Making sense of what landscape is about: a conversation with Mduduzi Xakaza

by Mario Pissarra

Mduduzi Xakaza (1965–) paints landscapes that draw on his lived experience in rural KwaZulu-Natal. Localised histories and concerns are brought into conversation with broader philosophical questions regarding relations between humans and the natural environment, and the role of aesthetics in creating a dialogue or exchange between artist and spectator. Deliberately eschewing grand narratives, Xakaza’s paintings quietly elicit contemplation of contemporary debates about land ownership and usage, and the extent to which western aesthetic tropes can be repurposed to articulate contemporary African perspectives. [1]

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Maimuna Adam: Negotiating the in-between

Maimuna Adam has history of frequent travel and movement through Mozambique, Sweden, South Africa, and the United Kingdom which affected her practice, perspectives, and identity. These experiences of travel, crossing boundaries and developing work in a variety of other spaces is reflected in her past and current practice as a contemporary artist. In a series of exchanges via email and Zoom Adam and I spoke about how home, heritage, and displacement are expressed and documented in her works. [1]

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On Fish, Birds and Pears: A conversation with Kristin NG-Yang

by Carol Brown

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Kristin Ng-Yang was born in Shandong, China in 1970 and came to South Africa to in 2001 to study English. She settled in Pietermaritzburg, Kwa-Zulu Natal where she still lives. I had met Kristin briefly and have always been fascinated by her art.  The interview was meant to be a chat over coffee, but the COVID-19 lockdown changed that. Instead, we spoke over Zoom and exchanged emails. 

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An Engaged Practice: a conversation with Ayesha Price

by Greer Valley

I first met Ayesha Price in 2007 when I volunteered for an art project in Cape Town called PEACEJAM where she was a facilitator. I remember how in awe I was of the way she skillfully switched between media and commanded the attention of a room full of young artists who would travel from across the city to attend the weekly art workshops held at the District Six Museum. The joy of making, a pedagogical impulse and a commitment to social justice are central to Price’s practice. The choice of meeting place for this interview – the District Six Museum’s café speaks to her rootedness in the District Six community, the part of Cape Town she calls home, and her ongoing commitment to marking its significance in the city’s history – a history that is often at risk of erasure or misrepresentation through the city’s political and market-driven projects. [1]

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Dress Code: the politics of dress, oppression and self-determination in the works of Zemba Luzamba

by Kirsty Cockerill

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Zemba Luzamba sits on a black swivel desk chair in his Cape Town home studio, surrounded by methodically organised paintings in progress, his white t-shirt freshly ironed is neatly tucked into misty blue jeans. The T-shirt is branded with the black logo of Picha, the art biennale held in his home town of Lubumbashi (Democratic Republic of Congo). Fire engine red socks assert themselves before disappearing into his brilliantly polished shoes. I relax into a chestnut coloured leather couch warm from the sun, my feet comfortable on a Prussian blue and burgundy Persian carpet. Drinking tea out of crockery decorated with the cobalt blue willow pattern, we begin our conversation on the morning Africa hears that Robert Mugabe has died.

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Art harmonious: an interview with Lizette Chirrime

by Keely Shinners

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Lizette Chirrime is on a mission to heal us all. Her work, characterised by rich, hand-stitched recycled textiles weave together complex stories about trauma and reconciliation, ancestry and rebirth. Her simultaneously corporeal and abstract figures treat the body⁠ – as Chirrime specifies, the femme body⁠ – not as a site of exploitation, but mutability. But it’s not just about the artworks. There’s something restorative about Chirrime’s way of being-in-the-world. Perhaps it’s the space she creates for herself, so well-curated with objects holy and homemade. Perhaps it’s how she listens to the world around her, sensitive to the violence we continue to enact on the earth and each other, while refusing to tunnel into pessimism. Perhaps it’s the way she respects herself, speaking both candidly about her vulnerabilities and confidently about her life’s work.

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Liberated Mind: a conversation with Avhashoni Mainganye

by Nolan Stevens

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At its conception, former President Thabo Mbeki’s “I Am An African” speech sounded more utopian than a reflection of the times. As those words age, their echoes etch deeper into the collective consciousness of all those with ties to the continent. The truths in those words find us today living in a global age of African ascension; evident in the time where every facet of life and culture appears to be touched by the influence of the African continent. 

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Garth Erasmus: the knots of time and place

by Valeria Geselev

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“I was Simply Never Part of The Dance. I Was a Wall Flower.”

I can’t recall the first time I met Garth Erasmus. It might have been in 2014 at one of his performances with As Is in Observatory, Cape Town. Or it could have been in 2015 at an exhibition opening or a workshop hosted by Greatmore in the neighbouring Woodstock. He was around being active, and I was around being curious. [1]

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Transformative art practice: a conversation with Kim Berman

by Simone Heymans [1]

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Simone Heymans: Can you please share reflections on your personal art practice and what you are currently creating and addressing? [2]

Kim Berman: I did my masters in Boston, at the Museum School of Fine Arts at Tufts University. I was there from 1983 to 1990. So that was during the height of the State of Emergency in South Africa. The work that I was doing connected to the State of Emergency. Because I was politically involved in the anti-apartheid movement, with the African National Congress (ANC) in exile, we were smuggling out quite a lot of Afrapix photographs and video footage from Afravision. There was so much silence through the pervasive censorship and what was happening at the height of oppression. The documentary material we brought out was banned and illegal in South Africa, so it became imperative to try and put it out there from the relative safety of living in Boston. And my own work became very much about that; a way of documentation and bearing witness of what was happening in South Africa during that very repressive period. I used the Afrapix photos and video footage as source material to make very large black and white monoprints and drypoints as artists books. One of those works Alex Under Siege is now at the Constitutional Court which was a big screenprint I did for my masters thesis exhibition. [3] Then when I came back to South Africa, in 1990, I started to introduce a little bit of texture and colour in my work and made series of work, some of them small artists books that I called Rediscovering the Ordinary. They were about trying to find the ordinary in a South African landscape that was different to my experience of a land at war while I lived in Boston for 7 years.

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Thami Jali talks to curator Jenny Stretton about his vision for the future

by Jenny Stretton

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This conversation was first published by Durban Art Gallery in conjunction with the exhibition ‘Thami Jali: Restless Spirit’, 2014.

JS: Metal features prominently in your work, what attracts you to the material?

TJ: You see, I have always been a person who likes to experiment. I have never been afraid to use alternative materials. Of course this whole thing about painting on metal, that on its own I see as a statement. I picked those things up in Clermont, they are of the area and they talk about process, life in the township. That particular container, when I went out in the street to dismantle it, I wasn’t sure I was safe doing it, because drug addicts and hooligans were using it as a shelter. So I was destroying something that was very important to them. Fortunately I didn’t encounter any problems. The fact that I managed to get out there, take all this iron sheeting and destroy this home that was so dangerous to people, to me it is actually a statement, because I live in that area. I am very much affected by what is happening there. Why metaI…I find that the material itself has opened up a new direction for me. I don’t just use any iron sheeting. I use sheeting that has been through fire. In the 80’s when the struggle was at its peak, we saw a lot of buildings being destroyed by fire … people just setting the buildings on fire. I feel that I don’t have to paint people to express the hardships in the township, I can just show it observing spaces and buildings.

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In conversation: Meshack Raphalalani, Avhashoni Mainganye and Jameson Ramvivhelo on the need to revive the VhaVenda Art Foundation and Ḓitike

Editorial note: This is a translated transcript of a conversation between former members of the VhaVenda Art Foundation, held on 5 August 2017 at the Victim Empowerment Centre, Thohoyandou, Limpopo. The original video recording (in TshiVenda) can be viewed on YouTube. The conversation formed part of a series of roundtable conversations with community arts networks active in the 1980s and early 1990s that have been convened by ASAI, with financial support from the National Lotteries Commission. Thank you to Gudani Ramikosi for the translation and transcription.

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Owning your Liberation History: Nise Malange on the work and lessons of the Culture and Working Life Project

by Nise Malange, Mario Pissarra, Tasneem Wentzel and Scott Williams.

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Note: Nise Malange, poet, activist, archivist and director of the BAT Centre, Durban, was interviewed by ASAI’s Mario Pissarra, Tasneem Wentzel and Scott Williams. The interview took place at the BAT Centre on 24 March 2017, and forms part of ASAI’s Community Arts Legacy Archive, funded by the National Lotteries Commission.
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Imvaba in the ‘hub of the struggle buzz’, an interview with Annette du Plessis

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ASAI: What were the factors that contributed to the establishment of Imvaba? How was Imvaba established?

ADP: Following in the footsteps of the 1970’s struggle, and more specifically during the mid-1980’s, as well as after the establishment of the United Democratic Front (UDF), a large number of activists from Port Elizabeth and surrounds, increasingly arose from the masses. In addition, the local establishments of workers unions were particularly taking off more.

The need for arts and cultural support in taking the anti-apartheid revolution forward was urgent. The local liberation movement needed new logos, banners, art backdrops, leaflets and pamphlets, t-shirts designs, resistance poetry and literature, as well as support from all other art disciplines – and Imvaba became a vibrant vanguard tool in the forefront of the Struggle.

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Africa’s Interlocutors: Lize van Robbroeck in conversation with Sylvester Ogbechie

Lize van Robbroeck & Sylvester Ogbechie, 13 September 2008

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This is an edited version of an email exchange that took place in July 2006. It formed part of a series of conversations conducted for From the Ground Up, the Reader developed for the Cape Africa Platform’s Trans Cape exhibition. Unfortunately, the publication of the Reader was held back indefinitely, as a consequence of the funding shortfall which saw Trans Cape being replaced by the Cape 07 exhibition. The first and latter part of this conversation have previously been published by Prof Ogbechie on his blog, but has hitherto never been published in its entirety.

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Creating New Conditions for Creativity: Uche Okeke in conversation with Mario Pissarra

by Uche Okeke & Mario Pissarra

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[This is an edited version of a recorded telephone conversation that took place on 10 July 2006. It formed part of a series of conversations conducted for From the Ground Up, the Reader developed for the Cape Africa Platform’s Trans Cape exhibition. Unfortunately, the publication of the Reader was held back indefinitely, as a consequence of the funding shortfall which saw Trans Cape being replaced by the Cape 07 exhibition. This version is identical to that which was prepared for publication. It should also be noted that Okeke has recently relocated to Lagos.]

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Making History: Gavin Jantjes in conversation with Rasheed Araeen

by Gavin Jantjes & Rasheed Araeen, 10 July 2008

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This is an edited version of a recorded telephone conversation and email exchange that took place in July 2006. It formed part of a series of conversations conducted for From the Ground Up, the Reader developed for the Cape Africa Platform’s Trans Cape exhibition. Unfortunately, the publication of the Reader was held back indefinitely, as a consequence of the funding shortfall which saw Trans Cape being replaced by the Cape 07 exhibition. This version is identical to that which was prepared for publication, inclusive of references to the original context.

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On the Need to Consume: An interview with Manthia Diawara

by Jessica Levin Martinez & Michael Tymkiw

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[This interview was originally published in the Chicago Art Journal and is reproduced here with permission from Manthia Diawara.]

Manthia Diawara is Professor of Comparative Literature, Film and Africana Studies at New York University, where he also serves as Director of the Institute of African American Affairs. He has written extensively on literature and visual culture, and some of his best-known books include We Won’t Budge: An African Exile in the World (2003), In Search of Africa (1998), and African Cinema: Politics and Culture (1992). Diawara is also an acclaimed documentary filmmaker whose credits include Who is Afraid of Ngugi? (2006), Conakry Kas (2004), Bamako Sigi Kan (2002), Diaspora Conversation (2000), and Rouch in Reverse (1995).

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“Not Just Another Biennale”?

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by Susan Glanville-Zini (CEO of Cape Africa Platform) and Julian Jonker (Coordinator of Sessions Ekapa), in conversation with Mario Pissarra

The Cape Africa Platform promises to deliver a mega-event that will be “not just another biennale”. The first major element in their plan is a conference, Sessions Ekapa, which takes place in Cape Town from 6-8 December 2005. The conference theme is “(re)locating contemporary African art” and will be followed with a multi-disciplinary “Manifestation” in 2006.

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