Portraits of Land
An Afrovibes exhibition that presents new stories on land, history and the universal search for identity. Works from e.g. South Africa, Kenya, the Netherlands provide a diverse and personal presentation from artists about their relationship to their environment socially, politically and culturally. The works at the exhibition are from diverse artists, Fiercepop and the IZIKO Museums of South Africa. Co-curated by Cathal McKee & Ingrid Masondo.
This year Afrovibes, in collaboration with IZIKO Museums of South Africa, will bring together a special collection of visual arts / video work from South Africa. Work from, among others, William Kentridge, Steven Cohen, James Webb and Gerald Machone, which hmostly has not been shown in the Netherlands before. Their work can be seen during the festival at the Compagnietheater in Amsterdam and the Kunsthal Rotterdam, as part of the Portraits of Land exhibition.
Amsterdam | Compagnietheater
Thu 4 – Fri 6 October
Amsterdam | de Balie
Thu 4 –Sun 14 October
Rotterdam | Kunsthal
Sun 14 October
William Kentridge | Mine (1991) First time in The Netherlands
William Kentridge (SA) made his Drawings for Projection series in the nineties, in which he shows and visualises South African history of apartheid. Afrovibes presents one of his works from this series: Mine a 16 mm animated film. Through the two characters, businessman Soho Eckstein and artist Felix Teitelbaum, Kentridge explores the political landscape of national trauma and the deeper forces in a society of renewal and destruction.
William Kentridge's work includes animations, books, collages, performances and installations. For his films, he developed a unique process in which he errased and changed a single drawing while recording the changes with stop-motion camera work. The result is a hybrid of film and drawing that is highly praised internationally.
Compagnietheater Amsterdam 4 to 6 October; Kunsthal Rotterdam 13 & 14 October
Steven Cohen | Chandelier (2002)
Steven Cohen (SA) is a performance artist who stages interventions in the public domain. One of his most famous performances is Chandelier (2001/2002), in which Cohen, with high heels and dressed in a tutu, walked with a lit chandelier between the residents of a squatters' camp in Newtown / Johannesburg that was about to be evacuated. Chandelier was previously presented at Center Pompidou in Paris (2008), Holland Festival and Queer Up North in Manchester in 2009.
Compagnietheater Amsterdam 4 to 6 October; Kunsthal Rotterdam 13 & 14 October
James Webb | Le Marché Oriental (2009) First time in The Netherlands
The video installation Le Marché Oriental from James Webb (SA) is a 2-minute intervention in the Oriental Plaza of Cape Town. A disused mall from the time of Apartheid, designed to control the trade of Muslims in the Cape. In 2008, on the 4th day of Ramadan, sheikh Mogamat Murat of the Zeenatul Islam Majid Mosque in Cape Town was invited to sing the Adhan (call to prayer) in the empty remains of the building prior to the demolition of the shopping center. The acoustics of the building, an acoustics that no longer exist, is part of the artwork.
Kunsthal Rotterdam 13 & 14 October
Gerald Machona | Vabvakure (People from far away) (2012)
Vabvakure means 'people from afar' in Shona and is used in South Africa to describe a 'foreigner'. In 2008, a wave of xenophobic violence spread through South Africa. Many of the victims of this violence were Zimbabweans. The attackers often assumed that authentic South Africans are not black but lighter in color or fluently speak an indigenous language. This resulted in a number of South African victims who were 'coincidentally' too dark in skin color. Such convictions have made the distinction between 'insider' and 'outsider' in South African society increasingly difficult; who belongs and who does not, when are you a citizen and when not? Gerald Machona is a performance artist from Zimbabwe who works with sculpture, performance, new media, photography and film. In 2011 he was selected as one of the top ten young visual artists in South Africa.
Compagnietheater Amsterdam 4 to 6 October; Kunsthal Rotterdam 13 & 14
