Represent Recommends: Africa Remix
We couldn’t believe the number of SUV’s lining up in a long wait to enter the grounds of the JAG in Joubert Park yesterday arvie – the number of people streaming into the gallery gave us a glimpse into an ideal world where art is as popular as sport. See our pics here. Have you spotted the numerous street posters featuring a colourful African pirate advertising the Africa Remix art exhibition? The marketing of this wonderful collection of 85 African artists from 25 African countries and the diaspora could not be more thorough – it is a MUST SEE and if you miss it, you miss out. The exhibition has been showcased to the world and now finds itself (appropriately) for the first time ever on African soil – however this is the last chance to catch it. It was quite overwhelming to step into a courtyard seething with people all listening to the speeches at the official opening of Africa Remix and we found ourselves preferring to wander around the enormous gallery poking our noses into all the installations, nooks, crannies and spaces… It is ongoing, unending, mind-blowing, fantastic… eventually, just before we hit sensory overload we decided to stop while we were ahead and come back another time for more. There is no way you can take it all in in one go. So make sure you pencil in a number of visits to the Joburg Art Gallery over the next few months to celebrate the wealth of some of the finest artist’s Africa has to offer – it’s on till September. See our pictures of the traffic, some of the art, the patrons and the speeches by clicking here. Africa Remix – which will be held at the Johannesburg Art Gallery from June 24 to September 30 – features the work of more than 85 artists from 25 countries on the African continent and the Diaspora. This is the first time it has been seen in Africa. Never before in the history of the continent has an exhibition of such magnitude focusing exclusively on Africa been shown to African audiences. Arriving to celebrate this unique occasion is the Cameroon-born, Paris-based curator and critic Simon Njami as well as number of artists including Goddy Leye, Samuel Fosso, Barthélémy Toguo, Bili Bidjocka and Pascale Marthine Tayou, Aimé Ntakiyica, Ingrid Mwangi, Antonio Ole, Benyounès Semtati, Mohamed El Baz, Mounir Fatmi, Dilomprizulike, Joël Andrianomearisoa, Myriam Mihindou, Cheick Diallo, Amal Kenawy, Moataz Nasr, Patrice Felix Tchicaya and Loulou Cherinet. South African artists included in the exhibition are Jane Alexander; Willie Bester; Wim Botha; Andries Botha; Tracey Derrick; Marlene Dumas; David Goldblatt; Jackson Hlungwani; William...
KINSHASA – the Invisible City
Do yourselves a favour and go and hang out at the Johannesburg Art gallery in Hillbrow next to Noord Taxi Rank& for suburbians it may feel a little hairy getting there but once you’re in it’s an amazing space to hang out in for a few hours. Just wind your windows up and do it. For more on the Johannesburg Art gallery click here … A friend of ours who affectionately calls it KIN, once said that Kinshasa was the scariest place that they had ever been to, but, he added, it also had an attraction to it that made him go back for more, despite his fear. This exhibition seems to examine this very ‘two-sided” experience of KINSHASA and sounds like a fascinating look at URBANITY in Africa. We encourage everyone to go to the exhibition to further inter-cultural understanding in Africa. GO GO GO. It opens on the 11 June. The Johannesburg Art Gallery is please to be hosting the exhibition: Kinshasa, the Imaginary City. The advent of this exhibition in Johannesburg is appropriate not only due to the increasing interest in various forms of urbanity especially in African cities but also because of the need for greater dialogue between the various communities in Johannesburg and other African cities. It is also relevant in light of the large number of Congolese in Johannesburg and the cultural influences that this influx has brought. The exhibition was commissioned and realized with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture of the Flemish Community for the 9th International Architecture Biennale of Venice 2004. The Belgian pavilion received the Golden Lion for the best country’s pavilion. Kinshasa, the Imaginary City is not solely focusing on the city’s material infrastructure or the urban colonial legacy. Rather, it comments upon Kinshasa’s urbanity, which exists beyond the city’s architecture. Underneath the surface of the material city lurks a second, invisible city that exists in the autochthonous mind as a mirroring reality of the visible world. The exhibition explores the constant transactions that take place between these two levels. The exhibition and the accompanying book are the culmination of many years of field research. This anthropological approach aims at stimulating the ongoing debate on the postcolonial African city as a salient site for the renegotiation of ‘modern’ citizenship and for the development of ‘alternative modernities’. RELIGIOUS TV CHANNELS Over the past decades Kinshasa has witnessed the rise of a whole range of Christian fundamentalist churches. Many of these churches have their own private TV channels, broadcasting religious music, masses and prayer sessions. The TV itself, omnipresent in the living room but also in more public...
We will be back!
