Dinsdag 01 Juni 2021

Galleries Curate is an informal group of contemporary galleries from around the world, formed as a result of the universally felt global crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. The coalition focuses on a supportive sense of community and co-operative interactions through collaborative exhibitions designed to express the dynamic dialogue between individual programmes. RHE is the first chapter of this collaboration, an exhibition and website themed around a universal and, we hope, unifying subject: water. Like culture, water is never static but always in flux. Ours is the final exhibition of the project. Looking back, one can distinguish two distinct approaches to the theme of water. On the one hand, there is the political and economic aspect, manifesting in climate refugees, water shortages and privatisation of natural resources. On the other hand, there is the mythical and poetic potential of water: water as image and metaphor. Each of the groups of work in the Amsterdam show illustrates one of these impulses. In his wood carvings, sculpted from the Zingana trees found throughout the country, Toguo pays homage to the sufferings and joys of the residents of the settlement of Bilongue, not far from his Cameroon studio. Léthé, the new series by Mame-Diarra Niang, also consists of head-and-shoulders portraits, but that is where the similarities end. Her previous project, Call Me When You Get There, was a response to the artist’s desire to travel at a time when movements were severely restricted. Scanning the globe from her Paris home using her computer, Niang photographed its screen with her Fujifilm X-T2 camera. In this new series, she uses the same technical set-up but takes a different conceptual approach.

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This exhibition is the second of twin survey shows focusing on the central tenets of the artist’s practice. Bringing together installation, sculpture and two-dimensional works dating between 2008 and 2018, Citoyen du Monde provides an overview of Gaba’s visual theses on nationalism, citizenship and the human toll of statecraft. The works exemplify how Gaba has identified spaces of belonging in both the Global North and South while examining the structures that construct this division. Raised in Cotonou, studying at the Rijksakademie, living in Rotterdam and retiring in Cotonou, Gaba has attributed his nomadism and experiences of migration as key to his own understanding of his Africanness. Translating as ‘Citizen of the world’, the phrase used as the title of this exhibition was first seen in Gaba’s oeuvre as the title of his 2012 ‘banner’, expressing an ideal of unity through the construction of a global flag. This radiant amalgam of the world’s national symbols, taken further in the direct allegory of his large-scale Globalloon (2013), echoes the artist’s vision for solidarity. Like the Globalloon, African Unity (2018) is underpinned by a principle that centres idealism in an attempt to ‘infuse a playfulness into our perceptions of the world – in turn, making the world a better place for us all’. As Phyllis Clark Taoua and Taylor Kathryn Miller have observed, ‘Gaba plays with the imagery of nationhood and his irreverent treatment of where political communities begin and end unsettles the once sacred narrative of national liberation.’ The economic and geopolitical intersections that inform how nationhood is constructed in an increasingly globalised marketplace are articulated in Project Voyage (2012), the Diplomatique series (2008-13) and Zimbabwe Survival (2016). The latter works feature devalued and decommissioned banknotes as part of their structure, examining the nation as commodified and commodifying force.

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In the exhibition at the Friends of S.M.A.K in Gent, South African artist Neo Matloga presented a selection of works that haven’t been seen physically in Europe. This presentation marks his first institutional exhibition in Belgium. The show opened May 29^th, for those who will be in the vicinity, the show ends August 29^th. Coordinated by Nadia Bijl. Neo has been selected as one of 30 artists to participate in Watou 2021, a festival coordinated by a trio of curators Benedicte Goesaert, Chantal Pattyn and Peter Verhelst. 'The 40th edition represents movement, harmony, humanity and intensity.' The festival is in Watou, Belgium and is open until September 5^th. Also, thrilled to be showing his large scale intimate collage paintings in my whole body changed into something else, a group exhibition taking place across the Stevenson galleries in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa. The show is curated by Sisipho Ngodwana and Sinazo Chiya. Open from 15^th of July till 3^rd September.

smak watou stevenson