FNB Art Joburg 2019

Following a successful solo exhibition at Eclectica Contemporary earlier this year, an installation and workshops and the Zeitz MOCAA and many high profile international commissions, Loyiso Mkize (South Africa) presents an installation wall at Eclectica Contemporary’s booth for Art Joburg’s Gallery Lab.

Accompanying this installation, Hussein Salim (Sudan) and Ibrahim Kharab’s (Egypt) evocative and vibrant paintings will add to the overall exuberance of the booth – bursting with colour, concept and content, from different reaches of the African continent. The presentation for Art Joburg’s Gallery Lab aims to reflect and extend a strongly afro-centric narrative, that focuses on commonalities of experience, the vast richness of different contexts and the representations necessary by and for people on this continent.

Loyiso Mkize

Loyiso Mkize is one of South Africa’s best known graphic novel and comic book illustrators (being one of the foremost contributors to the Sunday Times supplement SupaStrikers). He turns to painting for creative expression and as an avenue for his personal, political and social commentary. The paintings often depict expressive faces, focusing his work in portraiture because of his fascination with skin, texture and emotion conveyed through facial features – notions of the soul, the spirit and ultimately to illustrate his understandings of the true African experience in the contemporary art world. Mkize’s use of highly stylized and technically brilliant brushwork creates realistic imagery that leans toward the surreal with his decorative framing and imaginative illustration, adding multiple layers to each portrait with character references and the impression of self-awareness in each of his works.

His ability to create Visual art throughout the varied arenas he participates in, carries with it an intention to communicate ideas that he finds most important in his life, the most prominent of which is preserving the African identity. His work embodies the message of self-awareness, acknowledgment, strength and radical presence. It’s in this spirit that he hopes his work can perhaps create a platform in which we can all communicate freely.

Loyiso is currently working on a new body of work to commemorate the life of Winnie Madikizela Mandela.

Loyiso Mkize
NOMZAMO
2019
Oil and Acrylic on canvas
250 x 170 cm
SOLD

Ley Mboramwe

Ley Mboramwe hails from the Democratic Republic of Congo. He completed his degree in Fine Art at the ‘Academie des Beaux’ in Kinshasa (the centre of Africa).

His life experience in the Congo, its suffering, beauty, politics, culture and economic circumstances is evident in his work. Through his work he has tried to convey rhythm, emotion and freedom of the human spirit. His silhouetted figures are not only a representation of the physical self, but rather an amalgamation of flesh and spirit. The spirit as something in search of a tangible tether to land.

The human body is used as a means of storytelling and a reflection of life. Where stories, such as looting, hunger, disease, nightmares, dreams and the joys of human existence are theoretically portrayed. Mboramwe attempts to transfigure flesh into spirit, flesh into the depths of human suffering and happiness, flesh into the inner beauty and despair of human life. He uses the body as a mirror to the soul.

Ibrahim Khatab

Ibrahim Khatab, a Cairo born artist, currently lectures at the National University of Cairo and has exhibited both locally and internationally. His art showcases his knowledge and technical skills of paintings, installations and video art. Ibrahim’s artworks visually expresses the artist’s deep love of calligraphy, as well as colour, space, movement and arabic script which all factor heavily in his practice.

Ibrahim Khatab feels that Islamic Calligraphy played a poignant role in the education of art and writing. Then and now, the medium is seen to be an important element of the Arabic cultural legacy, an eternal heritage that Khatab fell in love with when he was 10 year’s old. Years of honing the technical skill allowed him to use this talent as a source of income (by designing banners for commercial spaces and beautifying the pilgrims’ houses who had arrived from Mecca)and it has become central to his designs as a practicing artist today.

Hussein Salim

Born in Karim Sudan in 1966, Hussein Salim, found himself, along with other Sudanese artists and critics, exploring the dialogue between the importance of heritage and contemporary Sudanese art.

Within his rich impasto paintings, Salim reflects this dialogue using personal symbolism of his dual African and Islamic identity. 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 combined, symbolises 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.

Hussein Salim
The Big Wall II
2019
Acrylic on Canvas
150 x 180 cm
SOLD

Hussein Salim
Migration of Symbols
2019
Acrylic on Canvas
150 x 180 cm
SOLD

Hussein Salim
Twin
2019
Acrylic on Canvas
120 x 180 cm

Hussein Salim
Untitled Series
2018
Acrylic on Canvas
19 x 27 cm
SOLD

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. While completing his degree in Fine Art at Michaelsi School of Fine Art (University of Cape Town) he was awarded the Cecil Skotnes Award for Most Promising Artist.  Kyu Sang Lee was also awarded the Simon Gerson Prize in 2016 for his graduating body of work as well as the Celeste Prize for Photography & Digital Graphics in 2017.

Kyu Sang Lee’s knowledge of Music, Art, History and world issues is exstensive and strongly influences his artmaking process. Working in predominantly black and white photography and more recently mixed media installation, He presents an interesting juxtaposition to ideas of the “lost”, driven by the concept of time and fate. Interlocking these notions with photography and sound, he focuses on constructing the realm of the metaphysical, the spiritual and the surreal.

Kyu Sang Lee
Selfportraits with Figure of Madonna behind white paint
2016
Photomontage with paint
124 x 100 cm
SOLD

Nava Derakhshani

Nava Derakhshani is a multimedia artist, activist and storyteller whose journey follows the earth. She has a background in architecture which developed her artistic and design skills. It grounded her thinking in post colonial theory and emphasised the layered social and environmental impacts of art and design. Her Master’s in Sustainable Development took her to rural Ethiopia where she sought timid narratives of soil and resilience. This narrative based approach has been central to her work, using storytelling to understand and communicate the nuances of peoples’ lived experiences in the development and NGO field. From soil back to earth, She is revisiting her love for clay and has been taking classes and producing bodies of work at TAB Ceramic Studio in Cape Town since 2015.

“I am currently developing an artistic series of stylised sculptures in clay, exploring themes of identity and non-binary gender and sexuality. My current exploration with clay sees the merging of colours together and alongside one another, which is a new area of exploration in the field. The couples I am building are built from different colours of clay, to represent different tonalities of skin and ethnicity. For me, this is a project of representation, showing love in all the forms which media often neglects.“