By FNB Art Prize winner Kudzanai Chiurai
This week Johannesburg becomes the centre of the African contemporary art world. The annual FNB Joburg Art Fair takes place from 7 – 9 September at the Sandton Convention Centre and this year’s promises to be the biggest so far.
Artlogic has curated and selected 28 galleries, 14 Special Projects and will be supporting four developmental programmes to transform the convention centre into the largest selection of African contemporary art to buy and view under one roof.
These are some not-to-be-misseds:
FNB Art Prize winner: Zimbabwean artist, Kudzanai Chiurai
The judges of this year’s FNB Art Prize were the Fiona Rankin-Smith and Julia Charlton of the Wits Art Museum, Paula Aisemberg of la Maison Rouge and Ross Douglas and Cobi Labuscagne from Artlogic. All galleries that take part in the Fair were given the opportunity to submit one of their artists for consideration. Kudzanai Chiurai was named the winner will showcase his work at this year’s Fair.
Born in 1981 in Zimbabwe, Chiurai is an internationally acclaimed young artist now living and working in South Africa. Boldly stenciled figures and anonymous text provide running commentary, leading viewers on a journey through his intricately painted turn-of-the century buildings, bustling streets and congested transit systems.
Chiurai has participated in a number of local and international group exhibitions, including the Dakar Biennale, Senegal; Africa Now, a travelling exhibition in Scandinavia; as well as New Painting, a local travelling exhibition in 2006. The Goodman Gallery has exhibited his work at Paris Photo 2009, the 2010 Armory fair in New York, and Art Basel Miami Beach 2009 and 2010. His work featured on two major international exhibitions in 2011: Figures & Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which has recently acquired Chiurai’s work for their collection.
For a man of few words, Kudzanai Chiurai is not afraid to speak his mind – which he does, loudly and brilliantly, through his art. His brutal honesty and fearless commentary on the status quo had him exiled from his homeland, Zimbabwe.
Despite sell-out shows, exhibitions abroad and his art hanging on the walls of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and in Elton John and Richard Branson’s homes, Chiurai remains unaffected: a cut-off observer, clearly speaking his truth. His only future agenda is to return home to Zimbabwe to teach kids about art.
Fair Featured Artist: Deborah Poynton
Artlogic and the Stevenson gallery present Deborah Poynton as this year’s Featured Artist. Poynton’s work entitled Arcadia comprises 11 paintings hung together tightly in a single room and creates the sense of standing in a decayed concrete folly at twilight and looking out through the pillars into a liminal, overgrown landscape that surrounds the viewer on all sides.
Pirelli Special Project: Pieter Hugo
Pieter Hugo has been commissioned by Pirelli to produce a series of artworks exploring of the notion of natural beauty. John Berger writes: “To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude.”
At the Salon of 1865 Édouard Manet presented his Olympia to the Parisian public. Manet eschewed conceptions of Venus and thus departed from the canonical understanding of the female nude. Crowds and critics were shocked by the absence of idealism. Pieter Hugo abandons the type of conventional nude romanticised by the Pirelli Calendar. This series rejects idealism, negotiates realism, subverts the classical and erotic traditions, and thwarts the scopophilia of the male gaze.
The participating galleries are: Gallery Momo – Johannesburg, Jack Bell – London, Fred Gallery – London, Goodman Gallery – Johannesburg, Cape Town, David Krut Projects – Johannesburg, New York, Gallery AOP – Johannesburg, Whatiftheworld Gallery – Cape Town, Barnard Gallery – Cape Town, Stevenson – Johannesburg, Cape Town, Everard Read Gallery – Johannesburg, Cape Town, Dylan Lewis Studio – Johannesburg, SMAC Gallery – Stellenbosch, Cape Town, Brundyn and Gonsalves – Cape Town, BaileySeippel Gallery – Johannesburg, Galerie Baudoin Lebon, Paris Kijk Galerie, Paris Art EG, Equatorial Guinea Ed Cross, London Art Space Gallery, Johannesburg Rooke Gallery, Johannesburg Heart Galerie, Paris Galerie Galea, L’Isle sur la Sorgue, South of France Erdmann Contemporary, Cape Town Artist Proof Studio, Johannesburg Bag Factory – Johannesburg, Omenka – Nigeria, Market Photo Workshop – Johannesburg, Artco Gallery – Germany.
Find the full programme of events at www.fnbjoburgartfair.co.za
By FNB Art Prize winner Kudzanai Chiurai
By FNB Art Prize winner Kudzanai Chiurai
3 Comments
Same ish different toilets. Africans portraited as savages.
what’s next?
If that’s your interpretation of the work, I don’t think you understand Kudzi’s subject matter.
No.