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
Notes
Mahi Binebine’s work occupies a space where the deeply personal and the profoundly political intersect. The centeral composition of the present lot features a figure coiled into the fetal position. This universal gesture of vulnerability and self-protection suggests a return to origins, evoking themes of birth, trauma, and rebirth.
The figure’s placement within the expansive composition suggests isolation, but also openness. It is as though the figure is caught in a liminal space, a moment of introspection or suspension. This ambiguity invites viewers to reflect on their own states of vulnerability, drawing attention to the ways in which individual pain resonates within broader human experiences.
Below the figure, a horizontal panel of disembodied heads and hands introduces a dynamic interplay of forms and gestures. These fragmented body parts, rendered without hair or distinguishing features, create a sense of anonymity and universality. The hands, in various positions—open, clenched, reaching—speak to a range of emotional states: supplication, resistance, and solidarity. The heads become symbols of humanity stripped to its essence.
Binebine’s work is deeply informed by his Moroccan heritage and his engagement with themes of exile, displacement, and resilience. The present lot, with its juxtaposition of the individual and the collective, speaks to universal human experiences – the weight of history and the collective struggle for survival and recognition.
The absence of personal markers on the figure further emphasizes their universality, inviting viewers to see themselves within the composition. At the same time, the work’s tactile details and layered textures ground it in the specific, the material, and the visceral.1
1 Stella de Bagneux (no date) Stella Gallery, An Atypical Course, online, https://www.stella-gallery.com/artist/mahi-binebine/?accepter=1, accessed 20 January 2025.
Provenance
Acquired from the artist by the current owner.
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