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 the Bag Factory, where she first was exposed and inspired by African fabrics.

Nirasawa’s travels have had a great influence on her practice stylistically. She has been influenced by the architecture of Amsterdam, the graffiti in Rome and largely by fabrics of various eastern countries. This aesthetic stimulus can easily be seen in her works on the cells. The meticulous detail articulates the biological complexities of the cells. The vibrancy of the colours conveys strong energy, and even beauty, as she conceptually engages with powerfully debilitating diseases. These include HIV, various cancerous cells, leukemia, sickle cells, liver fluke and osteoporosis growing and multiplying in their microscopic world. This subject is inspired by the memory of her father who passed away from lung cancer, thus a manifestation of the body that can live on as sacred and still beautiful.

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 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.

Benon Lutaaya

Uganda-born artist Benon Lutaaya attained a BFA at Kyambogo University, Kampala, leading him to pursue art professionally in 2010. As a result of crippling financial circumstances hindering him from acquiring art supplies, he quickly learned the skill of improvising. He resorted to the using recycled, found paper material that decorated the streets. In 2011, he was awarded an international artist residency by the Bag Factory Studios, providing him with the opportunity to live and work in Johannesburg.

Over the course of a nine-year artistic journey as a professional artist, Benon Lutaaya’s artistic practice has grown exponentially, attracting a considerable amount of attention and recognition both locally and internationally.

Benon’s subject matter is deeply rooted in the fragility of human life and the vulnerability of the human experience. He creates evocative, fragmented mixed media portraits that attempt to elevate rather than reinforce the status quo of suffering.

Vincent Osemwegie

Born in 1977, Nigerian painter Vincent Osemwegie’s continuous creative journey led him to South Africa in 2009 where he settled in Johannesburg, participating in various museum and gallery exhibitions.

Vincent was born into a large family, with 21 siblings. Within the busy chaos of his childhood, art offered a means of quiet entertainment. He was often found with a sketchbook in hand experimenting and playing with forms and shapes.

He explores ideas of physicality through motion and pairs this with the layering of materials to allude to the construction of form being multilayered. Integral to his expressive technique, Vincent combines active movement through the dripping of paint to not only render subject matter, but to trace its construction.

Anthony Lane

Anthony Lane is a full time sculptor and multi award-winning designer, who skillfully marries the technical sophistication of a master draughtsman with an instinctive understanding of three dimensional forms and mass. His sculptural projects deal primarily with contemporary abstract representations of the human form while also investigating the themes of order and chaos.

Through the labour intensive process of hand forming individual stainless steel plates, and then meticulously constructing his unique, fragmented sculptures, the artist transforms a somewhat cold and impersonal medium into energetic, cascading shapes, full of life and expression.

Carefully considered and placed, the shaped stainless steel mimics the intricate curves of the human body, exposing visual clues, which simultaneously reveal and conceal when viewed from different angles. These bold, expressive representations with their reflective surfaces provide the viewer an entry point to Lane’s seemingly meditative projection, which seeks to encapsulate the transference of light between the interior and exterior.

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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 Michaelis 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 extensive and strongly influences his art making 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.