Tag: south african art

Mamasan – serving Cape Malay cuisine and South African art

Mamasan Eatery, with its distinctive blue, yellow, pink and green colours, has brought the Bo-Kaap to the corner of 1st and 7th Street in Melville. They are serving up food inspired by traditional Cape Malay flavours with locally sourced ingredients. In addition to delicious food, you are served an experience of South African art and design which has been hand-picked by co-owner Dawood Petersen.

This experience begins before walking through the door. Through his various travel experiences, Dawood explained that there is often a disconnection between the look of a space and the food that it served. Visual artist Chloë Hugo-Hamman was commissioned to create a window display that would be able to make this connection for Mamasan. The images of ingredients that frame their large windows reference South African food and exploring holistic and spiritual practices. With most of the work coming from Dawood’s private collection, the space has been laid out in such a way that it feels homely with pink fleece blankets draped across the back of chairs, pot plants hanging from the ceiling and piles of books on the shelves.

The art on display represents “my identity, my culture, where I am from…the art relates to food or people culturally,” Dawood explained. The counter produced by Johannesburg-based design company Dokter and Misses has a direct link for Dawood with its cutout of Table Mountain. The macramé chairs made by Jade Paton’s House of Grace also has evoke a sense of homely nostalgia and familiarity with the weaving reminding him of how pot plants were hung up at home. Every piece comes with a story as he has a connection with each of the artists and designers he buys work from.

While there was no particular formal curatorial structure to how the art should be displayed, it was important to find a balance between mediums. There are paintings by Lady Skollie, textile work by Lawrence Lemaoana, conceptual work by Megan Mace among others. The desire was to not only have work that can be put in a frame. “I think the frame itself sometimes supersedes the art you know,” Dawood explained.

Dawood emphasized the importance of encouraging an interest in art, particularly in South African art. This fits in with his attitude around buying local and supporting people of colour. Not only does it contribute to allowing artists to be able to live off their work, but artists are examining topics that are socially and politically relevant in South Africa. As a result it the conversations that people have about the works has them engaging with these issues. The Mamasan team have also managed to do this with the Beautiful Boys long-sleeved tshirts they have hung up on their bathroom doors. The shirt with ‘Beautiful Boys’ on the chest is often associated with the men’s bathroom and the shirt with the large ‘B’ printed on the back assumed to stand for ‘babes’ often thought to be the ladies bathroom. However, the bathrooms are unisex and so the tshirts play conventions around gender-specific architecture.

The Mamasan team have created a space where one can engage with art without feeling intimidated by the white cube space.”You can view it for free. It is here you know. You don’t have to go to a museum [or gallery]. Like Laura [Lady Skollie] her work is on display here and she has her show in London. It’s that connection,” Dawood explained.

Make sure to visit Mamasan to get a taste of Cape Town and to view some of the art they have on display.

31 January 2017
Carly Whitaker – exploring romance online through digital art

I caught up with digital artist, researcher and curator Carly Whitaker about her latest work and the digital art space in South Africa.

“My work often amounts to expressing who I am and using the medium to maximize that expression,” Carly expressed. Her work explores on how we behave online, our relationship to the online as well as how our relationships with one another manifest online.

Carly views her research and writing as a way to critically interrogate digital mediums. “I am extremely invested in finding out what it means to other practitioners to use the medium and how it assists them, especially in South Africa where it is an emerging medium and emerging field.”. Her work is influenced by the internet as a whole, particularly how content manifests online. She expressed how she is constantly overwhelmed and falling in love with the internet. The content of her work is largely influenced by music. “I find that a lot of the way in which we behave in relationships and behave online comes through in song lyrics,” Carly explained. Her creative process usually starts off with her creating a gif. Thereafter she translates that into a gif box or a physical manifestation of a gif.

EMOJIKINDALOVE (2016) – animated gif

Her latest installation, titled All the feels for you, is a collection of work was part of a group exhibition that took place at No End Contemporary Art Space. Extending from her fascination with the online and the specific kinds of communication that it engenders, these works look at the feelings you get when you first meet someone, and you quite literally have all the feels for them. Carly explores how within that initial spark there is a constant negotiation between partners, and how online platforms are embedded within that negotiation. The specific work You text nothing like you look references Frank Oceans song ‘Good Guy’. This gif is about figuring out how someone else speaks and how they function online, specifically through messaging. What can be challenging is figuring out how to translate these digital artifacts into physical spaces. Carly has been trying to work through this, describing All the feels for you as being the closest she has gotten to re-creating in a physical space how we interact with our computer screens. Carly gave the curators at No End instructions on how to install her works in such way that they collectively reflected the way one behaves within one’s computer screen with multiple tabs open. “So they are individual works in their own right but collectively they become the sum of their parts,” Carly explained. She is thinking about taking this work further to challenge herself in terms of display.

All of the feels for you (2016) – installation

On the 26th of January Carly will be part of another group exhibition at No End titled What’s in it for you?. The two works she will be showing, Algorithmic Kinda Love and I am a unicorn, are both gifs and are simple explorations of concepts that she is developing in more complex ways in other works. Algorithmic Kinda Love is a response to her earlier work EMOJIKINDALOVE which looked at how we use emojis to express affections. This latest work looks at how we try to find love through algorithms in online spaces such as Tinder and other dating sites. I am a unicorn relates to this work conceptually in that it explores how people try to find the perfect partner. “So we are all searching for unicorns and we all think we are unicorns,” Carly explained.

Investing in all aspects of the digital art practice, Carly also runs an online residency program called Floating Reverie. She invites various artists once a month to be part of this two week long program. “The idea is that they work on their research and their process and their concept every day. And each day repetitively somehow doing something or building on a concept that they have done,” Carly explained. She is also planning to start an online gallery called Blue Ocean.

Carly notes that there are few practitioners that are looking at the medium at the moment. However, she is excited about the growth the digital art space has seen and will see in the future. For her, seeing big galleries such as Stevenson and Goodman getting behind artist who are using the medium is evidence of the growing recognition and support both for artists and the medium. Keeping up to date with the work of current graduates and seeing the way that people use apps such as Instagram and Snapchat as a creative outlet is encouraging for her and the future of digital arts in South Africa.

Follow Carly on Instagram to get an idea of the kind of concepts and processes she is working through. Check out her website to have a look at what she describes as a more retrospective, consolidated view of her work.

So many times, so many ways (2016) – generative code

25 January 2017
Art as the reflections of our times and the collector the preserver of our history: In discussion with Gallery MOMO creative director

Art is more than just about the business that generates it. Gallery Momo is more than just a conduit for the sale of art but also the creation of works that seeks to challenge the ideas of those who enter her walls. Set in the leafy suburbs of Parktown North this gallery offers both collectors and art enthusiasts the opportunity to engage with works that:

… keep pushing the boundaries of local and international markets. The gallery continues to support local and international young-and-upcoming talent through its renowned residency program. This program allows artists to exchange ideas and engage with the new environment (Gallery Momo, 2016).

I got to meet up and interview the creative director Odysseus Shirindza of Gallery Momo.

Motlatsi Khosi (MK): Please explain how Gallery MOMO started and how you (Odysseus) became a part of its creative team?

Odysseus Shirindza (OS): The gallery was founded in 2003 by Monna Mokoena to fill the gap in the market for a contemporary African art. I joined the gallery late 2015 as the operations manager.

MK: What have been some of the major hurdles and blessings in running the gallery and what advice would you give to black creatives and entrepreneurs when engaging the business aspect of the arts.

OS: At the end of the day a business is business regardless of your background, the challenges are the same however that is not to say that overcoming those challenges is equally easy for everyone. I’m fairly new with the gallery so the impact of my contribution only time will tell. But the in the time I’ve been with the gallery, working with the artists that we represent has been a great blessing and the challenge is also managing the very same artist that make my work enjoyable.

MK: What role do you see black collectors playing in the art word? Is it all business or do they also have some sort responsibility to the creative arts within South Africa and the continent.

OS: The role of the black collector is very important especially at this point in our civilization. To quote Nina Simone, “An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times”. Then in that case the collector’s duty is to preserve what the artists produce. The more black collectors buy in to what the artists produce, the more we can be secure as a people that that our place in history is safe and that our stories will be told with integrity because our is in the custodianship of people who have vested interest. It is our job as black people to collect and preserve our own history and/ through art.

MK: Art and creatives from this continent are making waves and gaining a new thrust in popularity, both locally and internationally. What role does Gallery MOMO play in fueling this next wave in the consumption and appreciation of the arts?

OS: Africa and African art and artists have become very recognizable on the international art scene. Our main duty as a gallery still remains to break down barriers and expose the artists that we represent at best light and at the right platforms.

Readers can learn more about the Gallery Momo and keep up to date with their upcoming exhibitions on their website, Facebook page and on Instagram.

24 January 2017
Claiming public space: Artist Sethembile Msezane on history and commemorative practices

History is often spoken about as one story which unfolds on a linear timeline. Artist and Masters student Sethembile Msezane thinks about the impact of this understanding of history in relation to commemoration, monuments and memory. When she completed her undergraduate studies she knew she had to respond in some way to the discomforts she was feeling about living in Cape Town – feeling as if she did not belong or exist as Black woman. So she began public performances in 2013.

The invisibility of Black women’s histories in public spaces stirred up her fixation and fascination with memory and monuments, as well as her public performance work. Her work highlights the plurality of history; pointing out that there are and always have been multiple stories unfolding at the same time. She works against the constant privileging of one history and a cutting out of others, specifically the histories of Black women. “I realized that there was an interplay between what histories were remembered and what histories are forgotten based on which symbols we choose to put in the landscape,” Sethembile explained. Her work engages with key debates on how the commemorating of history that has taken place in South Africa has been constructed through erasure.

Amanzamtoti (2015)

She has been frustrated and disturbed by constantly being confronted by white, colonial hyper-masculinity, and the few stories of women portrayed as symbols of piousness in the image of white women. “And if there was any kind of symbolism or remembrance attributed to Black women it was plaques which were on the floor which [allows people to] step over our histories,” Sethembile expressed.

Untitled (Youth Day) 2014

In her first performance on Heritage Day 2013 and the beginning of her ‘Public Holiday’ series she started to explore symbols which could have been attached to public holidays as well as trying to engage with what was happening in the landscape sociopolitically at the time of her performances. “[These performances are] living sculptures because they look like they are statues but they can never be because my body is living even though I am statuesque,” Sethembile explained. Her most recognized work, ‘Chapungu- The Day Rhodes Fell’ (2015), forms part the larger body of work called ‘Kwasukasukela‘ that looks at the reimagined bodies of a 90s born South African woman. This performance saw the personification of the Zimbabwe bird monument, that is in the Rhodes’ Groote Schuur Estate, stand tall in front of a crowd as the Rhodes statue was removed from the UCT campus. Originally thinking that she had put Chapungu to bed, Sethembile admits that “she [Chapungu] keeps wanting more”. She has plans to bring her back to life later this year in the form of a film part of another body of work.

Chapungu- The Day Rhodes Fell (2015)

The beaded veil she wears in all her performances works as a device to take away the attention from her face and her identity. “I am embodying other women in trying to bring their histories to the forefront so we can start thinking more about Black women’s histories,” Sethembile explained. This encourages viewers to think about who the woman in the performance could be. This is imperative as it refutes the continuous disavowal of the presence and stories of Black women in public spaces by allowing people to identify the women in their lives within her performances. “I guess these performances were a way in which we could start to identify and claim spaces as women so we can also start seeing ourselves within these spaces,” Sethembile explained. The veil also references her culture which brings a part of herself back into her performances.

At the moment she is working on completing her Masters in Fine Art with her show coming up at the end of this month. The show will display her wide range of work including images of her performances, sculptures and an installation.

“My work is definitely an experience. It’s best to be in the space to experience it. Whether it is through performance when I am in public spaces or in looking at the textures and the materials that I use such as hair, such as wine, and salt. It is a sensory experience. It is quite an experiential body of work”.

To keep up with her work check out her website or follow her on Instagram.

Thobekile (2016)

18 January 2017