On Ancestral Fabric & the Poetics of Life
2023/2024
in conversation with Samara Huggins
We are sitting outside in the garden in Johannesburg where Samara Huggins, a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, has joined for a residency at Gallery MOMO. Our conversation is focused, unpacking the young artists’ practice. There is a piercing gentleness that surrounds Samara. An attentiveness to herself, her work and I guess probably everything in her proximity. Something that at first feels more befitting to a seasoned matriarch, because she has seen it all, experienced an unimaginable array of everything, carries the burden of good and bad memories of a lifetime and more. 


On the Rhythm of the Mountain & other Performances

2024




in conversation with Jonathan Freemantle 

Our conversation started as a spontaneous inquiry into the mode of artistic work between form and performance, and continued into an exploration of solitude and the dance between once own centre and the world around us. 

Jonathan Freemantle has a deeply grounded posture through which it becomes easy, almost playful, to speak about transient moments, discoveries and journeys - from magnificent summits to difficult concepts such as shame. 

The artist as his artworks seem to transport a frequency; performative traces of when one stands amidst giants, balancing on uneven ground, ones own body a miniature compared to the elemental forces and the moment when the steps of ones feet and the mechanical breathing synchronise with the rhythm of nature and when one can trust that however insignificant, a part is a part. 

“The beauty is that we don't really need to know who we are. We are just dancing in this kind of joyful delight” as Jonathan will say later on is one core aspect I see in his art - a practice of mark making and a composing of said transience into tangible stories.

-photographs ©Brett Rubin




Soil Conversations

2023



collection of writings on the exhibition Soil Conversations

contributors:

Nisha Merit
Yolanda Kaddu-Mulindwa
Zara Julius
Zayaan Khan
Lindiwe Mngxitama
Nolan Oswald Dennis
Tomke Braun
Kathy-Ann Tan
Mahret Ifeoma Kupka
Magnus Elias Rosengarten



A Gathering in Three Parts
2023

in conversation with: Ofri Cnaani

published in:
Lost Libraries, Burnt Archives edited by Sindi-Leigh McBride and Julia Rensing

contributors:
Danielle Bowler, Nicola Brandt, Sophie Cope, Dag Henrichsen, Duane Jethro, Atiyyah Khan, Bongani Kona, Lerato Maduna, Portia Malatjie, Sindi-Leigh McBride, Nisha Merit, Santu Mofokeng, Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja, Jade Nair, Masande Ntsanga, Koleka Putuma, Julia Rensing, Lorena Rizzo, Ruth Sacks, Niren Tolsi, Eugene van der Merwe, Lady Skollie, Carine Zaayman

Lost Libraries, Burnt Archives reflects on the 2021 fire at the Jagger Library at UCT. It holds myriad questions and stories about other fires / libraries / archives / exhibitions.



On Spirituality and Speculative Modes 

2023









in conversation with KagisoGundane
Kagiso Gundane is young in age, though when speaking to the 25- year-old South African artist, his mind is mature - maybe one can say he is an old soul. We sit outside the residency at the back of Gallery MOMO Johannesburg where Gundane has been working for the past two months. His eyes are clear and sturdy. His practice and research combine questions on spirituality, speculative futures, and art-making as an impetus for healing. The artist’s studio holds paint and canvases that are put up on the walls around him, a book called “Your Mysterious Power of ESP” by Harold Sherman on the table, and everywhere traces of artmaking - drips of paint that speak of a process that is simultaneously extremely introspective yet universal. The artist's works reveal timestamps in terms of progress, a search, a beginning, and a possible destination, though, not linear. They show a circular connectivity between himself and the spiritual world. Art for Gundane seems to be an extension of his being, a way of seeing, and mapping the world - physically and spiritually



Unfolding Notes on Curatorial Solidarity...

2023
collective writing, published by 

Continued Conversations….. is a self-organised network that brings together curators working in various contexts and across a number of continents.

A working group from the network engaged in an anonymised, spontaneous writing exercise as a method to express a collective thought on curatorial solidarity. The varying fonts in the text are an acknowledgment of the different temporalities in which the interventions took place, highlighting the continuous process of the conversation.

The group included Clementine Butler-Gallie (Berlin), Sofia Steinvorth (Lisbon), Kwasi Darko (Ghana), Nisha Merit (Johannesburg/Berlin), Lara Koseff (Johannesburg), Florence Devereux (London), Emmaus Kimani (Nairobi).




UMAF’ EVUKA, NJE NGENYANGA / DYING AND RISING, AS THE MOON DOES

2022
published in Art Africa Mag

The retrospective 'Umaf' evuka, nje ngenyanga / Dying and rising, as the moon does', opened at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg on South African Heritage Day – on 24 September 2022, curated by Azu Nwagbogu, Pippa Hetherington and Cathy Stanley. The exhibition showcases an oeuvre of large-scale tapestries by the Keiskamma Art Project, an artists' collective founded in 2000 in Hamburg, Eastern Cape, by artist and medical doctor Carol Hofmeyr.

The rural village, named after the eponymous seaport city in Germany, is steeped in colonial history. German soldiers who had been enlisted by the British to fight in the Crimean War in the nineteenth century, were instead re-routed to the Eastern Cape to create a settlement that would serve as a buffer between the Xhosa peoples and the British occupying forces. While little is left of the German settlers' legacy, its contemporary gestalt shows a conjuncture of colonial and Apartheid spatial planning, cultural influence and forced disparity and an age-old, richly symbolic Xhosa cultural landscape. (...)





Images ©Anthea Pokroy/Keiskamma Trust



Still Present! A conversation with Kader Attia and Marie Hélène Pereira

2022
for SWAG magazine on the occasion of the
12th Berlin Biennale


‘Mapping’ as artistic strategy and method to reposition the ‘historical now’ is one of the continuous themes running through this year's Berlin Biennale. Curated by French artist Kader Attia in conjunction with his team of Ana Teixeira Pinto, Đỗ Tường Linh, Marie Hélène Pereira, Noam Segal and Rasha Salti, Still Present! suggests an intermediate survey of repair, which in the artist-curator’s practice is concerned with the moment of transition from one state to another.

The artist list reflects on the paradox of visibility and invisibility within the establishment such as a biennale, largely eschewing marquee names. Situated across six venues, the curatorial strategy of repetition emphasises the non-linear reading of history and its contemporary interpretation; at the same time one tends to spiral down complex concepts of colonial heritage, past and present iniquities, modernity and racism through visualised data points, the female gaze on accounts of social justice to environmental realities. “The place to which we have arrived today is not by chance: It is the result of historical formations constructed over centuries” reads its statement. (...)










-artwork details of 12th Berlin Biennale
The School of Mutants
Dubréus Lhérisson
Khandakar Ohida
Binta Diaw
Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme
Mayuri Chari
Sammy Baloji
Moses März
Mai Nguyễn-Long


Magolide Moon Landing

2022
in conversation with Magolide Collective on the oocasion of COSMOS exhibition 
As part of the preparation for the COSMOS exhibition last August at Toasted in Johannesburg I sat down with Magolide Collective to talk about their process and artwork which they had created specifically for this exhibition.
Based on this, they have produced a limited edition which drops this week! Contact them directly on instagram @magolide.co or email: magolide.co@gmail.com 

“Formed in 2019 by Adilson De Oliveira (b.1998) and Mzoxolo Mayongo (b.1986), the Magolide Collective is concerned with transforming a barrage of collected reference material – historical narratives, cultural events, and academic texts – into visual renderings that incorporate performance, digital and video media, and more traditional disciplines like printmaking. The duo names this act ‘visual alchemy’, a notion related to their moniker: ‘Magolide’ is a colloquial Xhosa term describing someone with gold (teeth, chains, watches) and also references the socio-political histories of Johannesburg, a city literally built on gold – and on the labour of black migrant workers.” (...)



‘Magolide Moon Landing', Limited Edition Poster's. 2 colour screen-print on Bohem Off White 285 GSM paper, with an AR intervention 
(2022). 42 x 59,4 cm's. Edition of 25.



On the Consciousness of Collecting 

2021
for SWAG magazine
in conversation with Salma Tuqan
onine - London & Johannesburg

Today's art world is a well established and formalised ecosystem with its main protagonists of artists, curators and gallerists that largely dominate a public perception of the contemporary art scene. But what about collectors?
A key component, the collector oscillates between a strong voice and a secret player. The first attribute that comes to mind when thinking of the collector, is having the means to do it - financially and spatially. But taking a closer look, draws a complexity full of questions and opportunities. From concepts of the custodian, philanthropist, space maker or incubator - the collector comes with many trades and varied reasons to collect. (...)
©Chuan-Lun Wu
©Delfina Foundation
Photo Dan Weill. ©Delfina Foundation




Shades of Home in Lis Johnson Artur’s Photography 
2021
for SWAG magazine 
Photographers are like chroniclers of life, capturing moments in time, telling a story about the subject in front of the camera, while subsequently telling a story about the person behind it. Taking Liz Johnson Artur’s photography as prompts with South African photographer Nontsikelelo Veleko who lives in France, we talk about histories, geographies and the intentionality of photography.

Johnson Artur was born in 1964 in Bulgaria to a Ghanaian father and a Russian mother, who raised her. She was educated in Germany and now resides in the UK. Bulgaria is located at the eastern periphery to the Balkans, a satellite state to the Soviet Union before its collapse in the 1990s and became a member state of the European Union in 2007. Although the Cold War is long over, today’s Russia and the EU (by virtue of geographic proximity and shared history) are continuously negotiating their presents, power and representations through ideologies often carried out and questioned through the arts. (...)

©Liz Johnson Artur
©Nontsikelelo Veleko



Die Grenze des Theaters und der Blick in den Zwischenraum 

2020
contribution to exhibition publication by Mirjana Mitrovic, Mexico City & Berlin
Traditionelles Theater folgt einer Rezeptur von Bühne, Darstellenden und Publikum. Erwartungen, Benehmen und Ablauf sind im Konzept selbst und der Psychologie des Raumes mit inbegriffen und bedürfen einer speziellen Ansage nur, wenn sich Gesellschaftsnormen ändern.
So wurde »bitte nicht rauchen« von »bitte nicht telefonieren« abgelöst. Davon mal abgesehen, tendieren Theaterbesucher*innen in eine stille Konspiration der Theateretikette zu verfallen. Ähnlich wie die Kirche oder das Museum bietet das Theater eine Lesart der Zugehörigkeit, in der die Verteilung der Rollen klar definiert ist – Grenzen mit Komfort. Passend zum Titel der Aktion »Erster Europäischer Mauerfall« war der Ausgangspunkt der Reise am 7. November 2014 das 1952 umbenannte Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, unter der Intendanz von Shermin Langhoff. (...)
©Mirjana Mitrovic
©Mirjana Mitrovic
©Mirjana Mitrovic
©2024 nishamerit
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