KAMIAR’S MONTHLY REPORT

It’s hard not to fall in love with Cape Town instantaneously. With a landscape that is both historically evocative and breathtaking in its environment, it’s no wonder that tourists from all over flock to its beaches and wine lands over the summer, and its over this time that the local art scene traditionally presents its best face.

A highlight for me was the recently opened solo exhibition at VOLTA alumni WHAT IF THE WORLD GALLERY by emerging artist Chris Soal. It’s hard to categorize Soal as ‘emerging’, as his long list of accolades and sophisticated work belie his 27 years. His practice is rooted in materiality using simple materials such as toothpicks, bottle caps and concrete. For this show and facilitated by a move into a larger studio space, Soal has pushed these materials to their extreme, in a scale unrealized in his prior work, and by doing so, elicits in the viewer an immediate physical response to these monumental pieces.

Two galleries that I will never leave off my city itinerary are Blank Projects and Stevenson. Across the street from each other in Woodstock, an originally industrial area, each space offers insightful shows with very different personalities.

Blank Projects’ minimalist show, How do you arrive at a place when your image arrives before you, is made up of only three works by Kevin Beasley, Dineo Seshee Bopape and Gerard Sekoto. Conceptually meditative, each piece sits in quiet dialogue with the other whilst forcing our direct attention in the absence of distraction – a welcome relief from the propagation of information and imagery online. In their smaller private viewing space hang the works of one of my all time favorite artists, Igshaan Adams, whose tapestry pieces are so intricately layered with beads, stones and shells. In contrast to Blank Projects’ sparse presentation, Stevenson – another VOLTA alumni – has a solo by Zander Blom called Garagism that explodes sketch-like paintings across the gallery walls and floor.

At Iziko – The National Gallery of South Africa, one of the most powerful works I have ever witnessed is Gabrielle Goliath’s This Song is For… Working in collaboration with a group of women and gender-queer led musical ensembles, Goliath’s installation returns to the popular convention of the dedication song. Each song that is re-performed is a dedication song chosen by a survivor of rape, and at a point in the song a sonic disruption is introduced, almost like a broken record skipping. The disruption pushes a physical endurance on both the performer and the listener, which inhabits a space of traumatic recall.

I popped in to Zeitz MOCAA to see Haroon Gunn-Salie’s open studio residence Line in the Sand (which due to Covid has been extended). Using part of the museum as a living exhibition, as well as a studio space, Gunn-Salie is certainly challenging both the institution and its audience. The Cape Town-born artists and activist often works on projects collaboratively manifesting as site-specific interventions, public artworks, film works and sculptural projects.

The Norval Foundation is a relatively recent addition to the Cape Town art landscape, having opened its doors 2018. In this short span the foundation has already played host to incredible shows including: William Kentridge’s sculptural retrospective; Wim Botha’s Heliostat; Lisa Reihana’s In Pursuit of Venus, Yinka Shonibare’s African Library and exhibitions by David Goldblatt and Ibrahim Mahama. On this visit, I was particularly excited to view the Zanele Muholi exhibition And Then You See Yourself, particularly since being unable to travel to London to attend her recent solo at the Tate. This show spanned a two-decade body of work through a particularly intimate curation.

Johannesburg and Cape Town have very different rhythms – while Cape Town is enveloped in the most unbelievable landscapes, Johannesburg is the bustling metropolis and soul of the country. Often underrated and sidelined as a tourist destination, Jo’Burg, our golden city, is a force to be reckoned with and an incubator for some of the most important voices in the South African art world.

There are artists’ studio complexes that sit right in the heart of the Johannesburg CBD – August House, Arts on Main and Victoria Yards. In a pre-covid world, the Open Studio Weekend would see these spaces come alive with crowds, music and fashion. Although these spaces seem a little more demure now, the creative communities that inhabit these spaces are keeping the energy alive.

As March 2020 brought with it the cloud of the pandemic, the Johannesburg Contemporary Art Foundation (JCAF) was on the precipice of opening its door. Neighboring the Holocaust Museum in Forest Town, the building itself is a work of art. Designed by Studio MAS, the foundation is located in a former electrical tram shed. JCAF is a non-profit organization whose stated mission is to play a role in globalizing contemporary South African art through academic research, museum exhibitions and a technology lab. Their inaugural show Contemporary Female Identities in the Global South is made up of five women artists – Bharti Ker, Nandipha Mntambo, Wangechi Mutu, Shirin Neshat and Berni Searle.

What made this viewing experience so completely unique was the welcome we received on arrival. After booking your private hour slot, you are greeted by the foundation’s small team including its chief curator Clive Kellner, and given the option of a guide to walk you through the show, or to use their specially designed App through unique internal architectural spaces purpose built for each show.

The Johannesburg gallery district has become concentrated in and around a suburb called Rosebank, where the established galleries each have an outpost. Goodman Gallery has recently launched the exhibition Everything Fits to Our Daily Needs, which is a physical iteration of their online platform initiative South South.

Just down the way from Goodman is the Jo’Burg space of Stevenson, having recently moved from the old CBD into a beautiful old JHB vernacular house with wooden floors and pressed ceilings. Serge Alain Nitegeka’s show Lost and Found recently opened and feels like a new step for the artist. He continues to explore intimate experiences of forced migration through painting and sculpture as ‘vessels of memory’.

Text and images: Kimberley Cunningham

To follow Kimberley’s journeys across the African continent, you can follow her at @kimbers_c

Follow @kammaleki and @voltaartfairs for more art insights.