Michaelis alumnus Haroon Gunn-Salie in New York and London
Haroon Gunn-Salie’s 17 crouching figures, Senzenina 2018, honouring the miners shot in the Marikana massacre of 2012 will be displayed in London’s Regent’s Park in July for Frieze Sculpture 2018. The sculpture was created for New York’s New Museum Triennial earlier this year.
The work depicts 17 life-sized, hunched figures, modelled after the striking mine workers slain at Marikana in one of the most lethal uses of force by South African security forces against civilians since the 1960s. The work debuted earlier this year at the New Museum Triennial in New York. In an interview with the Cape Times, Gunn-Salie said that taking 'Senzenina' to London is a crucial step given that the city is home to the head offices of Lonmin, the Marikana platinum mine operators. “This is an opportunity to take the unresolved issues to their doorstep,” said Gunn-Salie, “and it’s the next step of mobilisation, I believe.”
Gunn-Salie completed a BAFA at Michaelis in 2012, receiving the Barbara Fairhead Prize for Social Responsibility in Art in 2010. In 2015 he was awarded the first ever SP-Arte/Videobrasil prize, an award to encourage and publicise the work of young artists whose lines of research focus on the debate surrounding the global south. He is represented by Goodman Gallery.
https://mg.co.za/article/2018-02-23-00-artist-tells-what-we-have-done