From across Africa and the diaspora, artists are carving new and meaningful connections to their histories and identities – often by challenging the limits of both the medium and the message of their works.
Carla Hayes Mayoral
Malaga-born artist Carla Hayes Mayoral’s artworks hope to deconstruct issues of colonialism through the medium of fabric, both as a cultural base and a means of work. Carla’s pieces combine traditional African materials – such as raffia – with typically Western collective imagination as a process of decoding the construction of the identity of the Afro-descendant in the diaspora. Her work also draws from personal experience as an Afro-descendant with an individual view of identity and history – it is a creative process that sees her start with Western images and codes and interweaves them with matter to produce a language that gives rise to new visions.
Unathi Mkonto
Using art to explore the conditions of the built environment, South African-born, self-taught multidisciplinary artist Unathi Mkonto draws on both the worlds of fashion and architecture in pursuing his creative mission. With an oeuvre that spans drawings, sculptures and installations, Unathi’s work manipulates common materials, such as Velcro and vinyl, to construct pieces that manifest the universal need for human connection, often to visceral effect.
Amina Benbouchta
For several years, Casablanca-born Amina Benbouchta has developed a body of work rooted in exploring the limits of painting.
The diversity of the mediums she explores – painting, photography, sculpture, installation, video – allows her to fully analyse the complex social structures of contemporary life. She invents a symbolic language that stems from both personal concerns and socio-cultural issues: making visible what escapes the visible and its modalities. Beyond this, there is a relevant political dimension to her creations, with each work created corresponding to a new way of apprehending the existing issues of inhabiting space – both public and private – as a woman.
Anna van der Ploeg
Contemporary Cape Town artist Anna van der Ploeg works across the mediums of painting, sculpture and printmaking, investigating the notions of interaction and inscription and the way surfaces relate to prescribed roles, scripts and dialogue. In recent projects, this has manifested in a particular focus on tables and DIY posters. Her works occupy themselves with the precarity of exchange between strangers and people who know each other well.
Bonolo Kavula
Multidisciplinary South African artist Bonolo Kavula creates with the acute awareness that her work will outlive her, so it needs to humanise her and those who come across it. Working predominantly in print media (though her oeuvre does include video, performance and comic art), her pieces come from a reflective place, allowing viewers to engage them intuitively. Deceptively simple in execution, Bonolo’s work involves meticulously punching materials to create tiny discs and then joining them with measured lines of thread.
The 10th Investec Cape Town Art Fair will run from 17 to 19 February at the Cape Town International Conference Centre from 11am to 7pm. All artists and galleries featured in this article will be showcased at this year’s Fair.
For more information and to purchase tickets via Webtickets, visit investeccapetownartfair.co.za or follow Investec Cape Town Art Fair on Twitter @ICTAF, Instagram @investeccapetownartfair and Facebook @ICTArtFair.
