The FNB Joburg Art Fair is now in its 11th year. In the last decade and a bit, it has established itself as one of the finest celebrations of the continent’s Contemporary African Art. The beating heart of Africa pulsates through her artists, who bring to life the lexes of culture embroiled in her daily experiences.
Creativity is born of struggle. From the dawn of humankind, we captured our emotional expressions through visual representations. Long before civilisation’s birth, in the times of megafauna like the mammoth, humans would paint with dyes on rocks the reindeer they relied on to survive. Capturing them in time, as creatures represented life. Gods long gone were worshipped for their domains. Such as the Fertility Goddess our distant ancestors prayed to, in desperate hope for rains that sowing season.
Art has been part of us and our unique way of perceiving the world. It is what makes us a species apart from all others… for now.
Long considered ‘Magic art’, our ancestors believed by creating artistic presentation, they could bring about altered reality.
African dreams, hopes, and sorrows are cast into bronze, whittled into shape from wood, and imbued with paints and pigments alive across the continent.
And the supreme of it will be on exhibition between the 7 – 9 September at the Sandton Convention Centre, in Sandton Central.
This will also be the 8th year in a row that the FNB Art Prize will take place, where any artist can be elevated to true greatness by being recognised for their exceptional contribution to art. Each gallery represented is allowed to nominate one of their artists for the prestigious honour, and the FNB Art Prize committee deliberates.
It is not only South African artists who can be considered. As the fair is a festival of the continent, any African artist can win – the committee stating that the intention of the Prize is to enhance creative dialogue across the continent, and perhaps even lead to cross-pollination of creative thoughts. The very idea of a unifying super-culture of Africa.
Last year, it was Nigerian artist Peju Alatis who won the Prize. She has her own studio in Lagos and has a degree in Architecture. Multi-talented, she has written both poignant poetry and powerful prose – with several of both in publication.
This year’s winner was South African born, however. Haroon Gunn-Salie, an activist in addition to his artistic talents. He has constructed set piece experiences… essentially structures designed to capture a place and time to make the audience understand the emotions and chaos undergone by those during times of struggle. There is one which, for instance, reverberates with protesting miners singing Struggle songs before being brutally interrupted by police action, and gunfire.
If that does not chill you, not even an afternoon outing to dwarf planet Pluto will.
He is now presented with the opportunity to construct a special work, as this year’s winner, for the Fair itself. A piece that will be centre of attention, as centre stage as the African sun from which we rotate round.
Haroon Gunn-Saile’s On the Line, dedicated to the miners of Marikana
What will it be? What deep-seated emotional evocation will be provoked?
Attend the Fair to find out.
Art is meant to be lived, in person, for it springs forth from the agonised ecstasy of the living. It must be experienced in the flesh.
For a full events calendar click HERE
