Featured Artists – Cultural Brokerage, Africa Imagined 2013

ANGOLA - BOFA DA CARA-NASTIO MOSQUITO

I think you can call DZZZZ, Hawk, Fly, The Night Fly, Saco, Nasty-O, Cucumber Slice, Zura, Zurara and Dzzzzura I will acknowledge your call! But if you must know my mother calls me, always followed by one I have told you, Antonio da Silva Nástio Mosquito!
I was born in Angola, Huambo (Kaala) in the month of enlightened! I'm a Cancer, and why some say it could potentially be a natural born psychologist, or even a teacher! Well I confess that I decided to be a bum creative with economic and financial concerns!

ANGOLA - FRANCISCO VAN-DÚNEM

Artist, teacher, cultural promoter, University Professor and Master of arts education. Stage name "Van". Born in Bengo Province, his primary and secondary education was in Luanda. He frequented ageneral Course of Visual Arts in the former Industrial School Luanda (1976). He is the founding member of the National Union of Plastic Artists (1977). He is also a course Instructors Arts in Luanda (1978). He frequented a painting Course in Havana, Cuba (1981). As well as an Introduction course on research methods and cultural Gerard Kubik (1982), he studied Architecture (1989-91). He holds a degree variant of Visual and Technological Education, from the School of Viana do Castelo / Portugal (1994). He is the co-founder and teacher of drawing, printmaking and painting at the Middle School of Fine Arts in Luanda and director of that school to de1994 1997. He holds a Master of Arts Education at the University of Surrey Roehampton, London, in collaboration with the Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo / Portugal (2003). He is the Author of several national and international awards in the field of Fine Arts. He currently runs and manages the Project Space Dizalalu Cultural - Art, Culture and Ecology. UNAP of the Secretary General (2005-06). Currently holds the office of Director of National Artistic Training (DINFA) and lecturer of chair design course in architecture at the University Agostinho Neto.

BOTSWANA - PAMELA PHATSIMO SUNSTRUM

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum was born in Botswana and grew up in South Africa, Malawi, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Canada. She completed her Masters in Fine Arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, USA. In 2010 Sunstrum relocated to Johannesburg. She is an artist in residence at the Bag Factory Artists' Studios; a researcher at the Centre for the Creative Arts of Africa at the University of Witwatersrand; and a part-time lecturer at the History of Art Department at Wits.
More of Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum's work can be seen at www.PamelaPhatsimo.com

This drawing reflects Sunstrum's continued interest in the invention of "futuristic mythologies". There is a beautiful tension between the powerful migratory flight of birds and the poetic tumbling of human figures through space. Gilded geometry and constellations of star maps create a rhythmic multi-dimensional cosmos.

MALAWI - PRECIOUS MHONE

Precious Mhone is a Malawian artist who moved to London at a young age. There she pursued her studies at the Camberwell College of Arts at the University of the Arts London where she was receipt of a recipient of BA (Hons) Photography. Mhone creates work that is not based on any particular style of photography. Wanting to push the boundaries in her use of photography, she became interested in making work that had a bit more room for reckless abandon in the production process, one where error could lead to welcome surprises

MOZAMBIQUE - MAIMUNA ADAM

Maimuna Adam (Maputo, 1984) completed her BA in Fine Arts at the University of Pretoria in 2008. Her artistic research focuses on personal and historical narratives related to travelling and migration making use of materials such as coffee, ink, paper, charcoal, acrylics, canvas, found objects and books in her practice. She explores notions of identity and memory in relation to her mixed heritages, mixing narratives gathered through research that leads her to literature and published findings as well as oral, informal and indirect recounting of experiences.l of fine arts.

MOZAMBIQUE - MUDAULANE

Celestino Benedict Mondlane (Mudaulane) was born March 17, 1972 in Maputo. He holds a degree in History from the University Eduardo Mondlane, he also concluded the average level in pottery in 1992 at the School of Visual Arts. He teaches Ceramics, Design and Education Look at the school since 1993. He taught drawing, arts and crafts and Education Visual Institute in Edulandia. He was also the first teacher education course in Visual Matalana and cultural center of the course ceramic artisans of Nampula, Cabo Delgado and Niassa.

He has worked as a kindergarten teacher in kindergarten Tweety in Maputo.
He is an artist, a member of the Center for Art, a founding member of the Art Movement Contemporary and Gallery resident artist Fonseca Macedo (Portugal). He attended a professional internship: Art Scholl Foundation, specialized school art education, Johannesburg (1994); As well as another at the secondary School Soares dos Reis (specialized school education artistic, Porto (1997), Department of Design and Ceramics at the University of Natal, South Africa South (1999), School of Fine Arts from Reunion Island (2006).

SEYCHELLES - DANNY SOPHA

Born September 1968, Victoria, Mahe, Seychelles. Trained in Fined Art, School of Art and Design Seychelles Polytechnic, 1986 – 1998.
Danny Sopha's recent paintings are focused on the cultural and natural heritage of Seychelles. Marine life and the traditional music of Seychelles are two inter-related themes addressed in his work at the present time. Some of the paintings are composed of a montage of images carefully arranged over the canvas to create a visual narrative which the viewer may interpret in his own way. His palette ranges from warm yellow and orange hues to cool blues and greens all of which also evoke the sensation of music which the artist depicts through some of the images in his paintings. The marine paintings are a combination of two-dimensional images embellished with three-dimensional found-objects to create assemblages on a highly textured surface.
The recent interest in found materials and technique reveals a new direction in the works of Danny Sopha and the kind of concept he will probably address in the future.

SOUTH AFRICA - DINEO SESHEE BOPAPE

Dineo Seshee Bopape was born in 1981 on a Sunday. If she were Ghanaian, her name would be Akosua/Akos for short. In the year of her birth, the Brixton riots took place; two people were injured when a bomb exploded in a Durban shopping centre. Bobby Sands dies, MTV is launched, the Boeing 767 makes its first air flight, Umkhonto we Sizwe performs numerous underground assault operations against the apartheid state. There was an earthquake in China that killed maybe 50 people. Hosni Mubarak was elected president of Egypt, there was a coup d'etat in Ghana. Princess Diana of Britain married Charles. Bob Marley dies. Apartheid SA invaded Angola. AIDS is identified/created/named. Salman Rushdie releases Midnight's Children. In the region of her birth: Her paternal grandmother died. Julius Malema is born. Millions of people cried. Millions of people laughed! The world's population was apparently at around 4,529-billion.

Bopape spent her youth in Limpopo in varying social situations. At 12 years of age she began to follow a hunger for an elsewhere, beginning with Durban where she spent some years and studied painting and sculpture. She is a 2007 graduate of De Ateliers in Amsterdam and in 2010 completed an MFA at Columbia University, New York. She was the winner of the 2008 MTN New Contemporaries Award, and the recipient of a 2010 Columbia University Toby Fund Award. She has shown her work in major and minor national and international exhibitions ... Other events of the year of her birth and of her lifetime are perhaps too many to fully know.

SOUTH AFRICA - JOAO ORECCHIA

João Orecchia is an artist and self taught non-musician who has been making music for many years. His fascination is in squeezing sounds out of anything and layering them on top of other sounds squeezed out of other things. From guitars to manipulated circuits and banjos to field recordings.
He has been exploring ideas of randomness and perceived meaning, composition using found sound and field recordings and creating graphic scores. Through experimentation and improvisation Orecchia investigates the physicality of sound, seeking a balance between computer technology, hand made electronics and real world sounds such as the human voice and traditional musical instruments.
Orecchia performs with his band Motèl Mari which includes Mpumelelo Mcata and Tshepang Ramoba of BLK JKS, as well as improvised music with the likes of Lukas Ligeti, Jill Richards and Joseph Suchy. The album Eternal Peasant by João Orecchia's Motèl Mari will be out on vinyl and download in July 2012 on Other Electricities.

SOUTH AFRICA - RUTH SACKS

Ruth Sacks is a South African visual artist who lives and works in Johannesburg. She has exhibited widely, with highlights including: The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds after 1989, curated by Peter Weibel and Andrea Buddensieg at ZKM |Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany (2011);Performa 09, curated by RoseLee Goldberg in New York, USA, hosted by the Museum for African Art (2009);Luanda_Pop Checklist, curated by Fernando Alvim and Simon Njami for the African Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale, Italy (2007); .za, curated by Lorenzo Fusi at the Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena, Italy (2008) and the 1st Architecture, Art and Landscape Biennial of the Canaries, curated by Antonio Zaya at Los Lavaderos, Tenerife, Spain (2006).

More recent solo projects have been Twenty Thousand Leagues Under Seas at the Center for Historical Reenactments in Johannesburg (2012) and Double-sided Accumulated at Extraspazio in Rome, Italy (2010). Her 3rd artist's book, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under Seas will be launched this year at the Museé Jules Verne in Amiens, France.  Previous artist books to date are: False Friends, published by Kunstverein Press, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2010) and An Extended Alphabet, published by Expodium, Utrecht, the Netherlands (2011).

Sacks was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa in 1977. She is currently based at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), where she is a doctoral fellow. Sacks will be participating in the International Residency at Récollets program in Paris, France, this year. She is one of the facilitators of the artist-run project space, the Parking Gallery, hosted by the Visual Arts Network of South Africa (VANSA). Sacks is a laureate of the Higher Institute for Fine Art (HISK) in Ghent, Belgium.

TANZANIA - SAFINA KIMBOKOTA

Safina Said Kimbokota was born in 1981 in Lindi Region, Tanzania. She moved to Dar-es-salaam at the age of eight and has lived in Dar-es-salaam since then. She was born into a very creative family and she was influenced from an early age by the wide range of creative expressions going on around her. She was encouraged to explore a variety of interests throughout her childhood but it was not until her final year of secondary school that she realized her passion for fine art.
She went to Uganda in 2001 to study at the Namasagali College. Then to Bagamoyo College of Arts in Bagamoyo and in 2008 She joined University of Dar-es-salaam and completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2011, she has been concentrating on developing a career as both a painter and a sculptor. She is a member of several organizations TNC for (AIAP), WAC (Women Are Creators), (FPASA) Fine and Performing Students Association). TAVICOM (Tanzania Visual Communication Management). Also has been involved in a variety of group exhibitions. She currently lives and works in Dar-es-salaam, Tanzania.

ZIMBABWE - GERALD MACHONA

Gerald Machona is a Zimbabwean born Visual artist pursuing a (MFA) Masters Degree in Fine Art in Sculpture from Rhodes University and holds a Bachelors degree in Fine art from the
University of Cape Town, which he completed at the Michaelis School of fine arts in 2009-2010.

In 2011 Gerald Machona was selected by Business Day and the Johannesburg Art Fair as one of the top ten young African artists practicing in South Africa. Machona works with sculpture, performance, new media, photography and Film, and the most notable aspect of his work is his innovative use of currency—particularly decommissioned Zimbabwean dollars—as an aesthetic material.

Machona's work engages with issues of migration, social interaction and xenophobia in South Africa, and explores the creative limits of visual art production through the use of decommissioned Zimbabwean dollars as a key medium. He has participated in group exhibitions such as Making way at the standard bank art gallery, Johannesburg (2013), The Night Show, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town (2011); The Geography of Somewhere, Stevenson Gallery in Johannesburg (2011); and US II, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa (2010). Machona is Also a recipient of a Mellon shcolarship and is a member of the Visual and Performing Arts of Africa research group at Rhodes University.

Gerald is interested in the convergence of art, performance, culture and heritage in Africa and the experiences of the African-Diaspora.

"This body of work intends to re-imagine the negative perception of African nationals living and working in South Africa, through the use of a Malawian (Chewa) traditional masquerade know as Gule Wamkulu or Nyau. This Chewa rite of passage is performed by Malawian young men who are coming of age, as a means of expressing their identity. Masks and secrecy plays an important role in fueling this practices powerful ability to re-imagine self and as shown in places like Zimbabwe can be used to negotiate a new sense of group identity that negates xenophobia and issues pertaining to the alien and the nation.

"My practice is interested in how those that migrate into a society negotiate cultural and ethnic conflict. Through this Chewa tradition, which I have appropriated and evolved, I aim to create dialogue with various local audiences in an attempt to challenge attitudes of intolerance towards these new comers. It is an attempt to reconstruct new identities based on positive economic and occupational practices and not derogatory labels such as Makwerekwere".

ZIMBABWE - GERALD MACHONA

Born in 1981 in Zimbabwe, Kudzanai Chiurai is an internationally acclaimed young artist now living and working in South Africa. He was the first black student to graduate with a BA Fine Art from the University of Pretoria. Regarded as part of the "born free" generation in Zimbabwe – born one year after the country's independence from Rhodesia – Chiurai's early work focused on the political, economic and social strife in his homeland. Seminal works like Presidential wallpaper depicted Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe as a sell-out and led to Chiurai's exile from Zimbabwe.

In a series of large mixed media works, Chiurai consequentially began to tackle some of the most pertinent issues facing southern Africa such as xenophobia, displacement and black empowerment. He began to produce paintings that confront viewers with the psychological and physical experience of inner-city Johannesburg, the continent's most cosmopolitan melting pot where thousands of exiles, refugees and asylum-seekers battle for survival alongside the never-ending swell of newly urbanised South Africans. The actuality of these environs is reinforced by Chiurai's use of photographic transfer. Boldly stenciled figures and anonymous text provide running commentary, leading viewers on a journey through his intricately painted turn-of-the century buildings, bustling streets and congested transit systems.

His sell-out exhibition Graceland (2007) offered striking commentary on issues related to black economic empowerment and inner-city rejuvenation in South Africa. From his home/studio located in one of Johannesburg's most notorious crime hotspots (now earmarked as a rejuvenation zone), Chiurai produced a body of work that featured buildings, residents and signage seen from his own balcony. And while stereotypical benchmarks of urban development, such as the new BMW-driving suburban black elite, were challenged and often ridiculed, a subtle yet powerful ray of hope and progress also emerged. Works like Since 1900 and Fela heralded the perseverance and longevity of mom and pop neighborhood businesses and indigenous African icons. Chiurai offered a deeply personal glimpse of his version of "Graceland" and signalled a fresh direction for future works.

In 2009 Chiurai joined the Goodman Gallery stable, exhibiting in the group exhibition Nation State and extending his foray into the murky world of African politics with two solo shows: Dying to be men at Goodman Gallery Cape in 2009 and Communists and hot chicken wings: the birth of a new nation at Goodman Gallery project space in 2010. Large-scale photographs critiquing the representation and aesthetics of political power were at the core of Dying to be men, and Chiurai followed this with a series of large linocuts, an oversized mural, and the fictional remains of a presidential assassination inCommunists and hot chicken wings.

Though he is known primarily as a painter, Chiurai extends his practice to a broad public engagement not always possible in the confines of the white cube. His work as a producer, editor, and designer is often located in informal networks and situations and is intimately connected to his political activism. This wide-ranging approach to making art is demonstrated in a body of work that embraces photography, publishing, music, public art, and fashion. He has edited two publications with contributions by leading creatives. The first of these formed part of his 2008 solo exhibition Yellow Lines, which was a catalogue of the exhibition that also worked as magazine. Collaborating with writers, artists, graphic designers, stylists and fashion photographers, Chiurai presented them with a brief to reinterpret the theme of the exhibition. He completed a second reader titled Black President vol. II, which was published in 2010 by Goodman Gallery Editions.

Chiurai has participated in a number of local and international group exhibitions, including the Dakar Biennale, Senegal; Africa Now, a travelling exhibition in Scandinavia; as well as New Painting, a local travelling exhibition in 2006. The Goodman Gallery has exhibited his recent work at PhotoParis 2009, the 2010 Armory fair in New York, and Art Basel Miami Beach 2009. His work is represented in the collections of Iziko South African National Gallery,BHP Billiton, and Nandos UK, amongst others.