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
About this Item
accompanied by a digital Latitudes Online certificate of authenticity, signed, dated 2022, inscribed with the title and medium
Notes
This three-panel work, Nkqo-nkqo-nkqo eChumalaka (knock-knock-knock in Chumalaka), presents an Eastern Cape setting with a small goat pen in the foreground and a village on the nearby hill. The dominant colours are earthy browns, muted dark green shrubs, grass, and a blue sky. The scene depicts a familiar and ongoing form of human engagement with land in South Africa, a mix of community life and limited commercial intervention. A series of busy lines criss-cross and break up the picture. These are made from digital records of the artists’ movements while planning the work – a combination of walking, driving, and working in the studio. Conceptually they are connected to the traces people make as they walk or move through a landscape, but they are also linked to the history of marking out new territory using dividing lines, markers, and maps, which serve as a kind of invention of reality – like the image that Zwelendaba and Stanwix have pieced together here.
This lot has been selected by Curatorial Voice: Camilla van Hoogstraten.
View all Xhanti Zwelendaba and Ben Stanwix lots for sale in this auction
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