Now is the time that everyone is looking for ways to make their time at home more meaningful. We are testing the boundaries of working from home; trying to get the children to carry on with their school work, and attacking the chores neglected for too long because we’ve been otherwise engaged.
For millennia, arts and culture have provided solace, mental relief, and tools for resilience in trying times.
As the Stellenbosch Triennale joins the majority of major exhibitions, museums and festivals around the world in suspending its operations, we take the opportunity to delve into the works of the artists featured at this seminal African art festival.
Artist features: On the Cusp
These talented young African artists were featured in the On the Cusp Exhibition, which is focused on revealing and unravelling the creative talents of tomorrow. We believe they deserve another look.
Aaron Samuel Mulenga | Last Supper
Aaron Samuel Mulenga’s work seeks to interrogate the tensions and overlaps in various representations of transcendence, which have shaped his spirituality. Aaron’s artwork “Last Supper” is a multi-layered video and object installation that offers an Afro-conscious lens on the last supper as presented in European art history and on Christianity as a whole. The video presents a take on an aspiration to transcendence through flight.
Valerie Fab-Uche | A cockroach cannot bring forth a butterfly
Valerie Fab-Uche has spent the majority of her life in Lagos, Nigeria. Danfo, as she is fondly called due to her “never stop, never settle” attitude and insatiable love for Lagos metropolitan life and street culture. A cockroach cannot bring forth a butterfly is influenced by internal fear (tribalism) and external fear (racism) and its relationship to the common fear of cockroaches (also known as Katsaridaphobia).
As human beings we are often afraid of what we don’t understand. We often perceive unfamiliarity as a threat, to our authority, our thinking and our beliefs: once it’s different, it is not “normal”. While gathering research for the project, she found that there are more commonalities between the life of a common cockroach and the average black man or woman. “A bird is an animal; a cockroach is a monster.”
Agnes Waruguru | Homewares
Agnes Waruguru is interested in everyday materials, especially those associated with the home. Many of her works reference women’s practices and traditional cultural identifiers. Homewares is an installation born from a process of collecting and passing. It is about the passing down of knowledge from one generation to the next through retelling and re-enacting of certain traditions.
Asafo Black Artist Collective | Various Works
Asafo Black is an artist collective established by six talented artists after their graduation from the Kumasi College of Art, Ghana, in 2017. We speak to Samuel Baah and Jeffery Otoo about their pieces that can be found at the On the Cusp Exhibition. The artists are Daniel Mensah, Denyse Gawu-Mensah, Jeffrey Otoo, Larry Adorkor, Nuna Adisenu-Doe and Samuel Baah Kortey. Through their independent practices, they have been actively involved in the critical discourses surrounding contemporary art across the globe.
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