To argue for or against. To refute, to testify. To admit guilt or defend innocence. The Public Hearings online festival approaches women’s rights issues through a lens of artistic research practices. Co-curated by Annett Busch and Marie-Hélène Gutberlet in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, the festival was prompted by a research trip to South Africa….
“Johannesburg, a city fathered by gold, mothered by money, then commandeered by white men with cruelty and greed.” “This is what I call redistribution, via back door.” Jerusalema, 2008 There’s something about the collage artworks created by artist Benni Mahlangu who makes work under the pseudonym Izinyembezi, that elicits unnamed feelings that have moved through…
The past few weeks have been really difficult for most of us. To paraphrase Baldwin, to be Black and relatively conscious in this world is to be in a constant state of rage. Between dealing with my own feelings about the police brutality here in South Africa, as well as the world over, and thinking…
There has always been an intrepid yet quiet sense of energy in all that Duduza Mchunu makes as an artist, a channel for her own spiritual essence, her means of communicating revelatory symbolism is through the varying mediums that she employs as a multi-disciplinary artist. Duduza’s advocacy for artistic expression as a form of healing…
How we began to conceptually define these ideas in relation to the group exhibition was to gather a group of diverse artists who work and think through different mediums and have diverse approaches to process and the spaces in which they produce in. When we did this it was evident that the idea of what…
2020 is a big year for South African director’s making films about evil and cursed farmhouses! First out were the cosmic terrors of Richard Stanley’s Color Out of Space, that was followed by the Afrikaans drama Griekwastad—based on the horrific true life crimes of Don Steenkamp. And now, Netflix has released Harold Holscher’s 8 (also…
Dust-filled shelves of forgotten memories. The paperwork of people and places half-remembered in the recesses of a long-lived experience. The allure of the archive beckons. It draws you in; through the rustling of paper and hushed tones. Three postgraduate students from the University of the Witwatersrand heard and answered the call. Exhibitionary Feels: Re-membering the…
Abstract The piece that is to follow forms part of the work produced for our distributed residency with A4 Arts Foundation, an unfolding conversation with the assemblages of Johannesburg’s city space. A first for both entities; working together from a place of distance. City Deep A Virtual Affect Practice, is the working title for the…
Home or domestic space — has taken on additional meanings during South Africa’s COVID-19 lockdown. These spaces are seen to be places of safety and comfort but also of danger, concern and nostalgia. Feelings have oscillated between feeling trapped and restricted to feeling protected. Back of the Moon, an offsite show through the Stevenson Gallery…
Bringing ideas into being, can perhaps at times- feel like the most didactic endeavour of human pursuit; governed by a myriad of disciplines that have fashioned the ecologies of artistic landscapes through century’s past – each with its own essence and capability to illustrate a message. We orate, narrate and create with conscious or unconscious…
My interest in art began with a crayon and as I grew older my innate performative self, began asserting space. Though never a student of drama, it is this sense of performativity that lingers in all my creative tasks. I drew, and I painted, and I sculpted and I sang — long before I ever…
My week in the Goodman Gallery’s online viewing room: worrying about shebeen queens, the pleasures of home viewing and new coping mechanisms On Monday, a police officer with an automatic weapon was prowling about the entrance of my building. Unnerved, I rubbernecked over the balcony and saw that he was standing guard over a forensics…
