Also Known As Africa – Art and Design Fair

Eclectica Contemporary will be showcasing a variety of artworks at Also Known As Africa – Art and Design Fair from the 9 – 11 November 2018

Featuring Artworks by:

• Hussein Salim

• Kyu Sang Lee

• Asuka Nirasawa

Hussein Salim

Born in Karim Sudan in 1966, Hussein Salim, found himself, along with other Sudanese artists and critics during the 1970s and 1980s conflict, exploring the dialogue between the importance of heritage and contemporary Sudanese art. Through his rich impasto paintings, Salim reflects this dialogue using personal symbolism of his dual African and Islamic identity, and through this coalescence his work creates a personal conversation with the viewer of the effects of a diasporic background. Here, his works allow a space for appreciation of diversity. Salim’s forms and colours combine, symbolising his own psyche and subliminal musings on topics of identity and heritage in the contemporary discourse. However, what is critical is that the shapes and forms in his work only leave just enough clues to catalyse thinking rather than explicitly demonstrate an idea.

As a contemporary African artist, Salim is faced with the weight of art history and political discourse as equally pertinent to his formation as a voice within the conversation of makers. As such, Salim gestures to the work of other painters but also to history, culture, mythology and situation. His work contemplates the ordeals of human life, returning again and again to symbols of love, time and death.

Hussein Salim
Nostalgia
2018
Acrylic on Canvas
120 x 180 cm

Hussein Salim
Untitled (series)
2018
Acrylic on Canvas
19 x 27 cm

Kyu Sang Lee

Kyu Sang Lee’s photographic artistic practice draws on his experience within distinct regions and cultures of the world. Born in Seoul, Korea in 1993 and having moved to Cape Town in 2005, his artistic practice exhibits strong influences of Eastern, Western and African cultures. Working in predominantly black and white photography, presents an interesting juxtaposition to ideas of the “lost” and are driven by the concept of time and fate. Interlocking these notions with photography, he focuses on constructing the realm of the metaphysical, the spiritual and the surreal.

Photography in South Africa indeed has been a violent one. People use images to influence and invade others minds. Posters and news, as images are works in a similar way. Just like a heavy rain, one lives in a world with an overflow of information where one cannot always identify what is true. The more information flows, the more one forgets about oneself and eventually one’s life become dominated by oblivion.

As an art student, Kyu Sang Lee was awarded the Simon Gerson Prize in 2016 for his graduating body of work and previously had been awarded the Cecil Skotnes Award for Most Promising Artist, Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town in 2014. After graduating from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2016, Lee won the Celeste Prize for Photography & Digital Graphics in 2017. Lee has exhibited with Eclectica on numerous occasions and has exhibited both locally and internationally.

Kyu Sang Lee
Photographs in Twelve Parts
2018
Fibre base Prints with positive retouch colour
25.2 x 20 cm (each)

Kyu Sang Lee
A Motif for Thirty-two Irregular Orbits
2018
Photographic Paper Handprints
142 x 96 cm

Kyu Sang Lee
The Seventh Seal No.1 2014
Hahnemule Baryta
63 x 42 cm

Asuka Nirasawa

Japanese artist, Asuka Nirasawa, obtained her BA in Fine Arts at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where she majored in painting and printmaking. She has had numerous projects, group and solo shows in Japan and other countries such as India and South Africa. In 2015, she had a residency with Cape Town’s local Bag Factory, where she first was exposed and inspired by African fabrics.

Nirasawa’s travels have had a great influence on her practice stylistically. For Nirasawa, these Shwe-shwe, Kanga and Kitenge and other African fabrics serve as a metaphor for the universe, cells and eternal life due to their organic circular nature. This series represents her interest in the dichotomous relationships between chaos and silence, life and death; and how they come together forming an imaginary dream scape of the ‘universe’ she seeks. The use of cells as a foundation for this universe and life itself speaks to a number of metaphysical links between us and the cosmos.

Within these works the line of sight begins with an aggregation of small circles, translucent and swollen, like cells and stars, guided to a cluster of African colours vibrating with life. Just like outer space, full of accumulative swelling energy Nirasawa uses intense colours and circular form – creating technical connections that jump in front of our eyes and form life in multifaceted ways.