Notes from the Arts Kraal — October in Paris is alive with stimulating events

KAP artist Boyce Magandela’s The Unity. Photo: Supplied

By Vera Mihailovich-Dickman

3 Dec 2024

If there is a uniqueness to South African artists, it is their deep human values.

October in Paris is not a month like any other. People have settled back after the summer, autumn has lowered the temperature, inviting Parisians to turn their minds to the inner world of art. The art fairs are buzzing: 1-54 in London, Art Basel in Paris, the Salon d’Automne on the Champs Elysées, and, of course, the Also Known as Africa (AKAA) Art and Design Fair.

I track down the contemporary South African artists as a way of leaning in to hear the voices of the country I left when I came to study here many years ago. For the 2024 edition of AKAA, 36 international galleries showed works from all over Africa, including its diaspora, and seven showed works by South African artists in their booths.

I also follow the artists at the Cité Internationale des Arts, where a Sanava (South African National Association for the Visual Arts) artist-in-residence, Simone Marie Farah, held a spellbinding Open Studio. She was subsequently invited to show her work with two Parisian galleries, one in the Marais and one that wanted to represent her online through Artsy.

I wondered whether, if there is a uniqueness to South African artists, it is their deep human values.

Bonne Espérance, Scott Billy’s South African gallery in Paris, was showing works of the Keiskamma Art Project, a collective from Hamburg in the Eastern Cape, of about 150 embroidery artists collaborating with contemporary painters or photographers, in this case Asanda Kupa, Henk Serfontein, Boyce Magandela and Lionel Mbayiwa.

Philiswa Lila made the only installation at the AKAA in Paris last month. (Photo: Vera Mihailovich-Dickman)

Not only are ancestral lifestyles represented in a collage of textiles, threads and stitches combining people, clothes, rituals, landscape, nature and architecture, but one senses the value of community and transmission. In one of the works, we hear the voice of South African poet Antjie Krog praising Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the prayer appearing as embroidered text in the hands of those paying homage in isiXhosa.

Zimbabwean artist Lionel Mbayiwa, who understandably feels a little like an alien in South Africa, expresses this in a playful, colourful, almost surrealist manner through his design, which is then collectively developed and embroidered, perhaps helping him integrate into the local community.

Pippa Hetherington’s photographic technique reverses the historical prohibition for indigenous people to use the clay of colonial settler land and integrates a modern-day indigenous woman back into the landscape, repairing the wound.

An artwork b by KAP artist Lionel Mbayiwa’s Vabvakure on show in the Bonne Espérance gallery. (Photo: Supplied)

Themes of nature, society, colonial history, and ancestral history, through found and recycled materials, with techniques of making or repairing as well as collaborating across cultures and generations, are the hallmarks of these surprisingly varied, unique and vibrant works.

THK Gallery in Cape Town, also present at London 1-54, featured Lulama Wolf, who had a three-month residency with Undiscovered Canvas in France in 2021. Her stylised line and colour echo the ancestral techniques of rich pigment painting while honouring women and the beauty of simple interaction with the environment.

Also with THK, Abdus Salaam’s sculpture, The Last Stone (Marmo IV), 2024, makes Black Marquina marble seem as melty as caramel or pliable as Plasticine. The artist has a distinct voice: matter is both poetic and mystical, and its inner beauty is revealed through colour and light in natural materials which he has liked to shape since his childhood experience of painting and sculpting in South African mountains.

Barbara Wildenboer was a Paris artist-in-residence with Air Arts, a heritage site of Montparnasse. Her cut paper and collage work allow her to “return” what has been “looted” while investing new forms of life and cohabitation in an imaginary world. She is represented for the second time at AKAA by the Lisbon gallery, This is not a White Cube. Through reassembling and combining analogue and digital processes, she revisits the notions of history and culture and attributes new meanings to heritage and ancestry.

A Prayer Song for Desmond Tutu by Henk Serfontein and the artists of KAP. (Photo: Supplied)

Geneva’s Gallery Brulhart, which specialises in showing contemporary art by African women, featured the only installation of the AKAA show, by Philiswa Lila, Sanava’s winner of the 2019 Gérard Sekoto Award.

The work emerged from her residency with the GendV project, a collaboration between the universities of Johannesburg and Cambridge on urban transformation and gender violence in India and South Africa (2021-2024). She addresses theories of safety, resilience and survival using mediums ranging from beadwork to painting, found objects, performance and video.

David Brits’ snake-like sculptures in black carbon fibre introduce yet another innovative technique representing mythical and physical power in Africa and enriching the diversity of visual themes.

Duende Art Projects from Antwerp presented Sibusiso Ngwazi with his more automatic or spontaneous style of painting and texture-creating, sometimes working with his eyes closed, an abstract approach aiming to reflect the free-flowing nature of the mind.

As for Reggie Khumalo, with Filafriques in Geneva, his paintings and textiles extend beyond the frame as if to invite the viewer to look beyond boxes or categories to develop empathy and restore dignity. The gallery mediator said this philanthropist aimed to embody and display ubuntu through his humanitarian ventures in Africa, where he travels vastly, aiming to empower the communities he visits.

KAP artist Boyce Magandela’s The Unity. (Photo: Supplied)

If these artists give us even a glimpse of what South Africa offers today in terms of skills development, storytelling and resilience, what stands out for me is how they all reflect deep human values, embodied in their work. They make me proud of this young country and make it clear that international residencies – which are a major headache to apply for – make a difference through the interactions and confidence they help to develop.

As we eased towards November, four more South African artists closed the month. Familiar to Parisians, hip-hop artist Stogie T released his EP, Shallow, at the New Morning.

Photographer Sibusiso Bheka, with the French Soul and Joy project in Gauteng, is back after his recent residency at the Cité, exhibiting at PhotoSaintGermain along with Tshepiso Mazibuko. And on the last day of October, while Paris celebrated Halloween, writer Denis Hirson launched his new memoir, My Thirty-Minute Bar Mitzvah (published by Jacana), with a reading at the famous Shakespeare & Co bookshop.

Hard to keep up, right? DM

Le Kraal – Association of South African Arts & Culture; Comitejournalistes.eu

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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