Curatorial Voices: African Landscapes, Past and Present
Live Virtual Auction, 19 February 2024
Curatorial Voices: African Landscapes, Past and Present
About the SessionFrom Thomas Baines to Jake Aikman, Curatorial Voices: African Landscapes, Past and Present will showcase art by pioneering modernist and trailblazing contemporary artists, spanning 175 years of visual landscape painting on the African continent. This comprehensive auction reveals a nuanced understanding of the diverse cultural, historical, and environmental contexts that have shaped artistic representations of the landscape. Through an examination of various themes, the auction seeks to engage viewers in a dialogue that transcends time and space, connecting past representations to contemporary perspectives. The auction attempts to engage with the diversity of artists that have shaped and continue to shape the depiction of Africa through time.
The auction invites viewers on a captivating journey through the artistic expressions that mirror the multifaceted nature of African terrain. Through meticulous curation and insightful analysis, the catalogue aspires to be a valuable resource for scholars, art enthusiasts and anyone eager to embark on a thought-provoking exploration of Africa’s rich and complex artistic heritage.
Curatorial Voices
Recognising the dynamic discourse surrounding African Landscape, both past and present, the auction features texts by invited contemporary curators responding to the auction selection and themes. As external voices, they provide critical insights into the complexities of the landscape theme. By amplifying these contemporary perspectives, the exhibition seeks to bridge the gap between traditional representations and the ever-evolving discourse on the role of African art within the global art market.
Azza Satti, Independent Curator, Kenya
Azu Nwagbogu, Founder and Director of the African Artists’ Foundation (AAF), Nigeria
Camilla van Hoogstraten, Head of Sales, Latitudes Online
Ugoma Ebilah, Curator, Gallerist & Founder of Bloom Art
Nkgopoleng Moloi, Independent Curator, South Africa
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About this Item
accompanied by a digital Latitudes Online certificate of authenticity, signed, dated 2020, numbered 1/7, inscribed with the title and medium
Notes
Thero Makepe uses personal and public archives to explore the minds of different family members during crises, separation, and ennui with exquisite empathy behind the lens. Makepe is a descendant of jazz legend John Mothopeng and Zephania Mothopeng, the second president of the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC). The present lot is part of a photographic series We Didn’t Choose to be Born Here, where Makepe traces his family history, exploring everything from their activism and exile during (and after) apartheid to their inherited love of jazz. We Didn’t Choose to be Born Here relays a family’s holistic and individual experiences of and with resistance, beauty, struggle, love, heartbreak, discovery, and rediscovery. Each portrait is a brief, delicate portal into an individual’s innermost world. Each landscape is a testament to enduring strength, love and sacrifice.
Makepe's Robben Island University speaks to his own family's experiences in the prison. Robben Island’s limestone quarry was a gathering and learning space for inmates who wished to share their respective knowledge and skills with one another. The limestone quarry is recognised as a crucial part of our nation's history, largely owing to its facilitation of the transfer of vital information in a time when education was denied to and/or restricted for Black people and people of colour by the apartheid government. Today, the very place that enabled this transfer of information now represents invaluable inter-generational knowledge in and of itself.
This lot has been selected by Curatorial Voice: Camilla van Hoogstraten.
Exhibited
Sakhile&Me, The Botswana Pavilion: Maš(w)i a Ditoro (tsa Rona), Frankfurt, Germany, 25 April to 4 June 2022.
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