Day Sale: Re/Presentation of the Figure
Timed Online Auction, 4 - 20 March 2024
Re/Presentation of the Figure
About the SessionAll human bodies are shaped, fashioned and deciphered according to the prevailing cultural, social, and political order which inform the notion of the human form within a particular society.
There is an enduring presence of body images in the history of art often with entrenched visual conventions. Figuration is a powerful conceptual thread linking historical, traditional, modernist, and contemporary art in Africa. Since the early 90s the practice of art and how the body is expressed, viewed, and received entered a new paradigm. Artists broke away from 20th century conventions, challenged boundaries and interrogated what it means to be within social, class, racial, sexual and gender paradigms and explored identity within these cultural contexts.
Re/Presentation of the Figure exemplifies this conceptual thread as modern and contemporary artists express the body though painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics, and woven images.
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
About this Item
signed with artist's initials; signed and accompanied by an artist's statement on a Magnum label adhered to the reverse
Notes
‘These photographs came about after a friend emailed me an image taken on a cellphone through a car window in Lagos, Nigeria, which depicted a group of men walking down the street with a hyena in chains. A few days later, I saw the image reproduced in a South African newspaper with the caption The Streets of Lagos. Nigerian newspapers reported that these men were bank robbers, bodyguards, drug dealers, debt collectors. Myths surrounded them. The image captivated me. Through a journalist friend I eventually tracked down a Nigerian reporter, who said that he knew the ‘Gadawan Kura’ as they are known in Hausa (a rough translation: hyena handlers/guides’).
A few weeks later in Abuja, I found them living on the periphery of the city in a shantytown – a group of men, a little girl, three hyenas, four monkeys and a few rock pythons. It turned out that they were a group of itinerant minstrels, performers, who used the animals to entertain crowds and sell traditional medicines. The animal handlers were all related to each other and were practicing a tradition passed down from generation to generation.’ —Pieter Hugo
Provenance
Magnum Square Print Sale, Online, 2017.
Private Collection.
Exhibited
Magnum Square Print Sale, Great Journeys, 30 October to 3 November 2017, in celebration of Magnum’s 70th anniversary and Aperture Foundation’s 65th.