Perspectives on Africa
Live Virtual Auction, 17 February 2025
Perspectives on Africa
About the SessionStrauss & Co is pleased to present Perspectives on Africa, a sale that explores the complexity, beauty, and fluidity of perspectives through African art and works by artists with strong ties to the continent. The sale coalesces the rich and varied connections between Africa and its artistic expressions, presenting works that span figuration, landscape, and abstraction, inviting collectors to engage with powerful narratives emerging from Africa's evolving perspectives. The works reflect layered meanings, both as a method of representing depth and dimension as a way of framing our understanding of the world. Work by Contemporary artists reflects on the historical foundations of Modernist artists, exploring themes such as identity, belonging, urbanisation, and re-encounters with tradition, while the sale transitions to Modernist interpretations of Africa, exploring the complexity of colonial encounters, post-independence aspirations, and indigenous practices. Building on Strauss & Co’s commitment to developing a strong local photography market, the sale includes an artist focus on the work of social documentarian Paul Alberts, whose images captured poignant narratives of everyday life, particularly in Cape Town. These works sit alongside David Goldblatt and Zanele Muholi, whose visceral images explore themes of identity, social justice and the multifaceted realities of African life.
About this Item
Exhibited
Krone and WHATIFTHEWORLD, Tulbagh, Home Strange Home, curated by Reservoir Projects, 11 June to 24 September 2022.
Notes
The present lot is one of Stephané Conradie’s intricate and ornate assemblages, made from discarded and rearranged objects. These items
are often found in working-class homes – such as those on bedside tables, in glass cabinets, or as trinkets and porcelain figurines marked with the unspoken label ‘do not touch’. Conradie’s work reflect on South Africa’s troubled history with colonialism, displacement, and uprootedness. These objects which exist in excess, become valuable to those who have been uprooted and when the impermanence of home exists. The uncertainty of home elevates the status of these objects. What does one leave with when displacement and migration occur? What does one pass down when a home no longer exists?1
The glass objects that form part of the arrangement of the present lot, are glass bottles and ornaments of varying sizes, a blue dolphin reminiscent of a 21st birthday celebration key, a humble glass bird and various animal figurines, all clustered together and turned inwards towards a dish, to form a bouquet of objects. Together, a feeling of mourning and nostalgia is evoked. These objects, out of active use, are transformed by Conradie, elevating the forgotten and ordinary into a monumental form.
1. David Mann (2024) ArtThrob, Stephané Conradie’s ‘Wegwysers deur die Blinkuur’, online, https:// artthrob.co.za/2024/08/20/sentimentalassemblages-stephanie-conradies-wegwysersdeur-die-blinkuur/, accessed 19 January 2025.
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