The Curatorial
View my curatorial and collaborative projects
Access the online exhibition here
Listen to the curatorial statement here
Access my catalogue essay here
Press:
Exhibitionary Feels: Re-membering the FUBA Archive on Bubblegum Club
I co-curated this online
exhibition with my classmates
from my Curating Exhibitions
course. The exhibition was
based on our explorations of
the Federated Union of Black
Artists (FUBA) Archive
housed at the Johannesburg
Art Gallery.
Exhibitionary Feels: Re-membering the FUBA Archive
Experimentations in exhibitionary affect, archival practices and play
This exhibition took as its starting point the use of personas or
constructed figures as devices for interrogating the self in relation to time and collective identities. Audiences are invited into visual and auditory thought worlds that have been mapped out in a digitally constructed present. These constructed figures are gifted
supernatural qualities as they conflate the past and present with
fictional narratives to review history, and as a result, reconfigure
imaginings of our potential future. These figures are not simply reiterations of Marvel or DC characters, or copies resultant of Afrofuturistic methodologies. They are, instead, figures embedded in the South African political context, and provide an understanding of how the self and collective identities are understood in relation to the larger spatiotemporal landscape. The performative nature of these constructed figures grants the artists the ability to “prepossess their future and repossess this emergent present” (Coetzee 2016: 243).
Prepossessing the Future
An exhibition featuring the work of Natalie Paneng, Zana Masombuka and Lunga Ntila to explore the use of fictional personas as devices for interrogating the self in relation to time and collective identities.
Press:
AUTONOMY WAVE: Future 76 // Meeting the Artists on Bubblegum Club
Future 76 // In dealing with the colonial wound on Bubblegum Club
While in the position of Editor at Bubblegum Club I co-initiated the micro-residency Future 76. The prompt for this came from a desire to create a more meaningful engagement with young cultural producers in response to annual Youth day celebrations. The pilot programme in 2017 included the artists Jéad Stehr, Seth Pimentel, Cahil Sankar, Mariam Petros, and the artisti duo Abi & Claire Meekel. In 2018 the programme was expanded to include visits to important institutions and players within Johannesburg’s art ecosystem. 2018 residents were Natalie Paneng, Jemma Rose, Boipelo Khunou and Tash Brown.