Reconciling Cape Town’s art frenzy in a time of economic strife

Discussing a contemporary art boom may strike some as a misplaced topic. This may be the view given South Africa’s economy appears to be in a precarious place and a new round of load shedding by Eskom will not sweeten our future prospects.

Despite this, people will flock to Cape Town’s International Convention Centre from 15 February not only to attend the seventh edition of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, but all the events that have mushroomed around it: Art Week, openings and programmes at the city’s two new premier art museums, the Zeitz Mocaa and the Norval Foundation, and to crown this art frenzy will be an auction dedicated to contemporary art.

The latter was established by Strauss & Co in 2018 and has been seen as hailing a new era not only of consumer confidence in contemporary art — 20th century and modern have dominated local art auctions — but implies that the art ecosystem in Cape Town, South Africa and Africa at large has evolved.

I have set out to tackle this contemporary art boom issue in an art report that I will launch on Saturday.

What is an ecosystem with regard to contemporary art from Africa and what is the value in mapping it?

On the African continent, where ecosystems are in their nascence, the term pertains to the network that has evolved to support and professionalise the visual arts industry.

The more diverse and robust the system in terms of the types of segments or groups of players that it sustains, from art fairs, auctions, artist run-collectives to curators, the better the quality of art. And, it appears, the closer relationship art might enjoy with society — the circulation of the visual arts is diversified through multiple channels and enjoys constant validation.

As awareness around the creative economy has grown, and its impact on society, employment opportunities, a growth of cities and economies is being quantified, it has become important to understand how the art “system” is structured and operates. Who, or which segment, is most powerful and what impact might this have on the system?

Possible answers to this question don’t only have consequences for the art industry, but society at large. While art can be regarded as a commodity, and operates as such within the context of an art fair, it remains an important conduit for socio-political commentary and expression of it not only within our national borders, but beyond, given that contemporary art produced in or by Africans circulates in a global context.

Understanding how an art ecosystem is structured in a particular art capital such as Cape Town, or more generally, what an African model looks like, as is the case with any industry, serves as a touchstone for economic and social patterns. For example, the fact that most commercial galleries in South Africa are white-owned is revealing of the lack of transformation in elitist cultural circles. This stark reality haunts every art fair in this country regardless of the efforts of the organisers — also usually white — to disrupt this skewed picture.

Corrigall & Co’s inaugural art report, Contemporary African Art Ecology: A decade of Curating, reveals a globalised, more pan African view through an analysis of exhibitions produced by 20 of Africa’s most high-profile curators over the decade from 2007 to 2017.

The cover of Corrigall & Co’s inaugural art report. Image supplied.

The data we collected from this study turned up some incredible facts about the category dubbed contemporary African art. We found that the past decade has been a defining one for the visual arts across the continent — and South Africa. In this time, the structure of the ecosystem has altered completely, offering one of those cliched before and after pictures you might find in a women’s health magazine.

However, instead of losing weight, the ecosystem has gained it in the past decade, as the number of museums, biennales, festivals, art fairs, auction houses and commercial galleries has increased. Cape Town’s standing as an art capital 10 years ago compared with its current offerings is a case in point.

From 2007 the African art ecosystem has kept growing with new segments and players entering the sphere, leading to what could be termed a “boom” — though the word implies a short burst of activity or energy.

Leading this boom has been the commercial gallery sector — where there has been the most growth — hence the expansion and the sustained presence of the Cape Town and Joburg Art fairs and the Turbine Art Fair, it’s “poorer” cousin.

Corrigall & Co plot art platform growth. Image supplied.

Much of the activity outside Africa has to some degree led developments in this category — or such have been some of the major findings in our inaugural report. The most powerful curators we tracked are African, but European art capitals remain their main stomping ground.

Forty-seven percent of exhibitions staged by this elite group, which include, Gabi Ngcobo from South Africa and Bisi Silva and Azu Nwagbogu from Nigeria, took place in Europe. As curators are most closely bound to validating centres, their patterns give us insight into where African art is largely validated and through which kinds of institutions and types of art platforms.

Why Europe? Not only are the most established art platforms located on that continent, but African contemporary art has provided the framework to confront colonial abuses, a way to deal with a crisis in museology with “Ethnographic” museums having to reinvent themselves. A growing awareness of racism and the rise of right-wing politics has ironically given African art a purpose in shifting and countering such positions within art circles. Our colonial legacy is such too, that Africans look to Europe for “validation” of their cultural exports.

Simphiwe Ndzube’s Inevitable Journey to Mars (2016) is one of the main attractions on the Strauss & Co Contemporary auction. He currently has an exhibition at Stevenson Cape Town. Image supplied.

As such the boom in contemporary African art does not hang by the tenuous thread thought to be holding the South African economy together. Many people attending the events in Cape Town this week come from other parts of the continent and world. The number of international galleries participating in the Investec Cape Town Art Fair point to this globalised quality of the art ecosystem.

However, this does mean that the art most valued is determined by those beyond our borders. This could be to our advantage — those audiences aren’t burdened by local fashions and narrow prejudices — or it could limit our artists’ expression, with enterprising copycats creating art proven to be appealing to Europeans. DM