Dominique Cheminais (b 1984) is a novelist and painter from Cape Town, South Africa. In 2010, she had an exhibition of paintings, titled For Esme with Love and Squalor, at Blank Projects. Shortly afterwards she stopped painting entirely and dedicated herself to writing fiction. She is the author of a collection of short stories, Slim Foot on the Neck of a Dead Lion and Immovable Movers, a book of abstract poetry. Her first novel, The Animal Breaking Through the Flesh, came out in 2015 followed by her second novel Eighty-Four Thousand. Her most recent novel Indefinite Holiday will be published in the US later this year through Pig Roast Publishing. Her novel Many Shallows has provided the inspiration for her new paintings.
Since re-entering the art world, she has shown work on FNB Joburg Art Fair with Stevenson Gallery, participated in a group show presented by Guy Simpson at Under Projects, and done a residency to launch her novel Many Shallows with A4 arts foundation, painting the walls and ceiling of the Goods space at Proto A4.
Born in Johannesburg in 1991, sculptor Driaan Claassen first studied 3D animation before apprenticing with Otto du Plessis, artist and founder of Bronze Age Foundry. Claassen is currently based in Cape Town, where he opened his own design and fine art studio, Reticence, in 2015.
Claassen works primarily in bronze, wood, and wire. Inspired by technology from a young age, he elevates the materiality of his sculptural mediums by merging cutting-edge machinery, traditional craftsmanship, and deep introspection.
For Claassen, manipulating the physical world has psychological implications. Through the abstracted forms his sculptures take whether solid or fractal, geometric or organic he reflects on the structure of the human mind and thought. He explores the intersection of our consciousness with the outside world, where light and dark meet, positive and negative space, the defined and amorphous, order and chaos. Claassen has created a visual language that juxtaposes shape, colour, texture, and pattern to offer insight into his search for self-knowledge. Claassen’s work has been exhibited locally and internationally, including at Design Miami, Design Miami/Basel, GUILD Design Fair, PAD London, and Intersect Chicago.
Nonzuzo Gxekwa (b. 1981) is a Johannesburg based photographer. Her approach to photography favours the everyday over the spectacular; sharing intimate moments by focusing the camera on what is around her as well as on herself. Whether photographing in the street or in the studio, her work explores the human condition in subtle and beautiful ways. Her optic is loving. It’s not simply that she chooses to focus on moments of self love—the way people occupy themselves—but that in the taking, her subjects are never wholly circumscribed. There is always space to manoeuvre. Collaboration is a crucial part of her practice, and she regularly works with photographers and other creatives in Johannesburg and further afield.
Nonzuzo’s work was included in Presence: Five Contemporary African Photographers at the Photographer’s Gallery in London from July – August 2021. In November 2021 Nonzuzo was selected for Self-Addressed, organised by Kehinde Wiley and Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles. For this landmark exhibition, Wiley invited a selection of contemporary African artists to produce a self-portrait. Together these portraits presented a new exploration of identity, perception, and self-regard within the global stage. She was also accepted to complete a year long residency at the prestigious Jan van Eyck Academie.
In 2022 her collaborative work, The Mask Project formed part of the exhibition Hope from Chaos: Pandemic Reflections at the ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.
Abdus Salaam is a self-taught multi-disciplinary artist from Cape Town, South Africa. Inspired by natural beauty and spirituality, Salaam reveals a sensitivity to three- dimensional spatial expression and the metaphysical connotations inherent in materials. Contemporary in his mystic abstraction, his work is rooted in poetry, calling from a familiar place to a state of peaceful and intensive longing. Moving freely between mediums – from sculpture to painting, video, photographic 'light paintings’, poetry, augmented reality, and music – he creates poetic worlds, from the intimate to large-scale installation. Salaam’s Heartwood Series is a meditation on the unseen heart, viewed through the poetic beauty of trees. By focusing on the natural formations within, Salaam refers to both our capacity for abstraction and growth, and our shared malleable form. Just as trees are moved by wind, sun, and the those around them, we too are shaped by the symphony of life that surrounds us.
Abdus Salaam’s oil paintings on stainless steel and aluminium are an expression of meditation and meaning. Each work is started and finished in a single session often 12-16 hours long of intensive repetition both inwardly and outwardly as the artist recites aloud a specific chapter of the Holy Quran in Arabic, continuously, from memory, until a given work is completed. Acting as a medium of sound the marks that the artist makes on the substrate are made with a single brush rotated in the same movement from the inside out, creating a very light impasto with a glossy finish that defuses light in a shimmering swirl as the viewer’s perspective changes. Salaam’s work looks beyond tropes of identity and outer struggle, instead focusing on unity and on the expansive spiritual inner realities of beauty, peace and striving, as they relate to nature and our shared human experience.
Jake Michael Singer (b. 1991) experiments with a broad range of disciplines from photography to works on paper and commands an exquisite mastery of sculpture. Drawing inspiration from the emergent behaviour of flocking birds, where the individual is subsumed in the whole; and meditating on the timeless monumentality of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, his Murmurations series speaks to our time. Meticulously constructed, using up to sixteen thousand meters of marine grade stainless steel for a single sculpture, the Murmurations series establishes his position as one of the leading young sculptors from Africa.
Singer has held solo shows in Africa and America and been part of over 60 group shows since graduating in 2013. He was recognised by the Eduardo Villa Foundation Grant both in 2016 and 2017, the youngest sculptor yet awarded this. His work features in private collections in South Africa, Germany, Greece, Canada, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Mmangaliso Nzuza (b. 1998) is a visual artist who lives and works in Durban, South Africa. Nzuza is a figurative painter who draws inspiration from his own personal history and popular culture. He received a Master of Arts with Honours at The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and has developed a unique style that reflects his personal experiences. Mmangaliso's style is characterized by his use of oil paints to create figurative paintings. He often depicts his figures in a state of stagnation, which reflects his own struggles with social anxiety. The figures in his, paintings are often depicted in a reflective and contemplative state, and he uses colour and composition to convey a sense of depth and complexity and a sense of individuality to each character.
“Inspired by my own personal history and popular culture. The idea of stagnation and mental health development is a recurring theme in my work and for me, the forming of my figures is a means of uncovering an individual’s character. This is a core focus of my practice with figurative oil paintings that express my battle with social anxiety.”
Mmangaliso's art is significant because it gives voice to the struggles of those who suffer from social anxiety and mental health issues. His work is a powerful reminder that mental health is an ongoing battle and can inspire those who feel alone in their struggles. Through his art, Mmangaliso is able to create a sense of understanding, and connection to the experiences of others.
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