Exhibitions

Lady Skollie: Lust Politics is still on view at Tyburn Gallery in London, United Kingdom until March 4, 2017

Using ink, watercolor, and crayon, Lady Skollie creates playfully sexual paintings, filled with bright colors, symbolic fruit, and all the joy and darkness of the erotic. Her work is simultaneously bold and vulnerable, expressing the duality of human sexuality. In Lust Politics Lady Skollie presents new painterly works considering sex, gender roles, taboos, objectification, violence, power structures, greed and lust. The result is a body of confrontational artwork rich with suggestive images of bananas, papayas and repeated patterns of ‘pussy prints’; these fruit motifs highlight the artist’s anxiety towards unrealistic expectations of sexual and romantic relations between men and women. In these new works, delicate and vibrant colours are masterfully blended within images that transcend Lady Skollie’s own take on sexual fantasies and desires.

Johannes Haile: With Different Eyes is still on view at ifa Gallery in Stuttgart, Germany until April 2, 2017

The exhibition With Different Eyes sponsored by ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) reveals, for the first time in Germany, the perspective of Johannes Haile (1927-2016) during his visit of West and East Germany in 1962. Haile was one of the first Ethiopians to study photography in the United States. He acted as the official photographer of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). In 1962, he was commissioned by the German Embassy in Ethiopia to capture images of postwar Germany during its industrial comeback. During his seven-week journey he visited East and West Berlin, the VW assembly lines in Wolfsburg, Munich and the Oktoberfest, the wine-growing town of Rüdesheim as well as many other places.

Kader Attia: Reflecting Memory is still on view at Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art in Evanston, IL, United States until April 16, 2017

The Block Museum presents an exhibition of newly commissioned work by the internationally acclaimed French-Algerian artist Kader Attia, based in part on the artist’s research in the collections of Northwestern University’s Herskovits Library of African Studies and interviews with university faculty across disciplines. Conceived as an installation, the exhibition will feature collage, a sculpture, and an extended film-essay. Taken as a whole, the works will expand on Attia’s long-term exploration of trauma and repair, both of the body and of society, and will probe the legacies of colonialism, slavery, and xenophobia in our time.

Festivals

Live Art Festival 2017 will open at the Institute for Creative Arts (ICA) in Cape Town, South Africa from February 10-26, 2017

This third edition of the Live Art festival will showcase a gathering of some of the most influential artists from across the continent for an explosion of performances set to push the boundaries of audiences and artists alike. With the City of Cape Town as the stage, this dynamic range of public, collaborative, and often transgressive performative artworks will disrupt public spaces across the Mother City. Continuing the ICA’s history as an initiator of innovative projects, Live Art 2017 establishes itself as a pioneer in the region, blurring the fields of fine art, dance, theatre, music and literature to form a unique platform for cutting-edge interdisciplinary art.  With an emphasis on works by African artists and those from the diaspora, the festival makes possible new and transformative interactions within diverse personal, political, public, and architectural spaces.

Art Fairs

Cape Town Art Fair 2017 will open at the International Convention Centre (CTICC) in Cape Town, South Africa from February 17-19, 2017

The upcoming fifth edition of Cape Town Art Fair (CTAF) will offer a diverse display of contemporary art from leading local and international galleries. Over 75 exhibitors from established and emerging art centres including London, Paris, Milan, Madrid, Lagos, Abidjan, Addis Ababa, Harare, Nairobi, Accra and Dubai are participating in CTAF 2017. Taking place in the heart of Cape Town’s city centre at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, the fair will also show a variety of sections dedicated to large-scale installations, emerging artists and online art platforms. Increasing in size and scope, CTAF 2017 will include a new section, UNFRAMED, dedicated to ambitious, large-scale works which will be strongly interactive, encouraging fairgoers to enter into a more stimulating dialogue with contemporary art.