The same space three times

Nicholas Hlobo

Nicholas Hlobo (b. 1975, Cape Town, South Africa. Lives and works in Johannesburg) began his career around the end of apartheid in 1994, when there was a new sense of freedom and national pride in South Africa. With the eradication of legalised and enforced discrimination and segregation, Hlobo and his peers were empowered to openly voice their opinions and ideas under the protection of these new laws. Hlobo’s subtle commentary on the democratic realities of his home country and concerns with the changing international discourse of art remain at the core of his work. Using tactile materials such as ribbon, leather, wood, and rubber detritus that he melds and weaves together, Hlobo creates intricate two- and three-dimensional hybrid objects. Each material holds a particular association with cultural, gendered, sexual, or ethnic identity. Together, the works create a complex visual narrative that reflects the cultural dichotomies of Hlobo’s native South Africa as well as those that exist around the world. His evocative, anthropomorphic imagery and metaphorically charged materials elucidate the artist’s own multifaceted identity within the context of his South African heritage.

Hlobo received a fine art degree from Johannesburg’s Technikon Witwatersrand in 2002. His work is included in numerous international public and private collections, including Tate Modern, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Museum of Art, Savannah; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit; and the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art, Cape Town. Solo museum exhibitions have been held at the Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague (2016); Savannah College of Art and Design, Georgia (2010) and Tate Modern, London (2008). Hlobo has participated in several biennales including the 18th Biennale of Sydney, Australia (2012), 54th Venice Biennale (2011), 6th Liverpool Biennial (2010) and 3rd Guangzhou Triennial, China (2008).

Hlobo has received numerous honors and distinctions such as the Rolex Visual Arts Protégé (2010-11); Standard Bank Young Artist Award (2009); and the Tollman Award for Visual Art (2006).

William Kentridge

William Kentridge (b.1955, South Africa) is internationally acclaimed for his drawings, films, theatre and opera productions.

Kentridge’s work is held in collections including MoMA, New York; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi and Zeitz MoCAA, Cape Town.

Kentridge’s largest UK survey to date was held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2022. In the same year Kentridge opened another major survey exhibition, In Praise of Shadows, at The Broad, Los Angeles. In 2023 this exhibition travelled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Kentridge’s work has been seen in museums across the globe since the 1990s, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Albertina Museum, Vienna: Musée du Louvre in Paris, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Reina Sofia museum, Madrid, Kunstmuseum in Basel; and Norval Foundation in Cape Town. The artist has also participated in biennale’s including Documenta in Kassel (2012, 2002,1997) and the Venice Biennale (2015, 2013, 2005, 1999, 1993).

Misheck Masamvu

Misheck Masamvu (b. 1980, Penhalonga, Zimbabwe) explores and comments on the socio-political setting of post-independence Zimbabwe, and draws attention to the impact of economic policies that sustain political mayhem. Masamvu raises questions and ideas around the state of ‘being’ and the preservation of dignity. His practice encompasses drawing, painting and sculpture.

Masamvu studied at Atelier Delta and Kunste Akademie in Munich, where he initially specialised in the realist style, and later developed a more avant-garde expressionist mode of representation with dramatic and graphic brushstrokes. His work deliberately uses this expressionist depiction, in conjunction with controversial subject matter, to push his audience to levels of visceral discomfort with the purpose of accurately capturing the plight, political turmoil and concerns of his Zimbabwean subjects and their experiences. His works serve as a reminder that the artist is constantly socially-engaged and is tasked with being a voice to give shape and form to a humane sociological topography. In 2020, Masamvu took part in the 22nd Biennale of Sydney.

Masamvu’s work has been well-received and exhibited in numerous shows including Armory Show 2018, Art Basel 2018, Basel Miami Beach 2017, 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair New York 2016, São Paulo Biennale 2016, and the Venice Biennale, Zimbabwe Pavillion 2011.

Shirin Neshat

Shirin Neshat (b. 1957, Qazvin, Iran) is an Iranian-born artist and filmmaker living in New York. Neshat’s early photographic works include the Women of Allah series (1993–1997), which explored the question of gender in relation to Islamic fundamentalism and militancy. Her subsequent video works departed from overtly political content or critique in favor of more poetic imagery and narratives. In her practice, she employs poetic imagery to engage with themes of gender and society, the individual and the collective, and the dialectical relationship between past and present, through the lens of her experiences of belonging and exile. 

She has mounted numerous solo exhibitions at museums internationally, including: the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Serpentine Gallery, London; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. Recent solo exhibitions include: Kunstraum Dornbirn, Austria; Faurschou Foundation, Copenhagen; Kunsthalle Tübingen, Germany; and Museo Correr,Venice,  Italy, which was an official corollary event to the 57th Biennale di Venezia in 2017. A major retrospective of her work was exhibited at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 2013. Neshat was awarded the Golden Lion Award, the First International Prize at the 48th Biennale di Venezia (1999), the Hiroshima Freedom Prize (2005), and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2006). In 2009, Neshat directed her first feature-length film, Women Without Men, which received the Silver Lion Award for “Best Director” at the 66th Venice International Film Festival. Dreamers marked her first solo show on the African continent, which exhibited at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg in 2016. That same year, Neshat featured in the New Revolutions: Goodman Gallery at 50 exhibition in Johannesburg and in the Summers group exhibition at Goodman Gallery Cape Town. In 2017, Neshat was awarded the prestigious Praemium Imperiale award for Painting. That same year, Neshat directed Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida at the Salzburg. In 2017, Neshat was awarded the prestigious Praemium Imperiale award for Painting. That same year, Neshat directed Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida at the Salzburg.  The Broad Museum in Los Angeles recently hosted a survey exhibition of the last 25 years of Neshat’s work, which travelled on to Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2021. This year Neshat was the feature artist and Master of Photography at Photo London festival which took place in Somerset House in September. 

Neshat has directed three feature-length films, Women Without Men (2009), which received the Silver Lion Award for Best Director at the 66th Venice International Film Festival,  Looking For Oum Kulthum (2017,) and most recently Land of Dreams (2021) which premiered at the Venice Film Festival.  

The artist lives and works in New York, USA.

Remy Jungerman

Remy Jungerman (1959) attended the Academy for Higher Arts and Cultural Studies in Paramaribo, Surinam, before moving to Amsterdam where he studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy.

In his work, Jungerman explores the intersection of pattern and symbol in Surinamese Maroon culture, the larger African diaspora, and 20th century Modernism, placing fragments of Maroon textiles and other materials found in the African diaspora—the kaolin clay used in several religious traditions or the nails featured in Nkisi Nkondi power sculpture—in direct contact with materials and imagery drawn from more “established” art traditions, Jungerman presents a peripheral vision that both enriches and informs our perspective on art history.

In 2022 Jungerman received the A.H. Heineken Prize for Art, the biggest visual art prize in the Netherlands.

From November 20, 2021 – April 10, 2022 he was the subject of a career survey show at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam titled Remy Jungerman: Behind the Forest. In 2019 he represented the Netherlands at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. In 2017 he was nominated for the Black Achievement Award in The Netherlands.

In 2008 he received the Fritschy Culture Award from the Museum het Domein, Sittard, The Netherlands.

Jungerman is co-founder and curator of the Wakaman Project, drawing Lines – connecting dots. Wakaman, which means “walking man,” was born out of a desire to examine the position of visual artists of Surinamese origin and to raise their profile(s) on the international stage.

He has exhibited works at: Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, NL; 58th Venice Biennial, Dutch Pavilion, IT; Prospect3, New Orleans, US; Brooklyn Museum, New York, US; El Museo del Barrio, New York, US; Hudson Valley MOCA, New York, US; Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, US; New Jersey City University, New Jersey, US; Rennie Museum, Vancouver, CA; Amsterdam Museum, Amsterdam, NL; Kunstmuseum, The Hague, NL; Centraal Museum, Utrecht, NL; Museum Arnhem, NL; Museum De Domeinen, Sittard, NL; Afrika Museum, Berg en Dal, NL; Tropen Museum, Amsterdam, NL, Museum Volkenkunde, Leiden, NL; Zeeuws Museum, Leeuwarden, NL; Museum Tongerlohuys, Roosendaal, NL, Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam; NL, Fridman Gallery, New York, US; Goodman Gallery, London, GB; Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam, NL; Havana Biennale, CU; Museum Bamako, ML; Museum Tromso, NO; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, DE; Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, DE; Schloss Oberdiessbach, CH; Malba, Buenos Aires, AR; Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta, ID; Gallery Krinzinger, Salzburg / Vienna, AT; Stedelijk Museum Aalst, BE; Musée Art Contemporain, FR; Air de Paris, FR.

Jungerman lives and works between Amsterdam and New York.

Kudzanai Chiurai

Kudzanai Chiurai (b. 1981, Zimbabwe)

Chiurai has held numerous solo exhibitions since 2003 and has participated in various local and international exhibitions, such as Figures & Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography (2011) at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now (2011) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Other notable exhibitions include The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited curated by Simon Njami at Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt (2014) and SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah USA (2015), as well as Art/Afrique, Le nouvel atelier (2017) at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, Regarding the Ease of Others (2017) at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Genesis [Je n’isi isi]- We Live in Silence at IFA in Stuttgart, Germany and Ubuntu, a Lucid Dream (2020) at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

Chiurai’s Conflict Resolution series was exhibited at DOCUMENTA (13) (2012) in Kassel and the film Iyeza was one of the few African films to be included in the New Frontier shorts programme at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013. Chiurai has held numerous solo exhibitions with Goodman Gallery and has edited four publications with contributions by leading African creatives.

At present the artist lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe.