|
Showing 1 - 3 of
3 matches in All Departments
Volume 4 of Visual Century: South African Art in Context 1907-1948
is part of a four-volume publication that reappraises South African
visual art of the twentieth century from a postapartheid
perspective. The years 1990 to 2007 are covered in Volume 4, edited
by Thembinkosi Goniwe, Mario Pissarra and Mandisi Majavu. The end
of the Cold War and subsequent emergence of globalisation, along
with the advent of democracy in South Africa introduced new social
and political orders, with profound implications for South African
artists. Concurrently, the persistence of economic inequalities and
conflicts within and beyond national borders constantly mitigated
against an unbridled celebration of `freedom'. The essays in this
volume critically address some of the most notable developments and
visible trends in postapartheid South African art. These include
South Africa's entry into the international art community, its
struggle to address its past, and artists' persistent and often
provocative preoccupations with individual and collective identity.
The widespread and often unsettling representation of human bodies,
as well as animal forms, along with the steady increase in use of
new technologies and the development of new forms of public art are
also discussed. While much of the art of the period is open-ended
and non-didactic, the persistence of engagement with socially
responsive themes calls into question the reductive binary between
`resistance' and post-apartheid art that has come to dominate
accounts of `before' and `after'.
This is a catalogue of artworks and essays that formed the
exhibition Space: Currencies in Contemporary African Art. Curated
by Thembinkosi Goniwe and Melissa Mboweni, the exhibition was held
at Museum Africa in Newtown (Johannesburg, South Africa), from May
to July 2010. This exhibit featured 25 artists, 4 art collectives,
and 6 writers whose work provided creative and intellectual
dialogue, which in personal and intimate ways animates imaginative
and reflective engagement with social matters and human experiences
in contemporary Africa and the diaspora. The book's essays include
the following: Debating and Framing Space: Currencies in
Contemporary African Art * Imagined Communities * African Art as a
Source of Knowledge * Comfortable Contradictions: South Africa,
Africa, and the Marketplace * Curating Contemporary African Art:
Questions of Mega-Exhibitions and Western Influences * The Scars of
Dissipation: Memory, Catharsis, and the Search for the Aesthetic.
*** "Superbly and profusely illustrated in full color 'Space:
Currencies in Contemporary African Art' is very highly recommended
for personal and academic library African Art reference collections
and supplemental reading lists." - The Midwest Book Review, Library
Bookwatch, The Art Shelf, August 2013
|
|