Donderdag 07 November 2013

A selection of African barbershop boards from Mali, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Cameroon and Zaïre. These non-verbal brightly coloured messages were collected over the last forty years by Esger Duintjer in Africa’s big cities, where they are hand-painted using industrial paints and lacquers on walls, hardboard, plywood, metal sheets and used canvas flour bags. Most of the craftsmen are autodidactic and anonymous although some are known by their chosen artist's name or the name of their collective workshop.

ascleiden

How we are misled by African development statistics and what to do about it. One of the most urgent challenges in African economic development is to devise a strategy for improving statistical capacity. Reliable statistics, including estimates of economic growth rates and per-capita income, are basic to the operation of governments in developing countries and vital to non-governmental organizations and other entities that provide financial aid to them. Speaker: Morten Jerven, Simon Fraser University. Please register.

ascleiden

This legendary band was formed in the late 1960's by guitarist Mamady "Djelike" Kouyate and singer Emile Soumah. They made some of the most beloved music of their generation. Now based in New York, Mamady Kouyate has decided to revive The Ambassadors. Every Wednesday night.

barbes mandingo ambassadors at my space

First major exhibition to examine the conceptually complex and visually rich relationship between African artists and the land upon which they live, walk, and frame their days. Approximately 100 artworks are on view in five thematic sections. For the first time, five artists create land-art installations in the Smithsonian gardens. Drawing upon a rich literature related to Earth shrines and religious organizations, this exhibition also contributes new and ground-breaking research on contemporary earthworks in Africa.

africa-si

From 1 to 17 November 2013, the exhibition Chambres des Canaux: The Tolerant Home takes place at a number of special locations around the Amsterdam canals. Over this period, more than 15 artists who share a connection with the city will show their works in unique canal-side locations, including the official residence of the mayor and the Huis van Brienen. The exhibition is curated by Siebe Tettero and commissioned by Stichting Amsterdam 2013, celebrating 400 years since construction began on the Canal Ring. Participating artists includes South Africans as Marlene Dumas and Ina van Zyl.

iamsterdam

Als uitgangspunt voor haar project The Afronauts, koos Cristina De Middel (1975, Spanje) een klein onderwerp uit de geschiedenis van Zambia. Een ruimtevaartprogramma gestart door een onderwijzer waardoor Zambia mee zou doen aan de internationale ruimtewedloop. Door gebrek aan financiële hulp was het initiatief echter gedoemd te mislukken. 50 jaar na dato reconstrueert De Middel dit verhaal, resulterend in de publicatie The Afronauts en de gelijknamige tentoonstelling; fantasie- en kleurrijke beelden vol humor, met prachtige zelf gecreëerde rekwisieten.

foam

Selected works of South African photographer and LGBTQI activist Zanele Muholi will be exhibited at the Prince Claus Fund. Muholi herself will be present at the opening on 6 September. Zanele Muholi is a South African photographer and LGBTQI activist. Her work often focuses on black lesbians in South Africa as she seeks to postively represent her community in the midst of news stories of the 'curative rapes' and murders that plague the South African queer community. Among the selection of works to be shown at the Prince Claus Fund Gallery are Faces and Phases, Crime Scenes, the documentary Difficult Love.

princeclausfund

Samba’s paintings reveal his perception of the social, political, economic and cultural realities of Zaïre, exposing all facets of everyday life in Kinshasa. His canvases offer a running commentary on popular customs, sexuality, AIDS and other illnesses, social inequalities, and corruption. From the late 1980s on, he himself became the main subject of his paintings. For Samba, this is not an act of narcissism; rather, like an anchor on TV news broadcasts, he places himself in his work to report on what it means to be a successful African artist on the world stage.

pascalpolar

Ifeoma Anyaeji’s recent sculpture employs a virtuosic ability to create elegant forms drawn from architecture and domestic furniture design through the reconstruction of found objects such as the ubiquitous plastic bags and bottles. She utilizes a process that is physically and conceptually steeped in memory, history and the passage of time to create work that radically puts into question conventional notions of what sculpture is.

skotogallery

Owusu-Ankomah (Sekondi, Ghana, 1956) is one of the best known representatives of contemporary African art. At the age of 15 he started his studies at the Ghanatta College of Art in Acra. In 1986 he moved to Bremen, where he has lived and worked for 27 years now. His lage-format and vividly colored works depict a spiritual world occupied by people and symbols. Owusu-Ankomah equally finds his inspiration in Renaissance artist Michelangelo and in the philosophy of his own Akan-speaking peoples of Ghana.

staedtischegaleriebremen

In his own words, Tei Huagie,”… a painter, sculpture, furniture and fashion designer”. A true artist whose works - paintings, sculpture,furniture and fashion - will launch the opening of the gallery space at Nubuke Foundation.

nubukefoundation

A multi-media traveling contemporary art exhibition that utilizes works by world-class artists to promote awareness of the root causes of violence against women; create empathy for women’s stories; foster a dialogue about the pervasiveness of violence against women; and inspire the belief that women and girls can be empowered with new behavioral choices. Throughout the world, women and girls are victims of countless and senseless acts of violence. The range of gender-based violence is devastating, occurring, quite literally, from womb to tomb.

artthrob

A protean and controversial artistic personality between the 1960s and the 1990s, Kevin Atkinson embraced a multiplicity of approaches to making art and made a deep impression on generations of students at UCT. This exhibition, drawn from the Atkinson’s underground studio named ‘Plato’s Cave’, is both a posthumous tribute and an attempt to come to a greater understanding of the impressive contribution that he made to South African art, both as an artist and an educator.

iziko

Essentially Art exposeert in november niet eerder getoond werk van drie gerenommeerde Zuid-Afrikaanse kunstenaars. In galerie ‘Bart Invites’ is de expositie ‘Fragile’ te zien van Lionel Smit, Ruhan Janse van Vuuren en Diane Victor. De kunstenaars hebben gekozen voor de titel ‘Fragile’ door het kwetsbare verleden en de eveneens kwetsbare toekomst van Zuid-Afrika, een land met een hart van goud en bakermat van verschillende interessante kunststromen.

Essentially Art

Prachtig vormgegeven en elegant vertelde animatie gebaseerd op het waargebeurde verhaal over de eerste giraffe die in 1827 naar Parijs kwam en voor een rage zorgde in de lokale dierentuin. De kleine Maki ontsnapt aan een Franse slavenhandelaar en beleeft vele avonturen voordat hij zijn belofte kan inlossen om de giraffe Zarafa terug te brengen naar Afrika. Zonder een moment opdringerig te zijn biedt Zarafa naast stilistisch meesterschap en Maki's spannende avontuur ook een blik op Frankrijks gewelddadige verleden en de koninklijke freakshow die toen de boel bestuurde.

cinema rialtofilm

Roger Ballen (b. 1950) has been shooting black-and-white film for nearly a half-century. A New York native, he has lived in South Africa for more than thirty years. Ballen's photographs of rural Afrikaners in their homes and urban-based "outsiders" in windowless rooms quickly became distinguished for their interior arrangements and the events that transpired among the people, animals, and furnishings within. Ballen's interest in line-whether of coat hangers, electric wire, or marks made on walls-has been constant.

africa-si

Over the past eight years Hugo has turned his eye on cramped townships, contested farmlands and abandoned mining areas; psychologically charged still lifes in people's homes; sites of political significance; drifters and the homeless; his pregnant wife, and his daughter moments after her birth; the domestic servants who have worked for the Hugo family over three generations. The series alternates between intimate and public spaces, with particular emphasis on the growing disparity between rich and poor, and reveals Hugo's deeply conflicted feelings about his home. Both Cape Town and Johannesburg, dates differ.

stevenson

Over the past eight years Hugo has turned his eye on cramped townships, contested farmlands and abandoned mining areas; psychologically charged still lifes in people's homes; sites of political significance; drifters and the homeless; his pregnant wife, and his daughter moments after her birth; the domestic servants who have worked for the Hugo family over three generations. The series alternates between intimate and public spaces, with particular emphasis on the growing disparity between rich and poor, and reveals Hugo's deeply conflicted feelings about his home. Both Cape Town and Johannesburg, dates differ.

stevenson

A culmination of Chiurai’s projects around public acts of violence as documented and represented by the media. The exhibition interrogates a contemporary African notion of sacrifice, though not enquiring into its necessity. Violence and sacrifice are evidenced through Chiurai’s use of sheepskin, bandages, wood, blood-red beads and bronzed horns. Chiurai alludes to ritual practices of war, cleansing and burial.

goodman

Brings together works by four photographic artists where camouflage serves as the binding theme. In a literal sense camouflage indicates the combination of colours, materials or illumination in order to conceal humans, animals or objects, or to disguise them as something else. We often associate this phenomenon with images of animals miraculously vanishing in front of our eyes, due to the perfect visual synchronicity between their own outer appearance and that of their immediate environments.

circagallery

About a hundred metres from artist Helmut Starcke’s home in the seaside hamlet of Betty’s Bay is the Harold Porter National Botanical Garden. It is cocooned in the heart of the Cape Fynbos region. Fynbos frames Starcke’s house. Seamless fields of scrub – in yellow, lilac, gold and green – snake along the scenic ocean, with around 1 600 plant species, the fynbos appears ubiquitously spread across the region, displaying an enormous floral diversity. It makes sense therefore that fynbos, or ‘slender scrub’ as it is translated, literally, from Dutch, should comprise the principal iconography of Starcke’s current body of works.

circagallery

Ginsburg's latest series of works is an experiment in figuration and the conversation between pattern, drawing and object. Odd, erotic ink monoprints and carbon copy drawings are developed into outsized sculptures of body parts, manufactured from pieces of canvas that are stitched together and stuffed. These soft body parts trigger more drawing, so that the process is an endless movement from drawing to object and back again. Offcuts from the sculptures in turn form large-scale abstract compositions on canvas.

blankprojects

SBK Amsterdam KNSM organiseert in het kader van de Maand van de Grafiek (G13) de groepsexpositie Prints made visible, met werk van kunstenaars die autonoom gebruik maken van grafische technieken en daarnaast een selectie van grafisch werk uit de rijke collectie van SBK. De nadruk ligt op de verscheidenheid van grafische discipline. Binnen dit raamwerk presenteert Galerie 23 werken van  Meschac Gaba, Remy Jungerman, Admire Kamudzengerere, Abe Mathabe, Lucas Nkgweng en Victor Ekpuk. Hun werk wordt gecombineerd met dat van Rob Voerman, Harald Vlugt, Annesas Appel, Elma Oosterhoff en Carola Rombouts.

sbk

Tijdens deze expositie wordt het werk van talentvolle kunstenaars uit Egypte, Kenia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Oeganda en Rwanda getoond en de functie en de betekenis van hedendaagse kunst in deze Afrikaanse landen geëxploreerd. Welke rol spelen de kunstenaars en hedendaagse kunst in deze samenlevingen? In hoeverre blijkt de kunst universeel dan wel geografisch verbonden te zijn? Tijdens de tentoonstelling worden diverse activiiteiten georganiseerd, zie de site van Devearts voor meer informatie.

devearts