addition, leading museums and institutions from around the world were present, including A4 Arts Foundation, ANO Institute of Contemporary Arts, FOLIO by Alserkal Arts Foundation, Fondazione Merz, Friends der Pinakothek der Moderne, Iziko South African National Gallery, the Centre Pompidou, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, The Norval Foundation, Palais de Lomé, Skissernas Museum – Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art, Tate Modern African Acquisitions Committee, WEDGE Curatorial Projects, Yerevan Biennial Art Foundation and Zeitz MOCAA.

Yet the challenging socio-economic landscape did provide cause for concern for many participants as well as the fair’s management. How does one host a contemporary art fair in a country where the local currency continues to plunge? 

“The economic landscape of South Africa is challenging,” said Vicenti. “Local collectors are very supportive but it is true that they are facing an economic crisis in South Africa so I tried to balance the situation by having international collectors from all over the world. The number of international collectors increased this year. In comparison to last year there is no comparison. But I am trying hard to have more collectors from Africa.” 

Local dealers were divided, however, on whether the buying power was coming from South Africa or abroad. “Of course we are happy when people from elsewhere come to South Africa to buy art—but the most exciting thing about this year’s Cape Town Art Fair was that the vast majority of our sales were to South Africans,” said Joost Bosland, a director at Stevenson. “It is amazing to see local support for our artists grow year on year.”

South African powerhouse galleries Stevenson, Blank Projects, SMAC Gallery and Goodman Gallery all reported swift sales on the first day of the fair. At the booth of Stevenson was an all-star group showing of emerging and established artists from the continent, including Meleko Mokgosi, Robin Rhode, Zanele Muholi, Neo Matloga and Paulo Nazareth and Simphiwe Ndzube. The gallery reported swift sales in the range of $2,000 and $75,000 and the works, like that of Bongoy’s, once again married the otherworldly and magical realm of dreams with the references to the often harsh reality of the present. 

Several of the fair’s biggest sales took place at Goodman Gallery’s booth, which confirmed approximately 25 sales in total on the opening day ranging from $2,000 to $500,000. The booth showed a line-up of some of their biggest names, including Ghada Amer, Yinka Shonibare…“We had a great diversity in terms of the spend and also the collectors that acquired the works,” said the gallery’s Anthony Dawson. “This is thanks hugely to Fiera Milano, the organizers of the fair who have cultivated a great program and collector base that is not only diversifying audiences to contemporary African art but bringing new brand new collectors into the country.”

“Cape Town is a stronghold for a lot of German citizens who have holiday homes here and they often come to the fair,” continued Dawson. “In addition, through the Italian organizers many Italian collectors were also in attendance but there seems to be strong focus of people from Western Europe coming more and more to Cape Town. We also had collectors from Angola and Nigeria as well. Overall, I’d say the majority of collectors were European.”

Taking place concurrently were two auctions for contemporary and modern art in Cape Town: The Aspire x Piasa Auction, which took place on 14 February and Strauss & Co’s Contemporary Art sale, which took place the day after. The former told of the first time a South African auction house had teamed up with a European equivalent to host a sale of African art on the continent. “Both auction houses made a big effort to bring French collectors to Cape Town which also added to a new audience in the city at the fair,” added Dawson. “With Piasa’s francophone influence we also so collectors arrive from West Africa that the South African audience has never been exposed to.”

The fair was also the place to forge long-term business relationships. First-time participant Galerie Veronique Rieffel from Cote d’Ivoire who showed a series of haunting works by Swiss-French photographer Manuel Braun of an Ivorian dancer in Egypt said she sold works largely to European collectors passing through Cape Town in the range of €3,500 and €6,000. “I forged excellent relationship with local collectors which deserve to be deepened,” said Rieffel. “I have formed a very beautiful partnership with a gallery in Cape Town, South gallery, and we have agreed to continue to show Braun’s work with them in situ.”

The recent edition of Investec Cape Town Art Fair testifies that a buoyant market for African contemporary art in South Africa can be achieved even during the most economically challenging of times—but through a concerted effort of local and international collectors, galleries and artists. 

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In collaboration with The Walther Collection, the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC) in Toronto present a major exhibition exploring African photographic portraiture through the perspectives of women, both as sitters and photographers. Guest curated by scholar Sandrine Colard, The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture features contemporary works by female artists alongside twentieth-century studio portraits and early colonial images and albums, exclusively from The Walther Collection’s holdings.

Throughout the history of photography, African women’s bodies have been repeatedly objectified and fetishized. Furthermore, the African female gaze is one of the most under-studied subjects in histories of visuality—a frequent assumption of powerlessness has caused researchers to overlook these women’s capacity to shape their own representations. On rare occasions when this viewpoint has been examined, women’s gazes are described as vital only to their own “limited” perspective. Drawing on the uniquely expansive range of images in The Walther Collection, The Way She Looks provides a timely historical overview of African female experience in photography and shifts the focus towards women’s gazes, highlighting female acts of looking that challenge the male-dominated narrative of the medium. With over 100 works by both female and male practitioners from across Africa, the exhibition emphasizes the multiple and nuanced ways women see and present themselves, both as photographic subjects and in positions behind the camera.

The second section features women’s portraits since the 1950s by notable West African photographers, such as Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keïta. From the middle of the twentieth century, African women became regular patrons of the portrait studios that were flourishing, particularly in cities. Desiring to be represented in front of the camera, women sitters styled themselves, carefully chose their outfits, commissioned the photographer, and performed during studio sessions.

The patriarchal imprint of male-owned studios was therefore frequently challenged by the self-fashioning agency of the women stepping in front of their lenses. At the same time, documentary photographers began to record the African female experience in a period of rapid social, cultural and political change as many nations prepared for and achieved independence. This was especially true in the decades surrounding the end of apartheid in South Africa, when numerous image-makers—white and black, but still predominantly male—captured self-aware subjects in moments of hardship, joy, resistance, and tenderness.

The final section highlights a number of significant African female and non-binary artists who have emerged since the 1990s, including Yto Barrada, Jodi Bieber, Zanele Muholi, Lebohang Kganye, Grace Ndiritu, Nontsikelolo “Lolo” Veleko, Sue Williamson, and Mimi Cherono Ng’ok. Exploring a wide array of subjects, from feminist, queer, and gender issues to history, kinship, migration, memory, and loss, many of the works made by these artists challenge conventional understandings of African female photographic representation. As the imaging of black female subjects continues to be a site of reductive and denigrating perceptions, and as a new wave of women’s voices rise to reclaim their fair share of humanity, these artists intervene upon some of our age’s most pressing conversations.

This exhibition is curated by Sandrine Colard, an art historian, writer, and curator based in New York and Brussels. A specialist of modern and contemporary African arts (PhD Columbia University), Colard is a professor at Rutgers University-Newark and has been appointed Artistic Director of the 6th Lubumbashi Biennale 2019, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Colard is currently at work on a book about the history of photography in the DRC (awarded 2019–2020 Ford Foundation Fellowship).

The Ryerson Image Centre’s (RIC) mission focuses on the research, teaching and exhibition of photography and related media. It is an active partner within the academic fabric of Ryerson University, the cultural network of greater Toronto, and the national and international artistic community. Its exhibition program addresses topics of social, cultural, aesthetic and historical concern from a variety of contemporary perspectives. Additionally, its Peter Higdon Research Centre conducts and facilitates inquiry into primary resource materials and offers workshops, lectures, symposia and publication programs. The RIC maintains a collection of photography spanning the medium’s history, as well as several artist and journalism archives—including the renowned Black Star Collection of twentieth century photo-reportage.

The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture

Photographs from The Walther Collection

Ryerson Image Centre’s (RIC)

September 11 – December 8, 2019

33 Gould Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5B 1W1 Canada

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The Zeitz MOCAA Collection houses a unique and extensive body of works by some of the continent and its diaspora’s most exciting established and emerging artists. The exhibition, which includes a selection of these works, will open on 7 November 2019, taking up all gallery spaces on Level 4. This forms part of a recent reimagining of the museum’s galleries and spatial organisation, with exhibitions in this space changing annually.

Titled Two Together, the show is built around major themes explored by artists from Africa and its diaspora represented in the collection, and each gallery contains a pair: either two objects, or multiple works by two artists, or two major themes – either in dialogue, as counterpoints or in complementary ways. As couples do, in comedic duos or in romance, the exhibition embrace a rigorous engagement between objects and ideas.

“We wanted to explore what happens when two things come together,” explained Senior Curator, Storm Janse van Rensburg. “Two photographers can subvert a gaze, whileprobing issues around representation, presence, omission, authorship and voyeurism. Speaking from contrasting geopolitical vantage points, two can highlight the perpetual and impeding undertone of violence still manifesting in present-day psyche. The numerous lines between collective memory, imagination and folklore are blurred when two artists use material to make visible intangible heritage.”

“This exhibition presents works from the Zeitz MOCAA Collection in a new way. Whilst some works will be familiar to regular visitors to the museum, the curation of the exhibition allows them all to be experienced anew.” 

Koyo Kouoh, Executive Director and Chief Curator at Zeitz MOCAA.

The exhibition includes a diptych by Isaac Julien, as well as pairings of and conversations between works by Zanele Muholi and Mouna Karray; Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Joël Andrianomearisoa; Nicholas Hlobo and Taiye Idahor; Sethembile Msezane and Glenn Ligon; Leonce Raphael Agbodjélou and Athi-Patra Ruga, as well as Mishack Masamvu and Lungiswa Gqunta.

“It feels like a fresh and exciting way to relook at our permanent collection. The goal of the museum has always been to build a cohesive collection that is as representative as possible of Africa and the diaspora, with strong political, social, environmental and personal messaging. This is demonstrated in this exhibition,” says Koyo Kouoh.

Two Together

7 November 2019 – 25 October 2020

Curators : Storm Janse Van Resnburg, Tandazani Dhlakama, Sakhi Gcina, Tammy Langtry, Precious Mhone

Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA)

Level 4, Collections Galleries

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‘Rock My Soul borrows its title from the eminent black feminist scholar and writer bell hooks’ 2003 book, in which she investigates the role of black self-esteem in empowering a body politic both culturally and politically. She writes: “without self-esteem everyone loses his or her sense of meaning, purpose, and power”.

The exhibition aims to meditate on how artists respond to conversations around figuration, abstraction and self- representation in contemporary art, and affirm, with a certain urgency and eloquence, their sense of esteem against established art canons. Their works traverse aesthetic and geographic borders and histories, as well as concepts such as domesticity, political resistance, symbolic repertoires of intimacy and trans-cultural entanglement.

The group show will gather new and historical works by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Sonia Boyce, Karon Davis, Zanele Muholi, Wangechi Mutu, Frida Orupabo, Howardena Pindell, Betye Saar, Khadija Saye, Tschabalala Self, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Some theorists have rightly advocated that the postmodern status of art has created a common philosophical ground on which race, nationality and other particularities of the artist’s circumstances are not determining of the reading and valuing of works. On the other hand, since conceptual art, the discursive dimension of artworks has become an inescapable territory to address social, political and cultural issues. This exhibition proposes that questions of gender and race are as pertinent and more relevant than ever today.

By bringing together black female artists with particular interests in both figuration and abstraction, Rock My Soul explores the aesthetics of reparation and, at the same time, positions these works unapologetically by artists who may face or witness first-hand the alterity of difference. Their particular contribution conveys a radical re-imagining, one in which the canons and established parameters of culture, politics and history are questioned.’ – Isaac Julien, curator of the exhibition.

Exhibition 2 October–2 November 2019

Victoria Miro, 16 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW

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This is a recording of visual artist and activist Prof. Zanele Muholi on a documentary series—Art21. Muholi’s mission is ‘to re-write a black queer and trans visual history of South Africa for the world to know of our resistance and existence at the height of hate crimes in SA and beyond’.

In late 2018, Muholi commissioned 25 emerging artists to interpret photographic images from their self-portrait series Somnyama Ngonyama—an ongoing photographic series where Muholi has decided to turn the lens inwards as a way of speaking to the politics of race, class, gender and sexuality. This group of artists responded through their own personal creations and interpretations, shining light on ideas of collectivism and visibility. Works created by the artists were later displayed as part of an exhibition at the KZNSA Gallery, Ikhono LaseNatali, curated by Thobeka Bhengu and Bajabulile Dhlamini.

I had an opportunity to chat to the curators about this impactful intervention.

NM: Can you tell us about  the title of the show: IKHONO LASENATALI, what does it speak to?

Curators: Ikhono LaseNatali speaks to the ability or skills of artists in KwaZulu-Natal. The title of the show is daring and direct in acknowledging and affirming skilled artists in KwaZulu-Natal.

NM: How was the reception for this exhibition, particularly from the local Durban communities? Who seems to be engaging with the work?

Curators: The exhibition has been open for close to three weeks and the reception of the work has been more than what we expected. The education programme has attracted more schools, including township schools that Muholi and Inkanyiso Media have been working with around Durban. This has opened opportunities for young people who have never had the privilege of being in a gallery to access the space and engage with this important work. Different people have been engaging with the work, people of all ages, races and backgrounds. We are humbled by the response and thankful to the Durban community for responding to this work.

NM: What kind of conversations do these images (responding to Prof Muholi’s work) create? What do you believe happens in that process of translation?

Curators: The entire body of work (Somnyama Ngonyama) confronts systematic and political nuances through visuals; looking at politics of race, gender, blackness, beauty and personal experiences in social spaces and constructs. It confronts complex personal, political and social experiences through visual representations and articulations.

It is usually said that certain things are lost in translation; however in Ikhono LaseNatali- Somnyama Ngonyama interpreted, the work has not been lost in translation. Instead, it has been intensified and multiplied. The translations by the twenty five artists brought the voices of the artists themselves to the fore, in addition to the themes addressed by Somnyama Ngonyama as a body of work.

NM: I’m interested in the manner in which these interventions  begin to formulate ways to deal with inequality (race, sexual and gender), can you speak to this?

Curators: This kind of intervention is looking at making art spaces accessible to black artists, ensuring that younger generations can visit galleries and experience black artist’s work on the walls of spaces that were previously inaccessible to these artists. The intervention also provided monetary compensation for the commissioned artists and explored the idea of collectivism.

NM: Can you tell us about the programme in its entirety? (Labs etc?)

Curators: The exhibition in its entirety features Educational Programmes that are accessible to the public at no fee—the Public Walkabouts, Lab talks and Education Programme for schools.

The Public Walk-Abouts give insight to the work displayed in the exhibition and they allow direct interaction with the artists. Lab Talks are more interactive and engaging, where the artists share their journey, mediums, styles and materials with attendees. The programme is open to KZN schools and it has been a resounding success.

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