Exhibitions

Julie Mehretu: The Addis Show will open at the Modern Art Museum Gebre Kristos Desta Center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from July 8 to August 6, 2016

The show will feature 17 of Mehretu’s paintings, ranging from her earliest paintings to her most recent works. The Museum is especially pleased to host this show as it will mark the first time that Mehretu will exhibit her work in Ethiopia, where she was born and raised until she was 7. Julie Mehretu is widely considered one of the finest painters of her generation. She is known for her densely layered and mesmerizing abstract paintings, which often gesture to the language of architecture and geography as inspiration for abstract compositions, as well as commentary on the complex social worlds we inhabit. Mehretu’s work offers not only a new form of visual abstraction, but also a new perspective of the social and geographic networks that underpin the modern world. Along with the exhibition there will be a series of events with the artist, including a daylong symposium featuring artists, architects, curators and art historians, and workshops and lectures at Addis Ababa and Bahir Dar Universities.

Aida Silvestri: Unsterile Clinic will open at Autograph ABP in London, United Kingdom from July 8 to August 27, 2016

Autograph ABP will present Unsterile Clinic, an exhibition by Aida Silvestri to raise awareness of the widespread practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Inspired by personal experience, Silvestri started an in-depth investigation into the wide-spread practice of FGM in 2015, and began interviewing women of East African background living in London. In order to 'reduce the intensity of the subject matter and make it more accessible', Silvestri has chosen an aesthetic approach that involves the creation of sculptural photo-works that feature beads stitched onto layers of vintage leather to resemble her subjects' skin colours. Each leather piece is unique, to reflect the different types of FGM the women portrayed have been subjected to, and shows the various stages of tissue removal where cutting took place; black silhouette portraits are accompanied by short text-poems assembled from interviews highlighting the women's experiences in their own words.

Paradoxal Stranger is still on view at the Gallery Momo in Cape Town, South Africa until July 30, 2016

Gallery Momo is presenting Paradoxal Stranger, a group exhibition of local and international artists working on video. The exhibition marks the continuation of the gallery’s commitment to actively engage with the growing medium of video art in South Africa. Paradoxal Stranger, positions itself within the current narrative of how individuals understand, respond, and challenge discourses within and outside South Africa, interrogating how people examine and reflect upon their history. The gallery has invited artists to aesthetically reflect on and question the idea of what are the ‘stranger’ and ‘citizen’ within the current political, institutional, and social context. Themes of boundaries, performance, collaboration, self-definition, lost histories, and individual or collective narratives converge within the works in a rhizomatous manner; which is to say that they are depicted as being in the thick of a complex web of ever-shifting and adaptive connections and links.

Biennials

Milano Triennale is still open at various locations in Milan and its suburbs, Italy until September 12, 2016

La Triennale di Milano is an international cultural institution which organises exhibitions and conferences as well as hosting arts, design, architecture, fashion, cinema, communications and social events. This year, the International Exhibition entitled 21st Century. Design After Design touches on key questions, such as the new dramatic art of design, which consists mainly in its ability to deal with those anthropological issues that classical modernity has excluded from its brief, such as death, the sacred, eros, destiny, traditions, and history; the issue of gender in design; the impact of globalization on design; the transformations brought about by the dawn of the twenty-first century and the crisis of 2008; the relationship between city and design; the relationship between design and the accessibility of new information technologies; and the relationship between design and craftsmanship.

Contaminafro: Evolving Identity will open during the Milano Triennale from July 13-17, 2016

A festival of theater, dance, music, enriched by exhibitions, workshops and conferences, which brings out a different image of Africa by the current stereotypes, not tied to folk and undifferentiated connotations, but respectful of the mosaic of cultures present in African continent and at the same time ‘contaminated’ by the events that have marked the history and changed the identity.

Festivals

Foreign Affairs will open at Haus der Berliner Festspiele in Berlin, Germany from July 5-17, 2016

Foreign Affairs is an international festival of contemporary performing arts in Berlin which is not just a place to present art, but rather a place to establish relationships and form ties. It links up with artists all over the world, from various sectors of contemporary arts, from theatre, dance, performance, visual arts, film and music. The festival creates a platform for a meeting of artists and audiences, of theory and art, of global guests and local realities. The fifth edition of the festival will focus on the collaboration of the South African artist William Kentridge with international artists who developed projects on the topic of ‘uncertainty’ – for the stage, urban spaces, and a night exhibition.