Samson Kambalu awarded professorship at Oxford University

Kambalu has been appointed associate professor of fine art at Ruskin School of Art and elected fellow at the Magdalen College, both at Oxford University. The Malawi-born artist, who currently lives and works in London, will take up his position in October.

Kambalu joined Goodman Gallery earlier this year. His practice involves site-specific installation, video, performance and literature. Autobiographical in nature, his work approaches art as an arena for critical thought and sovereign activities. He regards his work as a form of playful dissent that fuses the Nyau gift-giving culture of the Chewa, the anti-reification theories of the Situationist movement and the Protestant tradition of inquiry, criticism and dissent.

The artist studied at the University of Malawi (BA Fine Art and Ethnomusicology, 1995-99), Nottingham Trent University (MA Fine Art, 2002-03) and Chelsea College of Art and Design (PhD, 2011-15). Kambalu has shown his work around the world, including Dakar Biennale (2014, 2016), Tokyo International Art Festival (2009) and the Liverpool Biennial (2004, 2016). He has won research fellowships with Yale University and Smithsonian Institution and was included in All the World’s Futures, Venice Biennale 2015. His Nyau Cinema: American Psychogeographicals was named one of the top 10 artworks at Art Basel 2017, by Artnet News.

‘Wozzeck’, directed by William Kentridge, premieres in Salzburg

Kentridge directs Alban Berg’s libretto Wozzeck, which premieres at the Salzburg Festival (21 July – 30 August). Written by Berg after Georg Büchner’s fragmentary play Woyzeck (1836), it took him five years to complete the score, and another three to get the work staged in Berlin in 1925. The tale of the tormented, homicidal, soldier Wozzeck is set by Kentridge at the time of ‘The Great War’ in Europe and is characterised by bleak landscapes, denuded of their trees and scarred by shell craters. This co-production with the Metropolitan Opera, New York, and the Canadian Opera Company, Toronto is conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, with sets by Sabine Theunissen, costumes by Greta Goiris, video composition and editing by Catherine Meyburgh.

Samson Kambalu and Tracey Rose in Sydney

Kambalu and Rose are included in The Public Body .02 (28 July – 2 October) at Art Space in Sydney, Australia. It is the second in a three-part series of exhibitions over three years exploring various facets of the notion of the public body. This edition highlights a range of practices embedded in feminist, queer and anti-racist subjectivities, and concerned with revisioning certain biased histories of representation. It brings together the work of over 40 artists and collectives from the 1970s to the present, integrating the archival and the contemporary to draw connections between works across decades.

ruby onyinyechi amanze at the Drawing Center in New York

Amanze has work on the New York Drawing Center’s group exhibition Where Do We Stand?: Two Years of Drawing with Open Sessions (3 August – 17 September). Every two years Open Sessions invites a large group of artists, chosen via open call, to consider their relationship to drawing as medium, process and metaphor. Working together over a two-year period, Open Sessions artists participate in ongoing studio visits and discussions, punctuated by small-group exhibitions at The Drawing Centre. The exhibition of work by the 36 artists in the 2016-17 programme encompasses video, sculpture, photography and installation, as well as traditional drawing forms.

Jessica Webster curates Turbine Art Fair graduate show

Webster, in collaboration with Amber-Jade Geldenhuys and MC Roodt, curates Touch , the Emerging Painters exhibition at Turbine Art Fair in Johannesburg (13 – 16 July). The exhibition, which returns for a second year after a sell-out success in 2016, showcases the best post-graduate paintings from university fine arts departments across South Africa.

According to the fair organisers: “It brings a wide variety of painterly forms into focus such as how thick layers of paint may heighten a sense of the psycho-somatic or how painting in ultra-thin layers provokes an experience of the ethereal. Alternatively, painting in hyper-realistic ways can capture the visual textures of objects and figures. The show is aimed at evoking a deep impression of sensuality in material methods of painting.”

The curators foreground how the choice of material and technique causes certain processes, which inform the concept and effect of particular paintings. “Moreover, references to the art-historical canon are also a significant means by which contemporary painting comes to have potency. The show will therefore be accompanied by a critical and explanatory piece of writing on each artist exhibited, which will suggest possible readings the viewer may take from the work “ says Webster.

Shirin Neshat directs 'Aida' in Salzburg

Neshat directs Giuseppe Verdi’s third-last opera, Aida, at the Salzburg Festival in Austria (21 July – 30 August). Aida was commissioned by and first performed at Cairo’s Khedivial Opera House in 1871, and today holds a central place in the operatic canon. This new production is conducted by Riccardo Muti with Anna Netrebko in the title role, and features the Vienna Philharmonic and Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus.

Broomberg & Chanarin at the Yale University Art Gallery

Photographs by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin form part of a large-scale group exhibition Before the Event / After the Fact: Contemporary Perspectives on War, at the Yale University Art Gallery (21 July – 31 December). Curated by Judy Ditner, the exhibition offers a wide-ranging examination of the representation of war in contemporary photographic and video art practice.

Kendell Geers participates in global poster campaign

Geers takes part in Time for Outrage! , a global poster campaign that gives acclaimed artists and members of the public a platform to voice what they are outraged about in the world today. The first edition runs from 18 July – 1 September 2017 on the prominent billboards of the Great Eastern Street Gallery Wall, London, with approximately 2.1 million passers-by per month. The project is a response to the eponymous book Indignez-Vous! (Time for Outrage!), in which author and French Resistance member Stéphane Hessel (1917-2013) tells the youth of today that their lives and liberties are worth fighting for. Remembering the ideals for which he risked his life, while never forgetting the evils against which he struggled, the writer and diplomat calls on all of us to take back the rights that have been jeopardised or taken away all together. The poster campaign will take place in various cities around the world, including London, Berlin, Athens, Moscow, Istanbul, Mexico City and New York City, culminating on 11 December 2018, international Human Rights Day. Other artists include Jake and Dinos Chapman, John Cooper Clarke, Laure Prouvost, Linder Sterling, Robert Montgomery and John Isaacs. The London campaign is initiated by Alteria Art in collaboration with Zarina Rossheart of Unlimited Productions, with support from Gaia Art Foundation, Village Underground, Ace Hotel London, Wren Artists and Portable Print Studio.

Grada Kilomba at Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto

Kilomba performs Illusions for first time in her home country and exhibits The Desire Project in Live Uncertainty: An Exhibition After the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo (1 July – 1 October) at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto, Portugal. The Desire Project (2015-2016) is a video installation divided into three parts: While I Speak, While I Write and While I Walk, videos whose only visual element is the written word and which indicates the emergence of a speaker who has been historically silenced by colonial narratives. Illusions (2016) employs video projections and the African tradition of storytelling. The reading introduces the myths of Narcissus and Echo as metaphors for a colonial past and politics of representation that only reflect themselves. The Serralves exhibition is conceived in relation to the museum’s unique architecture and landscape. It extends the Biennale’s reflection on the current conditions of life and the strategies offered by contemporary art to harbour or inhabit uncertainty.

mounir fatmi at Bellevue Arts Museum in US

fatmi participates in a group exhibition, Cut Up/Cut Out (30 June – 22 October), at the Bellevue Arts Museum in the Pacific Northwest state of Washington, USA. Cut Up/Cut Out is an exhibition by international artists who explore the captivating methods of decorative piercing and cutting, using a wide range of media from paper and plastic to metal and rubber.

Hank Willis Thomas in two-person show at Baltimore Museum of Art

Thomas’ And I Can’t Run is on exhibition, alongside Kara Walker’s Salvation, at the Baltimore Museum of Art (28 June – 18 March). Through contrasts of light and dark, white and black, and obscurity and revelation, the work engages in a powerful metaphorical conversation about acts of horrific violence and racial inequality in the United States

Various artists at Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea

Four Goodman Gallery artists – Kudzanai Chiurai, Gabrielle Goliath, Tracey Rose and Yinka Shonibare – are included on the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea’s group exhibition, AFRICA. Telling a world (27 June – 11 September). Curated by Adelina von Furstenberg, the exhibition investigates the diversity of contemporary African art practices, and poses questions surrounding the issues of racial, political, gender and religious identities that continue to inform the continent at large.

Yinka Shonibare on group show exploring royalty at the Kensington Palace

Shonibare’s Mrs Pinckney and the Emancipated Birds of South Carolina features on Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte and the Shaping of the Modern World at Kensington Palace (22 June – 12 November). The work was commissioned especially for the exhibition, which is presented by Historic Royal Palaces and the Yale Center for British Art. It explores the lives of three German princesses whose marriage into the British royal family and wide-ranging interests placed them at the very heart of the Enlightenment underway in 18th-century Britain.

Kiluanji Kia Henda wins 2017 Frieze Artist Award

Kia Henda is the first African artist to receive the prestigious 2017 Frieze Artist Award, for which he will realise a new installation at Frieze London (4 – 8 October) as part of Frieze Projects, the fair’s celebrated non-profit programme curated by Raphael Gygax. Frieze Projects and the Frieze Artist Award are supported by the LUMA Foundation. Following an open call, artist applications were received from more than 82 countries. The Luanda-based artist – who works across photography, video and performance – won on the basis of his proposal for a two-part installation, Under the Silent Eye of Lenin. Taking the cult of Marxism-Leninism after independence in Angola as its starting point, the piece will draw parallels between witchcraft practices during Angola’s civil war and science fiction narratives used by Cold War superpowers. Kia Henda’s performative installation, which will change throughout the duration of the fair, looks at how fictional fantasy and its power of manipulation become a vital weapon in situations of extreme violence.

Kendell Geers on group show at CENTRALE, Brussels

Kendell Geers takes part in a group exhibition, BXL Universel, at CENTRALE for contemporary art in Brussels (14 June – 3 September). Through archive documents, films, photographs and other work by artists who live there, the show presents a subjective portrait of the bustling city that is the Belgian capital. On exhibition is one of Geers’ polymorphic installations, which captures the diversity and uniqueness of the city.

Yinka Shonibare on summer show in Switzerland

Shonibare’s Un Ballo in Maschera and The Crowning feature on the summer group exhibition, Un Bal Masque / A Masked Ball, at Le Chateau de Nyon (9 June – 26 November). The exhibition reimagines objects, artefacts and ceremonial occasions of 18th-century Europe by including works that offer a contemporary colouring to the garments, ornate subject matter and events of the period.

Dhlamini, Goldblatt and Sekgala in Aperture’s ‘Platform Africa’

Jabulani Dhlamini, David Goldblatt and Thabiso Sekgala are included in Aperture’s summer 2017 issue Platform Africa, which profiles the biennales, art spaces and educational workshops that are changing the shape of photography across Africa today. Edited in collaboration with John Fleetwood, former head of the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg, Bisi Silva, founder and director of the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos, and Aïcha Diallo, associate editor of the website Contemporary And, the issue is accompanied by an exhibition at the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair in New York (5 – 7 May).

Ghada Amer features on new contemporary art triennial in New York

Amer is one of 66 contemporary artists included in Uptown, a new triennial of contemporary art organised by Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University in New York (2 June – 20 August). The triennial showcases works by artists living or working in the Upper Manhattan area.

Yinka Shonibare at York Art Gallery in the UK

Shonibare features on a group exhibition, Leisure Land Golf, curated by Doug Fishbone at the York Art Gallery (2 June – 3 September). The artist’s Football Cloud forms part of the exhibition’s fully playable crazy golf course, with each golf hole designed and made by a different contemporary artist. The show is inspired by the curatorial theme of the ‘Leisure Principle’, which refers to the idea of tourism and trade as a metaphor to explore current global economic debates through one of the key values of leisure – consumption, and how it shapes our identity. Visitors are invited to play a round of crazy golf and engage with important cultural topics including migration, global warming and globalisation.

Clive van den Berg's 'Men Loving' series at Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre

Van den Berg’s most recent paintings, watercolours and sculptures, which form part of the artist’s ongoing Men Loving series, are on exhibition at the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre (JHGC) (1 June – 31 July). The works on show reflect on the increasing persecution of LGBTQI people globally by looking at the murders of gay men in Syria and Iraq, and memorialising these lives. The showcase coincides with two related events (13 – 15 June) at the JHGC with speakers including Mark Gevisser, Dr Robert Beachy, Dr Beate Muller and Dr Matthew Boswell.

Alfredo Jaar at Lenbachhaus in Munich

Work by Alfredo Jaar is included on After the Fact: Propaganda in the 21st Century (30 May – 17 September), a group exhibition at Lenbachhaus in Munich. The exhibition looks at the concept of propaganda in order to broaden its definition in light of the societal, political and technological developments of the 21st century. The artworks gathered in the exhibition engage in various ways with current forms of propaganda and with the porous borders between reality and fiction that are symptomatic of the digital age.

Alfredo Jaar's 'Shadows' in Lisbon

In Shadows, a museum show at Lisbon’s Carpintarias de São Lázaro (20 May-3 September), Jaar presents the engrossing interventionist work Shadows as a tribute to Swedish photographer Koen Wessing. The work comprises seven photographs and forms the second part of a trilogy (the first being The Sound of Silence, in 2006), which unpacks the power of denunciation that images have in relation to the inhumanity of dictatorial regimes.

Broomberg and Chanarin on PhotoEspaña 2017 festival

The 20th edition of PhotoEspaña 2017 International Festival of Photography and Visual Arts (31 May – 27 August) will feature work by Broomberg and Chanarin. The artists will exhibit their work at the Centro Centro at the Círculo de Bellas Artes and Museo del Romanticismo in Madrid. In addition to being included on the main exhibition, Broomberg and Chanarin will head up a group of creative initiatives in an editorial laboratory in Tabacalera, with the intention of seeking out new proposals for photography publishing.

Candice Breitz at Kunsthalle Erfurt

Breitz’s Soliloquy Trilogy features on Kunst.Ort.Kino at the Kunsthalle Erfurt in Germany (15 July – 17 September).

Large-scale survey show for Shirin Neshat at Kunsthalle Tübingen

The Kunsthalle Tübingen is devoting a major retrospective to Iranian-born artist Shirin Neshat (1 July – 29 October). On exhibition are important artworks from all creative phases of the artist’s extensive oeuvre – from the famous superimposed text-based works of the 1990s, the early video installations exploring themes of life in exile and diaspora, to the new filmic productions of 2016 and 2017, including some being shown in Europe for the first time. The exhibition, funded by the German Federal Cultural Institution, will be accompanied by a catalogue as well as a wide range of events organised in cooperation with numerous partners.

mounir fatmi at Museum De Wieger in Netherlands

fatmi features on Beautiful Stranger, a group exhibition at the Museum De Wieger in Deurne, Netherlands (21 May – 17 September). On view are a selection of paintings, photos and multimedia from the Nadour Collection, one of the most important collections of contemporary Arab and Iranian art.

NTU collective on 89plus exhibition in Zurich

Work by NTU – the art collective founded by Nolan Oswald Dennis, Tabita Rezaire and Bogosi Sekhukhuni – is included on a group exhibition, 89plus: Americans 2017, at the LUMA Westbau in Zurich (19 May – 3 September). Curated by Simon Castets and Hans Ulrich Obrist for their ongoing 89plus project, it showcases new productions by 19 key artists and groups from around the globe. Stemming from the concept of algorithmic citizenship introduced by artist James Bridle’s Citizen Ex project, this group exhibition gives centre stage to the work of artists from countries as varied as Ghana, Kuwait, China, Lebanon, Austria and South Africa, all the while reflecting the influence of US-based ‘computerised processes’ over information, aspirations and concerns.

Ghada Amer on residency in Wisconsin

Amer is one of four artists in residence at the John Michael Kohler Arts Centre in Sheboygan, Wisconsin in the US (15 May – 4 August). as part of its Arts/Industry programme. She will be working with metal and exploring new processes in the centre’s metal foundry, where she will be exposed to a body of technical knowledge from the industrial environment.

Solo museum show for Kentridge in Buenos Aires

The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes presents, for the first time in Argentina, the work of William Kentridge, in conjunction with BP17, Buenos Aires’s Performance Biennial (13 May – 13 August). On exhibition are the video installation Notes Towards a Model Opera and In Mockery of Progress, a series of watercolours on printed pages, both from 2015. Andrés Duprat, director of the museum, describes the works on show as “restor[ing] to art its explicit political dimension, exposing, with sarcasm and humor, the disasters of our era”.

Yinka Shonibare MBE on the Diaspora Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2017

Shonibare’s The British Library installation forms part of the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th La Biennale di Venezia. Presented by the International Curators Forum (ICF) and University of the Arts London (UAL), the exhibition takes place at the Palazzo Pisani S. Marina (13 May – 26 November). The Diaspora Pavilion is conceived as a challenge to the prevalence of national pavilions within the structure of an international biennial. By bringing together a group of 19 UK-based, ethnically diverse artists, the pavilion speaks eloquently of the infinite complexities of the very idea of nationality, whilst highlighting the continued relevance that diaspora as a lived reality holds today.

mounir fatmi on Tunisian Pavilion at 57th Venice Biennale

Fatmi features on Tunisia’s national pavilion, The Absence of Paths, at the 57th La Biennale di Venezia, the country’s first pavilion since 1958. Fatmi’s contribution, a series of photographic works, forms part of the pavilion’s exploration into human migration and how movement is becoming increasingly policed.

Paulo Nazareth on Brooklyn residency

Nazareth is currently on a residency from May to July at Residency Unlimited in New York, based at RU’s headquarters in the former South Congregational Church in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. The residency is part of his award as the 2016 winner of the two main categories (PIPA and Popular Vote Exhibition) of the PIPA Prize, one of Brazil’s most prominent visual arts awards. As part of the residency, the artist also participated in a conversation with Claudia Calirman, Associate Professor of Art History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY), On the Possibility of Dwelling in New York presented by RU and Mendes Wood DM on 23 June.

Alfredo Jaar at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit

Jaar is included on the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit’s major group exhibition, 99 Cents or Less (17 May – 6 August). The exhibition, curated by Jens Hoffmann, includes 99 artists who have produced work from items purchased at America’s ubiquitous 99 Cent stores. It addresses Detroit’s ongoing economic crisis and its 2013 bankruptcy – the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in the history of the United States.

Sam Nhlengethwa on residency in France

Sam Nhlengethwa is the artist in residence at the Southern African Foundation for Contemporary Art (SAFFCA) in Saint Emilion, France, from May to July 2017. Through its residency program in France and Knysna, SAFFCA aims to support and promote the work of artists from Southern Africa.

Thabiso Sekgala at the Walther Collection

Sekgala features on the Walther Collection’s group exhibition, Recent Histories – New African Photography (7 May – 29 October). Forming part of the collection’s ongoing projects showcasing contemporary photography and video art from Africa, the show focuses on how African photographers are engaging with revolutionary and current photographic practices to respond to ideas and understandings of African diaspora.

Various artists on Fondation Louis Vuitton’s Africa show

Five Goodman Gallery artists – Kudzanai Chiurai, David Goldblatt, William Kentridge, David Koloane and Sue Williamson – are included in Fondation Louis Vuitton’s exhibition Art/Afrique, Le nouvel atelier (26 April – 28 August). They are featured in the section Being There, which focuses on work by 15 artists from South Africa.

William Kentridge at Cincinnati Art Museum

On loan from the LUMA Foundation, Kentridge’s More Sweetly Play the Dance will make its American premiere at the Cincinnati Art Museum (26 April – 5 November). The artist’s film installation involves seven screen projections, creating an immersive panorama, and showcases a procession of travelers crossing over a charcoal-drawn animated landscape.

Sue Williamson at MAC VAL in Paris

Williamson’s new video work, What is this thing called Freedom?, from her ongoing No more fairy tales series is featured in Tous, des sang-mêlés, a group exhibition of approximately 60 artists at MAC VAL (Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne) in Paris (22 April – 3 September). Curated by Julie Crenn and Frank Lamy, the exhibition’s title is taken from the 1950 book Nous sommes des sang-meles: manuel d’histoire de la civilisation francaise (We are mixed-bloods: A history of French civilization) by the French historian Lucien Febvre.

Various artists at Parc de la Villette

Four Goodman Gallery artists – Samson Kambalu, William Kentridge, Kiluanji Kia Henda and Tracey Rose – feature on the Parc de la Villette’s group show, Afriques Capitales: Le Mois de la Photo du Grand Paris 2017 (29 March – 3 September). Focusing on various capital cities around Africa, the multimedia exhibition presents viewers with the opportunity to experience the ambiance of an African metropolis.