Structures is the second exhibition in the Worldmaking series, following Ecospheres. The exhibition brings together artists and architects from the South who explore how space, place, and race intersect in both tangible and intangible structures. From the immersive South African Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale to a city made of couscous, interactive installations and historical works from the 1980s, Structures reflects on how materials carry meaning and how people themselves can act as forms of infrastructure.
Images: Detail of Matri-Archi(tecture), Building Africa: The State of Things! (2023). © Matri-archi(tecture) and African State Architecture. Photo Neo Twala | MADEYOULOOK, Dinokana (2024). Installation. © and courtesy MADEYOULOOK. Commissioned by the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture for La Biennale di Venezia 2024. Photo Jamal Nxedlana | Kader Attia, Untitled (Ghardaïa) (2009). Private collection. © Kader Attia. Photo David Heald
Ecospheres aims to address ecology, the environment, climate and the natural world through the concept of making-with (living with). Based on the elements of Water, Air and Earth, the exhibition is divided into three Atmosphere Rooms. These Atmospheres function as conceptual spaces that foreground and amplify various artists and artworks in relation to the themes of the exhibition. Water is engaged as a mediator connecting the natural world to people, places and identity. The properties of Air as both a political and poetic construct are examined through the bonds of kinship, migration, diaspora and the lingering effects of atmospheric violence. The section on Earth embodies ideas of indigenous knowledge and sustainability, exploring how local indigenous knowledge informs the creation of ideas that shape art, culture and food.
The exhibition is an immersive experience that includes installations of hydroponic plants, oceanic-inspired knitted textile, botanic photography, sound and meditative paintings of migratory birds. Visitors also have the opportunity to enjoy a newly built Reading Room within the gallery. This space, designed by Wolff Architects, serves as a library for one book: the Ecospheres Reader, and is intended for convivial gatherings and discussions.
Ecospheres forms part of JCAF’s second research theme: Worldmaking. The human drive towards meaning-making leads us to both consciously and unconsciously build our world from social conditioning, scientific rationality, artistic traditions and our own struggle for survival. Worldmaking refers to the ways we collectively make the spaces around us that we inhabit through symbolic practices. JCAF will explore this concept through a trilogy of exhibitions, along with an accompanying series of talks and publications.
Read the publications: Ecospheres Reader 1 and Ecospheres Reader 2.
Explore the virtual tour of the exhibition below.
The first section of the exhibition considers the environment poetically. Here, artists from the Global South engage with the idea of water as connected to places, people and identity, and as an element that can be experienced as “under the sea”, as “rain”, as a “flood” or as “contained in vessels”. Intense colours play an important part in representing the concepts in the various artworks, alongside vernacular objects from local indigenous sources.
Here we see water is “sea”, “river delta”, “contained in a vessel” and “rain”. Conceptually, water is an expression of a community’s identity, summoned as rain, preserved to sustain life and to inspire ideas about our natural and biological world in oral narratives.
Installation views of ATMOSPHERE 1. Water: Narrative and Myth-Making: Ernesto Neto, Um dia todos fomos peixes (One day we were all fish) (2017). © Ernesto Neto; Rithika Merchant, Transtidal (2022). © Rithika Merchant (2022); Zizipho Poswa, uNa’kaMzingisi (Mzingisi’s Mother) (2024). © Zizipho Poswa; Bronwyn Katz, Kai tus tu (Great rain rain) (2023). © Bronwyn Katz. Photos Graham De Lacy.
Atmosphere 2 may give us a renewed appreciation for the properties of air, both as a political and poetic construct. Here the artists draw out the atmospheric effects of air as a field of transcendental form that blurs the line between earth and sky. Finally the bonds of kinship and diaspora are explored through a consideration of migratory patterns. In these ways, air becomes vision, breath and flight.
Here air is a habitat, a realm that sustains movement and in which migrating birds are metaphors for human diasporas. Air is also introduced as a malleable substance, as different forms of wind produce the environmental devastation of soil in Ethiopia or the atmospheric violence of thunderstorms in Johannesburg. How might the air around us – manifest as the powerful effects of wind and storms on our environment and the spaces we inhabit – compel us to rethink our relationship to kin?
Installation views of ATMOSPHERE 2. Air: Migration and Kin: Michael Tsegaye, Ankober (2007) and Afar II (2023). © Michael Tsegaye; Sutapa Biswas, Time Flies (2004–2021). © Sutapa Biswas. All Rights Reserved. DACS 2024. Jonah Sack, Thunderstorm Typology (2020) and Cloud Tower (2023). © Jonah Sack. Photos Graham De Lacy
In Atmosphere 3, several of the artworks feature seeds and entire plants growing hydroponically for the duration of the exhibition. These works speak of the diversity of nature and the complexity of plant life, but also reflect on indigenous knowledge and environmental sustainability. Each of the artists in this section of the exhibition draw from local knowledge and experience in the form of sound, typologies and moving images, suggesting a shift from identity to locality and proposing new concepts for the relationship between humanity and planet earth.
Plants and soil feature in various ways: in the biography of a seed told through an audible story, in micro-representations of the hidden life of plants, in the germination of seedlings, in the exploration of sustainable forms of production, and in reflections on the consequences of unscrupulous resource extraction.
Installation views of ATMOSPHERE 3. Earth: Indigenous Knowledge and Extraction: Zina Saro-Wiwa, Karikpo Pipeline (2015). © Zina Saro-Wiwa; Zayaan Khan and Coila-Leah Enderstein, Seeds from the Streets to the Seas (2019). © Zayaan Khan and Coila-Leah Enderstein; Mater Iniciativa, Ecosistemas Mater (2024) with details of Alejandra Ortiz de Zevallos, Khipuy, Earthen, Peruvian ceramists in collaboration with Mater, and Territorio relief table with pockets containing ingredients from the three regions of Peru (coast/Sierra/jungle) developed by Mater, designed and manufactured by BIGO Project; Russell Scott, Botanical Portraits Unearthed (2008–17); Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Insurgencias botánicas: Phaseolus lunatus (Botanical insurgencies: Phaseolus lunatus) (2017). © Ximena Garrido-Lecca. Photo Graham De Lacy
Sutapa Biswas (1962–) was born in Santiniketan, India and is based in London. She holds a postgraduate degree from the Slade School of Art (1990) and was a research student of Philosophy at the Royal College of Art (1996–1998). Group exhibitions include Identity and Environment, Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest (1999) and Miami Basel (2006). Solo exhibitions include Lumen, New Art Gallery Walsall, UK (2021); Recent Works by Sutapa Biswas, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland, Oregon (2006); Harewood House, Yorkshire; Café Gallery Projects, London (2004).
Coila-Leah Enderstein (1990–) is a pianist, artist and performer born in Cape Town and based in Berlin. She graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Cape Town’s College of Music (2012) where she was awarded the Lional Bowman Prize for Beethoven Playing and the Laura Searle Prize for Concerto Playing. Enderstein is completing her Master of Arts in Sound Studies at the University of the Arts in Berlin.
Ximena Garrido-Lecca (1980–) was born in Lima. She studied Visual Arts at the Universidad Católica del Perú and received her MA from Byam Shaw School of Art, London. Solo exhibitions include Ximena Garrido-Lecca: Paisaje Antrópico, Max Wigram Gallery, London (2012); Faz escuro mas eu canto, 34th São Paulo Biennale (2020).
Bronwyn Katz (1993–) was born in Kimberley, South Africa. She obtained a BaFA (Hons) from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town in 2015. Solo exhibitions include A Silent Line, Lives Here (2018), Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Group exhibitions include Venice Biennale (2022); 22nd Sydney Biennale (2020); 12th Dak’Art Biennale (2016).
Zayaan Khan (1984–) was born in Cape Town and is completing her PhD in Environmental Humanities South at the University of Cape Town. Solo exhibitions include The Apocalypse Pantry (with Heather Thompson), A4 Art Foundation, Cape Town (2016). Group exhibitions include Seeds as Relation (2019), part of Soil is an Inscribed Body. On Sovereignty and Agropoetics, SAVVY Contemporary at Beni Aïssi, Morocco and Berlin; Trammakassie, Permanent Environmental Exhibition, Simonstown Museum, Cape Town.
MATER, founded by siblings Malena and Virgilio Martinez, is an interdisciplinary organization that seeks to articulate the multicultural and profoundly biodiverse territory of Peru, by integrating knowledge through research, interpretation, and cultural expressions. The work of Mater involves designing gastronomic concepts with identity, such as Central and Kjolle in Lima and Mil, and in Cusco, where Mater’s field work is carried out as an immersive cultural and gastronomic experience that involves an everyday exchange with both neighbouring communities and the landscape they share, facing the archaeological site of Moray. The installation presented on Ecospheres was produced in collaboration with:
Alejandra Ortiz de Zevallos Rodrigo is a Peruvian textile artist pursuing an MFA at the University of New Mexico. She leads workshops on natural fibre braiding, drawing from traditional techniques learned during her 2019 residency at Mater in Moray, Cusco. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Galería del Paseo; Museo de Arte de Lima; PaRC PINTA 2022; and Galería La Mancha. Her debut solo was Nudos como cuerpos como nudos, SED – Dédalo gallery, Lima (2022). She is preparing for a solo exhibition at the Amano Museum in July 2024.
BIGO PROJECT (Bio Inputs – Generative Outputs) stems from an interdisciplinary research-creation project developed at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP), intertwining ecology, art, design, science and engineering. It explores processes and methodologies for generating and constructing objects by blending manual techniques with analogue and digital technologies. The BIGO team consists of Veronica Crousse and Octavio Centurión (sculptors), Ricardo Torres and Paula Cermeño (industrial designers).
Isabella Celis is a visual artist at the Universidad de los Andes (CO) and a researcher who studies sustainability and decolonial thought. Her practice interweaves knowledge and multispecies, bringing the Andes and the Amazon into dialogue. She explores textile practices as a place of regeneration and bonding in the ecologies of beings in which we live.
Rithika Merchant (1986–) was born in Mumbai. In 2008 she obtained a BFA (Honours) (Fine Arts) from Parsons School of Design, New York, and in 2021 was awarded the Sovereign Asian Art Prize, the Vogue Hong Kong Women’s Art Prize and the Le Prix Dessin, Paris. Solo exhibitions include Worlds Within Words, Fábrica do Braço de Prata, Lisbon (2009). Group exhibitions include Barcelona Showcase, Casa Batllo, Barcelona (2011); Bonna Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka, Bangladesh (2023).
Ernesto Neto (1964–) was born in Rio de Janeiro. He studied at the Escola de Artes Visuais Parque Lage in 1994 and 1997, and attended the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro from 1994 to 1996. Solo exhibitions include Genealogy of Life, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (2002); Water Falls from my Breast to the Sky, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2020); Between Earth and Sky, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2022).
Zizipho Poswa (1979–) was born in Mthatha, South Africa and is based in Cape Town. She graduated with a National Diploma in Textile Design from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in 2009 and studied surface design at the Cape Peninsula University. Solo exhibitions include iLobola, Southern Guild, Cape Town (2021). Group exhibitions include Ideas in Transit, Akademie der Kunste, Hamburg (2018); Investec Cape Town Art Fair (2023).
Rebecca Potterton (1996–) is a freelance illustrator based in Johannesburg. She has a BA (Honours) in History from the University of the Witwatersrand (2020). In her capacity as illustrator and researcher for Counterspace Studio, Potterton illustrated for: “Architecture’s Now, Near, and Next” published by the Solomn R. Guggenheim Museum; the Serpentine Pavilion, London (2021); the installation of After Image by Sumayya Vally/Counterspace as part of Liminal Identities in the Global South, Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation (2021).
Jonah Sack (1978–) is based in Cape Town. He received his MFA from the Glasgow School of Art, and has been a fellow of the Skye Foundation and the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts at the University of Cape Town. Solo exhibitions include Catalogue of Errors, Blank Projects, Cape Town (2017). Group exhibitions include Holdfast, The Gallery, Johannesburg (2020); Invisible Exhibition, Centre for the Less Good Idea, Johannesburg (2019).
Zina Saro-Wiwa (1976–) was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria and raised in Surrey and Sussex, United Kingdom. She studied Economic and Social History at Bristol University and transitioned into art in 2010. Solo exhibitions include Did You Know We Taught Them How To Dance?, Blaffer Museum, Houston (2015); Table Manners, Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami (2018). Group exhibitions include The Progress of Love, Pulitzer Foundation, St Louis, MO, and Menil Collection, Houston (2012).
Russell Scott (1961–) was born in Kitwe, Zambia and lives in South Africa. After obtaining his ND (Fine Arts) at the Technikon Witwatersrand in the late 1980s, he lectured in the Department of Fine Arts at the Technikon. Scott has spent many years working as a professional photographer and model-maker.
Michael Tsegaye (1975–) was born in Addis Abba where he lives and works. He received a Diploma from Addis Ababa University’s School of Fine Arts and Design in 2002. Group and solo exhibitions include Medecins Sans Frontiers, National Museum Addis Ababa (2011); For a Sustainable World, 9th Bamako Encounters – African Photography Biennale, Mali (2011); Selam Arts Festival, Toronto (2010); Hotel Dystopia Room #25/55, Al Bastakiya Art Fair, Dubai (2010); Aksum Rediscovered: the Reinstallation of the Obelisk, the UNESCO House, Paris (2009). Tsegaye also works as a photographer for publications such as Der Spiegel and Jeune Afrique, and press agencies such as Bloomberg and Reuters.
Wolff Architects is a design studio concerned with developing an architectural practice of consequence through the mediums of design, advocacy, research and documentation. The Wolff team is led by Ilze and Heinrich Wolff who work collaboratively with a group of committed and engaged architects, creative practitioners and administrators. Heinrich Wolff has received many awards including the Daimler Chrysler Award for Architecture (2007) and the Lubetkin Award (2005). In 2011 he was elected Designer of the Future by the Wouter Mikmak Foundation. Ilze Wolff has a Master of Philosophy in Heritage and Public Culture from the African Studies Unit, University of Cape Town. She co-founded Open House Architecture in 2007, a transdisciplinary research practice which she continues to direct parallel to Wolff.
Otherscapes proposes surveying the scene of contemporary South Africa through the artistic practices of four contemporary South African artists whose installations can be viewed as ‘scapes’. These address a local context by interrogating the tension between utopia and failure. Siemon Allen, Wim Botha, Sethembile Msezane and Nicholas Hlobo reflect their subjective views of South Africa by embodying narratives that elucidate the complex issues in which the country is entangled.
The exhibition introduces the South African-focused programme taking place at JCAF during 2023, which will culminate in the inaugural journal launch in December.
South Africa’s transition from the apartheid regime to democracy was heralded globally as a miracle, ushering in utopian visions of a rainbow nation, which proved to be stronger in symbolism and legislative change than in structural transformation. Three decades later, South Africans are grappling with the notion of failure, overshadowed by the ideas of what this democracy could have been. Unresolved dispossession, an ailing economy, unemployment, continuous load-shedding, corruption and crime have led to a state of social exhaustion and political disillusionment.
Exhibition reproductions, from left: Aerial view of the long queues of voters during the 1994 general elections in South Africa (27 April 1994). Photo Gallo Images/Sunday Times/Raymond Preston | South African President Nelson Mandela congratulating Springbok skipper François Pienaar after handing him the William Webb Ellis Trophy. The Springboks beat New Zealand 15–12 after over-time in the Rugby World Cup final (24 June 1995). Photo Jean-Pierre Muller/AFP via Getty Images | Dr Alex Boraine and Bishop Desmond Tutu at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (11 November 1997). Photo Gallo Images/Business Day/Lori Waselchuk | Thousands of striking mine workers demonstrate on a hill near Lonmin’s Karee Platinum Mine, Rustenburg demanding a wage increase. Violent clashes between mine workers and police left at least 18 people dead and several others injured (16 August 2012). Photo Gallo Images/City Press/Leon Sadiki | Lindokuhle Sobekwa, Death of George Floyd (2020), taken during load shedding. © and courtesy Lindokuhle Sobekwa/Magnum Photos
Within this exhaustion, Otherscapes poses the question of whether the tension between utopia and failure can introduce different ways of creating a sense of belonging in South Africa. Based on Arjun Appadurai’s notion of ‘scapes’ (ethnoscapes, ideoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes and financescapes), the exhibition suggests other types of ‘scapes’ that can be thought of in the current context. Allen considers the effects of colonial history and official representations of South Africa; Msezane meditates on local indigenous narratives; Botha explores the dialectic between the real and unreal; Hlobo explores our unknown future symbolically in the form of a labyrinth. The artists in this exhibition reflect on the state of South Africa today, not through direct visual representation but as philosophical threads that weave together a narrative about people and nation, identity and place, body and space.
Explore the exhibition below.
Siemon Allen. Photo Graham De Lacy | Wim Botha. Photo Graham De Lacy | Nicholas Hlobo at SCAD, Savannah, GA, USA (2019). Courtesy Goodman Gallery | Sethembile Msezane photographed at Studio Malick Sedibe, Bamako (2022). Courtesy the artist. Photo Uiler Costa Santos
Siemon Allen (1970–) was born in Durban, South Africa, and is based in the United States of America. He obtained an MFA from the Technikon Natal, KwaZulu-Natal in 1999. Select group exhibitions include 23 Kilograms Galerie West, The Hague, Netherlands (2013) and Desire: Ideal Narrative in Contemporary South African Art, South Africa Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2011); and solo exhibitions include Records, Goodman Cape, Cape Town, South Africa (2013) and STAMP COLLECTION – Imaging South Africa, Hemicycle/Corcoran Museum, Washington, DC (2001).
Wim Botha (1974–) was born in Pretoria, South Africa. He graduated with a Bachelor’s in Fine Art from the University of Pretoria in 1996. Select exhibitions include Wim Botha: Heliostat, Norval Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa (2018), Larger Than Life – Stranger Than Fiction, 11th Triennale für Kleinplastik, Fellbach, Germany (2010) and A Premonition of War, Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art, Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa (2005).
Nicholas Hlobo (1975–) was born in Cape Town, South Africa. He graduated with a Bachelor of Technology from Wits University of Technology in 2002. Select group exhibitions include The White Hunter: African Memories and Representations, FM Centre for Contemporary Art, Milan, Italy (2017) and What we talk about when we talk about love, Stevenson, Cape Town, South Africa (2011); solo exhibitions include Uhambo, Level 2 Gallery, Tate Modern, London, UK (2008) and Umtshotsho, Standard Bank Young Artist Award, Monument Gallery, Grahamstown (2009).
Sethembile Msezane (1991–) was born in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town in 2012 where she was also awarded a Master’s in Fine Arts in 2017. Select solo exhibitions include Liguqubele iZulu, BKhz, Johannesburg, South Africa (2023) and All Things Being Equal, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (2017); and the group exhibition Speaking Through Walls, Maa ka Maaya ka ca a yere kono, 13th Bamako Encounters African Biennale of Photography, Bamako, Mali (2022).
Kahlo, Sher-Gil, Stern: Modernist Identities in the Global South presents the works of three pioneering women artists, Frida Kahlo (1907–1954), Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941) and Irma Stern (1894–1966), together in South Africa and in Africa for the first time. The exhibition examines the constructions of ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘indigenous’ identities through portraiture and self-portraiture. It also considers the time and place in which each artist produced their work, and gives some insights into their experiences, inspiration and concerns. The viewer is invited to consider and engage with one iconic artwork by each artist.
Download the catalogue here. Explore the exhibition below.
Each artist practised from a different context in the Global South: Kahlo in Mexico, Sher-Gil in India and Stern in South Africa and the Congo. Although all three artists travelled extensively, these places had the profoundest impact on their work and their sense of themselves in the world. This section of the exhibition introduces aspects of the socio-political backdrop against which these pioneers of modernity in the Global South produced their most important work.
This section introduces documentary material comprised of photographs, films, diaries and objects that situate each artist’s practice within specific personal and socio-cultural contexts. Moreover, the content reveals a transformative narrative for each of the artists, from childhood into adulthood and from early European influences to an embodied, local, indigenous identity formation.
Frida Kahlo’s own identity was the central motif around which her artistic expression was manifest. In this exhibition, the focus is not on Kahlo’s surrealist paintings but on the ways she constructed her identity within the broader context of a new post-revolutionary Mexico. Central to Kahlo’s thinking was ‘Mexicanidad’ (‘Mexican-ness’), a new Mexican identity founded on indigenous culture and heritage.
The photographs of Amrita Sher-Gil in the exhibition take the visitors through Sher-Gil’s experiences in Europe and her decision to return to India in 1934. These images are a testament to the role of personal agency in the construction of a modern subject. In India, Sher-Gil painted her relatives but also depicted the poor, women and everyday life subjects.
Irma Stern’s work was informed by her personal history and experience of travelling throughout Africa and Europe. As a result of her father’s imprisonment during the Anglo-Boer War, the Stern family moved to Germany. During World War I, Stern was an active member of the Novembergruppe in Berlin, but the rise of antisemitism in Europe precipitated her return to South Africa. In colonial Cape Town, however, being Jewish and a woman meant that she was also something of an outsider in the art circles of her home city.
The exhibition design references the cultural and architectural heritage of each of the artists. For Kahlo, the Pre-Columbian architecture of Mexico; for Sher-Gil, Sikh and Mughal architecture in India; and for Stern, Watusi Congo vernacular architecture. A form is abstracted from the architecture to produce a motif that contextually represents the artist.
Frida Kahlo, Self Portrait with Hummingbird and Thorn Necklace (1940). Oil on canvas pasted on board. Collection of the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin, Nickolas Muray Collection of Modern Mexican Art. © 2022 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust
The subject of many of Kahlo’s paintings was herself (“I paint myself, because I am what I know best.”) She painted fifty-five self-portraits that embody, on the one hand, an external Mexican identity imbued with Pre-Columbian cultural references and symbols, and, on the other hand, an inner subjective realm arising from several traumatic experiences.
Kahlo painted Self-Portrait with Hummingbird and Thorn Necklace (1940) after her divorce from Rivera and at the end of her affair with photographer Nickolas Muray. The work reflects the influence of her mestizo heritage, and the Catholic symbol of the thorns is combined with Kahlo’s indigenismo politics, which is suggested by the ‘natural’ elements of flowers, leaves, cat and monkey. Here, Kahlo’s complex identity is foregrounded, and shown to be a hybrid repository; of the modern and natural worlds, and of the religious and the secular.
Amrita Sher-Gil, Three Girls (1935). Oil on canvas. Courtesy of National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.
Three Girls (1935) is the first painting Sher-Gil did upon her return to India in 1934. She was on holiday when she met her nieces at her grandparents’ home in Amritsar, and she painted the three sisters, Beant, Narwair and Gurbhajan Kaur with repeated sittings over a period of two to three weeks. The work depicts three young women contained in a pose that suggests a contemplative melancholy.
Irma Stern, Watussi Woman in Red (1946). Oil on canvas. Courtesy private collection, South Africa
Watussi Woman in Red (1946) was painted around the time of Stern’s second trip to the Congo in 1946. It is a portrait of a young woman dressed in red, set against a lush yellow background. The portrait is not a commission or a simple facsimile of her subject, but rather a robust interpretation in which the artist constructs a self-image that, according to Arnold, is ”infiltrated by her personal and social history and experience”. The young woman depicted in the painting is Princess Emma Bakayishonga, sister of King Mutara III Rudahigwa (1912–1959).
Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) was born on 6 July in Mexico City. She claimed 1910 as her birth date, as this year was the start of the Mexican Revolution. Kahlo attended the National Preparatory School in Mexico City in 1922. In 1929 she married Diego Rivera. Kahlo was a self-taught artist and held her first solo exhibition in New York in 1938. The following year she held a solo exhibition in Paris. Her first solo exhibition in Mexico was in 1953.
Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941) was born on 30 January in Budapest, Hungary. She undertook formal art studies at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1930 to 1934. She won a gold medal at the Grand Salon in Paris and was elected an Associate in 1933. Sher-Gil returned to India where she participated in an exhibition at the Simla Fine Arts Society and was awarded a prize for one of five paintings on the exhibition. She travelled to South India in 1937. She was awarded a prize for a painting exhibited in Delhi and held a solo exhibition in Lahore in 1937.
Irma Stern (1894–1966) was born on 2 October in Schweizer-Reneke, South Africa. She studied art in Weimar, Germany in 1912, and in Berlin from 1918 to 1920. She held her first exhibition at the Fritz Gurlitt Gallery in Berlin in 1919. She returned to Cape Town in 1920 and had her first South African solo exhibition in 1922. Stern travelled and exhibited regularly, both in South Africa and internationally. She was awarded the Prix d’Honneur at the Bordeaux International Exhibition in 1927. She travelled to Zanzibar in 1939 and the Congo in 1942. She exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1950 and won the Regional Award at the Peggy Guggenheim International Art Prize in 1960.
Liminal Identities in the Global South forms part of JCAF’s first research theme: Female Identities in the Global South. The second of three exhibitions in this theme explores hybridity and resistance in the artistic practices of seminal women artists from Latin America, alongside artists from the MENA region, the African diaspora and South Africa. The artists and architects included: Jane Alexander, Lina Bo Bardi, Lygia Clark, Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, Kapwani Kiwanga, Ana Mendieta, Lygia Pape, Berni Searle and Sumayya Vally/Counterspace.
The exhibition considers heterogeneous forms of expression across art, architecture and music, from the 1960s to the present. Given the impact of Covid-19, the pandemic body is a second curatorial thread running through the exhibition. The pandemic has placed many of us in a state of limbo or liminality, so that we are caught between a pre-Covid-19 world and one in which we imagine a better future.
The exhibition is divided into five areas: Prelude, Requiem, Movements I, II and III, each consisting of a particular colour based on the coronavirus alert levels. Moreover, each area is conceptualised according to a musical tempo, either moderate, fast or slow, denoting a time-based experience of the exhibition.
The exhibition begins with a Prelude, an archive that includes the concept of anthropophagia (cultural ‘cannibalism’ or assimilation) developed by Oswald de Andrade in his Manifesto Antropófago (1928), and embodied in the painting Abaporu (1928) by the painter Tarsila do Amaral. In the 1970s, architect Lina Bo Bardi developed a quintessential Brazilian architectural language derived from indigenous vernacular expression. These concepts resonate with contemporary South African society, which is engaged in asserting itself against Western postcolonial cultural domination through various decolonising movements.
Covid-19 has placed many of us in a state of limbo, so that we are caught between a pre-Covid world and one in which we imagine a better future. The pandemic can be understood as an ‘event’ – a rupture in the normal run of things. As such, it changes our perception of the world around us. Within this liminal state, the exhibition reflects on previous pandemics such as the Black Death (bubonic plague, 1346–1353) and the Spanish Flu (influenza, 1918–1920).
The pandemic body is a second curatorial thread running through the exhibition and is alluded to in the masks that appear in the works. The ubiquity of the mask in our time is at once ominous and comforting. Masks filter the air we breathe, helping to prevent infection and possibly death, since it is through breathing that we can be infected by the virus.
This section of the exhibition explores the precarious nature of life, suggested by images of the female body in the landscape, rituals performed by women, and bouquets of flowers that decay over time. The passage of time, which encompasses death, ritual and trace, points in turn to liminality.
During afflictions and disasters such as the coronavirus pandemic we discover our ‘radical vulnerability’ and the need for grace. In this section eternity is represented by the colour gold and by luminescence and reflection.
Jane Alexander (1959–) was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. She obtained an MAFA from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1988. Select exhibitions include: Venice Biennale (1995); ‘The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945–1994’ (2001); ‘Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continent’ (2004); Gwangju Biennale (2014).
Lina Bo Bardi (1914–92) was born in Rome, Italy. She obtained an architecture degree from the University of Rome in 1939 and shortly thereafter moved to Brazil, where she spent most of her life. Select exhibitions include: Venice Architecture Biennale (2009); ‘Lina Bo Bardi: Habitat’, MASP Museum, São Paulo (2019); ‘Lina Bo Bardi: Together’ organised by the British Council and the Lina Bo and P.M. Bardi Foundation, exhibited in London (2012), Chicago (2015) and São Paulo (2016); ‘Lina Bo Bardi Dibuja’ at Fundación Joan Miró, Barcelona (2019).
Lygia Clark (1920–88) was born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. She studied with Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, and then with Isaac Dobrinsky, Fernand Léger and Árpád Szenes in Paris from 1950 to 1952. Select exhibitions include: São Paulo Biennale (1959); Venice Biennale (1960); Documenta (1997); ‘Tropicália: a Revolution in Brazilian Culture’, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2005); ‘Lygia Clark: the Abandonment of Art 1948–1988’, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014).
Kamala Ibrahim Ishag (1939–) was born in Omdurman, Sudan. She graduated from the College of Fine Arts Khartoum (1963) and the Royal College of Art, London (1966). Select exhibitions include: Whitechapel Art Gallery (1995); National Museum of Women in Art, Washington DC (1994); ‘Women in Crystal Cubes’, Sharjah Art Foundation Art Spaces (2016).
Kapwani Kiwanga (1978–) was born in Hamilton, Canada. She studied anthropology and comparative religion at McGill University. She was the winner of the Marcel Duchamp Prize (2020) and the inaugural winner of the Frieze Artist Award (2018). She has been on group exhibitions at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, as well as the Whitechapel and Serpentine Sackler galleries in London, and held a solo exhibition at the MIT List Visual Arts Center (2019).
Ana Mendieta (1948–85) was born in Havana, Cuba. When she was twelve she and her sister were sent to live in the USA as refugees. She obtained an MFA from the University of Iowa in 1977. Select exhibitions include: ‘Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective‘, New Museum, New York (1987); ‘Ana Mendieta: Earth, Body, Sculpture and Performance 1972–1985’, Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC (2004); ‘Ana Mendieta’, Art Institute of Chicago (2011); ‘Ana Mendieta: Covered in Time and History’, Jeu de Paume, Paris (2018).
Lygia Pape (1927–2004) was born in Nova Friburgo, Brazil. She was a founding member of Grupo Frente in 1954, then developed ideas that would combine with the defining principles of the Neo Concrete Manifesto, of which she was one of the signatories. Select exhibitions include: Venice Biennale (2003); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2004); ‘Lygia Pape: Magnetized Space’, Serpentine Galleries, London (2011); ‘Lygia Pape: A Multitude of Forms’, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2017).
Berni Searle (1964–) was born in Cape Town, South Africa. She received her MFA from the University of Cape Town (1995). Select exhibitions include: ‘Approach’, Krannert Museum, Champaign, Illinois, Johannesburg Art Gallery and USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, Florida (2006–7); Dak’Art (2012); Havana Biennale (2012); Venice Biennale (2001, 2005); Cairo Biennale (1998); Johannesburg Biennale (1997).
Sumayya Vally/Counterspace (2015–) is an interdisciplinary architectural studio led by Sumayya Vally. Through her design, research and pedagogical practice, Vally is committed to finding expression for hybrid identities and contested territories. Johannesburg serves as her laboratory for finding speculative histories, futures, archaeologies and design languages, and for revealing the invisible. Her work is often forensic, and draws on performance, the supernatural, the wayward and the overlooked as generative places of history and work. She is based between Johannesburg and London and is the lead designer for the Serpentine Pavilion 2020 plus 1.
Explore the virtual tour of the exhibition below.
This exhibition proposes a realm in which these subjects explore worlds of their own choosing, in which they might be mother, martyr, warrior or hybrid. The exhibition is divided into three areas or worlds. The first is configured around the Fall which evokes the biblical story of the Garden of Eden, a realm where the natural and human worlds meet.
The animal-human hybrid figures represent the second world of the exhibition. Hybridity refers to the mingling of species, races or cultures, a crossing of one thing with another. These figures are both abject and powerful, beautiful and repulsive. This uncomfortable ambivalence is meant to provoke a response in the viewer, who must consider the relationship between themselves and other, different subjectivities.
In the third world of the exhibition, the viewer is reminded that the body is real and embedded in race, religion and identity. They offer an intimate depiction of women, who are transformed by the aging process, or whose faces are concealed behind Farsi calligraphy or veils of Belgian lace.
The exhibition design presents three other-worldly or dream-like spaces, connected by metaphorical ‘bridges’ that nonetheless draw attention to the constructedness and tangibility of the exhibition environment. Lorraine O’Grady expresses this conceptual framework of identity bridges:
Because I was raised by West Indian parents in one of the most traditional areas of New England culture, Boston’s Back Bay, my childhood placed me at a distance from wherever I stood and required me to always build a bridge to some other place. One had to be several things at once … both Caribbean and New England, both African American and West Indian, both black and white … and to daily negotiate the differences ….
Bharti Kher is based in New Delhi. Her work explores cultural misinterpretations, social codification and hybridity. She has come to be known for the use of the bindi as a central motif in her work, which often explores the link between tradition and modernity and is deeply concerned with the role, experiences and conceptualisations of women in India.
Bharti Kher, Warrior with cloak and shield (2008). © Bharti Kher. Image courtesy the artist. Photo Guillaume Ziccarelli | View of Bharti Kher in her studio in New Delhi, a multi-storey space where Bharti produces her artworks, which also houses her collection of Indian artifacts and heritage that inspire her process. Photo by Bharti Kher Studio
Nandipha Mntambo lives and works in Johannesburg. Working in photography, sculpture, video and mixed media, she explores the interconnectedness of human and animal, feminine and masculine, and attraction and repulsion. Her work tests and challenges perceived antitheses, while also exploring female experiences in and of the body.
Nandipha Mntambo, What Remains (2019). © Nandipha Mntambo. Image courtesy Stevenson, Johannesburg and Cape Town | The artist giving a tour of her studio, image courtesy of the artist
Wangechi Mutu lives and works in Nairobi and New York. Her films, sculptures, collages, installations and paintings explore femininity, violence, consumerism and excess, and the intersection of nature and culture, frequently challenging depictions of women and the female body throughout history.
Wangechi Mutu, A Dragon Kiss Always Ends in Ashes (2007). © Wangechi Mutu. Image courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels | Portrait of Wangechi Mutu, 2019. Photo by Cynthia Edorh
Shirin Neshat is an Iranian artist based in New York. She works in photography, film and video, on themes such as gender, identity and politics, examining the contrasts between Islam and the West, and the spaces in between.
Shirin Neshat, Soliloquy (1999), film still. © Shirin Neshat. Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels | The artist working in her studio, inscribing her photographic works with Farsi calligraphy texts by Iranian poets. Photo by David Regen
Berni Searle lives in Cape Town and works in the time-based media of photography, video and film. In her performative narratives, the self is a figure that embodies history, land-memory and place. Often politically and socially engaged, her work also draws on the universal emotions associated with vulnerability, loss and beauty.
Berni Searle, Lament IV (2011). © Berni Searle. Image courtesy the artist | The artist working in her studio. Photo by Chris De Beer Procter
