Curated by Rael Salley, the Exuberance Project Exhibition is presented in association with Michaelis Galleries.
The Center for Historical Reenactments (Kemang Wa-Lehulere, Donna Kukama, Sanele Manqele, Gabi Ngcobo and Jabu Pereira) presents an installation work entitled Not a Storm in a Teacup After All, based on a residency titled Fr(agile) at the Alf Kumalo Musuem in March 2012.
MTN New Contemporaries finalist and Sasol New Signatures Winner Mohau Modisakeng – a sculptor with recourse to performance, video and photography as the concept requires – presents Untitled (Triptych), in which the artist himself embodies the need for confrontation to resolve differences.
Triggered by the reaction to his 2010 exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, Gae Lebowa, for which he was compelled to research this subject, photographer George Tebogo Mahashe’s Dithugula tša Malefokane: Seeing other people’s stories responds to the concerns raised by his awareness of the concept of poverty porn within contemporary photographic practices, and its relations to 1930s ethnographic photography.
Zanele Muholi, who will present EyeMe, also co-facilitates the Ikhaya (Home) as part of the Photo XP community project with Lindeka Qampi, featuring a collection of 60 hours of photographic memories that were taken in different areas of Khayelitsha by seven women, each of the women created a body of work around a specific aspect of life in their immediate environment. Participating artists – all of them black lesbians between 21 and 31 years of age, from various places within and outside of Khayelitsha – are Gcobisa Nogova, Hlomela Msesele, Pearl Mali, Phato Mkosana, Phumeza Nkoanyane, Ntombozuko ‘Nzura’ Ndlwana and Velisa Jara.
Fragments of Tahrir, a video installation curated by Nicole Sarmiento with participating artists Justin Davy, Aryan Kaganof, Jasmina Metwaly, Philip Rizk and Dylan Valley also forms part of the Exuberance Project Exhibition. Using the work of interdisciplinary video and performance artists, the video works touch on the ongoing uprisings across what has been called ‘North Africa’, with visual and aural elements used to explore shreds, fragments, dissonances and imaginaries; rather than overarching narratives.
The Callings, a walking tour around key sites in the centre of the city, including projections on walls of historic sites around Church Square, sound installations and performances, is devised by Memory Biwa, Nicole Sarmiento and Tazneem Wentzel in collaboration with with Jethro Louw, Tracey Rose, Weaam Williams, Toni Stuart, Mawande Zenzile, Justin Davy, Kyle Shepherd, Lucelle Campbell, Dylan Valley, Sara Gouveia, Dani Swai, Ala Hourani, Monwabisi Xhakwe and Bradley van Sitters. The walking tour will start at Mandela Rhodes Place at 19h00 on Saturday 12 May and is described by the curators as follows: Traveling by taxi around the city, I see them, I hear them calling me. The callings make sense when I find out what has actually happened in a specific place. Sometimes after reading about a place of torture, I go to the city and walk to find the exact coordinates of the place. In this performative, visual, aural/oral installation and site-specific intervention, we walk spaces of the city of Cape Town. We walk through spectral landscapes that recall a past as much passed, as lived in the present. We bypass memorialised sites that form part of the matrix of ‘heritage’ tourism towards sites that form part of the everyday of urban street traffic, yet remain unmarked and silent(ced); imagining what the people looked like, what they wore, what they sounded like, and their feelings.
The Exuberance Project Exhibition will be open daily from 11am – 7pm, from 13 – 20 May at Mandela Rhodes Gallery.
For further information on the exhibition, please contact Michaelis Galleries on +27 21 480 7170 / cara.vanderwesthuizen@uct.ac.za
The Exuberance Project aims to foster new views and fresh understandings of creativity in contemporary Africa, through consideration and celebration of what is extremely good, effusive and uninhibitedly enthusiastic. A particular application within the creative context of Southern Africa explores aesthetic capacities, as they appear in specific instances of the visual, textual, sound, performance, digital and virtual arts. Convened by Raél Jero Salley and Jay Pather; and presented by the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA), this weekend event will consist of a symposium, performances, exhibitions, panel discussions and film screenings at Hiddingh Hall, University of Cape Town (UCT) Hiddingh Campus, Orange Street, Cape Town and surroundings from 11 – 13 May 2012.
The Exuberance Project updated programme is available for download.
For more information, contact the GIPCA office on 021 480 7156 / fin-gipca@uct.ac.za. Bookings and ticket sales through Computicket.
The Exuberance Project video recordings
Start: 12 May ’12 11:00 am
End: 20 May ’12 7:00 pm
Cost: Free
Category: Exhibition
Organizer: GIPCA
Email: fin-gipca@uct.ac.za
Venue: Mandela Rhodes Gallery
Phone: +27214807170
Address: Google Map Corner of Wale Street and St George's Mall, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8001, South Africa