After two years of living with Covid-19 and social restrictions, the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, and annual art season, is back (and in person!)
From Friday, 18 until Sunday, 20 February – you can visit the Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF) at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC); and while you’re in the mood for art, why not visit the Iziko South African National Gallery (ISANG) too!
Highlights currently on exhibition at the ISANG include amaHubo – a video installation by Buhlebezwe Siwani that interrogates the historical associations between African spiritual beliefs and cosmologies and Christianity. Centring the role of land and black women (and their positionality) within spiritual practices and institutions, amaHubo invites us to reflect deeply on the challenges of rootedness, devotion and healing in our society.
Other must-see exhibitions at the ISANG include Territories Between Us – a group exhibition foregrounding embodied ways of knowing and delving into various subjectivities to point to the many ways our existences are territorialized by structures, both visible and invisible; Durban-based artist, curator and educator Coral Bijoux’s multimedia installation Dreams as R-evolution – which takes visitors on a dreamlike journey and presents a surreal otherworldliness that is beyond social conditioning; and Tribute – an exhibition that brings the South African visual art school syllabus to life, creating a stimulating learning engagement that fosters respect, enjoyment and fresh visual expression.
Drawing from the Collection showcases the variety of drawings and works on paper from the Permanent Collection of the ISANG, and comprises of an eclectic number of both unknown and prominent visual artists working in different styles – stretching the exhibition across history and countries to provide an overview of drawing as a medium. Framing Landscape: ‘the Picturesque’ and ‘theSublime’ highlights two major modes of landscape art that emerged between the 1600s and 1800s: ‘the Picturesque’ and ‘the Sublime’. While the Picturesque sought to convey a pleasurable, improved vision of a harmonious nature, the Sublime sought to convey its infinite power and unpredictable moods, often stimulating feelings of awe and terror in the onlooker. The Sublime remains especially vital as humanity now confronts its own fearful and man-made vistas of environmental depredation and climate change.
The Iziko South African National Gallery is open daily between 09h30 and 15h30. Learn more about the Investec Cape Town Art Fair HERE.
