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
Stevenson, Johannesburg, Being, 4 June to 7 July 2007, another example from the edition exhibited.
Provenance
The Gary Eisenberg Collection.
Notes
“Being is an exploration of both our existence and our resistance as lesbians/women loving women, as black women living our intersecting identities in a country that claims equality for all within the LGBTI community, and beyond.”1
Zanele Muholi gained prominence in the mid-2000s with photographs that documented and affirmed the lives of Black lesbians in South Africa. As a member of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women, a support organisation for Black lesbians, Muholi highlighted the injustices faced by this community. Their growing body of work rejected photographic clichés and binaries often associated with Black women, instead focusing on intimate and loving representations of their community. Starting in 2003, Muholi made portraits of lesbian couples in Gauteng. Often made indoors and on beds, the improvised quality of these early portraits yielded to a more formal approach in which subjects posed outdoors. This portrait blurs these finer distinctions, and in turn reflects Muholi’s dynamic approach to collaboration, as well as ethics. “I have never approached a stranger to come and be part of my photography,” Muholi, then a Hillbrow resident, explained.2
1 Stevenson (n.d.) Zanele Muholi Being, online, https://archive.stevenson.info/exhibitions/muholi/being.htm, accessed 28 August 2024.
2 Sean O’Toole (2006) 'Zanele Muholi: Are You Feeling A Little Uncomfortable?' Business Day Art, March, page 12.
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