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