Johannesburg - Every year, the FNB Joburg Art Fair showcases the best in emerging and established talent. A platform for the development of art, growing business opportunities for the industry and positioning Joburg as a contemporary art city, the anticipated fair returns for its tenth anniversary edition at the Sandton Convention Centre from Friday, 8 September to Sunday, 10 September. This year it features more than 60 exhibitions within five categories.
With so much on offer, we chose five exhibitions you just can’t miss:
Lady Skollie
Known for her erotic artworks inspired by, among other things, Khoisan cave drawings, Lady Skollie is an intensely feminist artist. Her work depicts the nude form to convey concepts of gender and human sexuality. Like herself, her work is bold and vulnerable as she defies all taboos and talks openly about issues of sex, pleasure, consent, human connection and abuse.
Bronwyn Katz
This artist’s body of work incorporates sculpture, installation, video and performance. Her latest work is called Deur die Draad. For Katz, draad (wire) as both word and material is strongly linked to the idea of fences and enclosures, representing her interest in pushing through and dismantling spacial and social barriers and structures. Employing discarded bedsprings sourced from forgotten and neglected spaces in Joburg’s city centre, she seeks to question the unchallenged power of capital to dehumanise and displace.
Peju Alatise
Through her sculptures and installations, Peju Alatise dissects the economic, societal and cultural issues prevalent in Nigeria, such as financial empowerment, social justice and equality and the empowerment of women. Social, political and gender-related issues are her primary subject matter – and she expresses these issues amazingly through her art. She was announced as the 2017 recipient of the highly coveted FNB Art Prize at the media launch of this year’s instalment of the fair.
Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi
Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi is a multiform artist, whose sombre portraits of familiar faces question social constructs, as she interrogates: “What is a hero?” Her series of oil-on-canvas portraits brings martyrs to life and contemporary icons to the fore; taxi driver Emidio Macia, author Bessie Head, Nkosi’s great-grandmother, activist Winnie Mandela, soccer player Jabu Pule and rape victim Anene Booysen are among some of the heroes. She engages with power and its structures – with her paintings strongly addressing the idea of the icon or hero as a part of a social construct.
Lina Iris Viktor
Using white, blue, black and brown paints, geometric patterns, photography and pure gold, Lina Iris Viktor presents herself as a sensual goddess, an intimidating empress – challenging the ideas of black girl magic by envisioning herself as an intergalactic, otherworldly black female entity. “Those portraits, whether viewed as me or not, are an act of defiance, and in there lies something that is empowering. It controls the gaze and demands respect,” says Viktor.