Dear VIAD community, colleagues and friends,
We hope that 2023 has started on a good note for you, and that it will be a calm, restorative, and fulfilling year for us all. We are happy to extend a warm welcome to Sinead Fletcher and Dineo Diphofa, who have recently joined the VIAD team as Research Assistants. We also wish Mandisa Tshiqi (VIAD’s Administrative Coordinator) everything of the best while she is on maternity leave. We look forward to her return at the end of April.
Given the constantly shifting, and often challenging events of the past two years, we at VIAD have become increasingly aware of the need to strengthen ties with, and draw closer to our community, as well as the importance of finding new ways of holding space for meaningful dialogue and exchange. Much of this interaction is generated through the outstanding work of our Research Associates and Visiting Professors. We are proud and privileged to be working with such an illustrious group of scholars, artists and cultural practitioners, and would therefore like to use this newsletter as an opportunity to showcase some of the many significant achievements that they have accomplished over the course of last year. This newsletter is dedicated to all our Research Associates and Visiting Professors, even though we are only able to feature a fraction of the many successes we could have listed. Our hugest congratulations to all - we look forward to seeing you build on your outstanding work in the year ahead!
VIAD has an exciting line-up of dynamic exhibitions, public programmes, and publications lined up for the year. Please stay updated of these by following us on Instagram (@viad_fada), Facebook (Research Centre, Visual Identities in Art and Design) and Twitter (@VIADfada), and checking the VIAD website: www.viad.co.za.
With warm wishes,
the VIAD Team.
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WELCOME
Please join us in extending a warm welcome to two new Research Associates who joined us late in 2021 - Muhammad Hobe and Carlos Castellano.
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Muhammad Hobe was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. He became a Muslim in 1991 and in 1994 he was sent to Waterfall Islamic Institute where he studied Islamic studies, completed his hifz (memorisation of the Holy Quran) and developed an interest for Arabic calligraphy. During his teaching years at Waterfall Islamic Institute, he met Turkish calligrapher Hilal Kazan who, on recognising his skill and efforts, encouraged and assisted him in travelling to Istanbul, Turkey to study under the Turkish master of calligraphy, Hasan Çelebi. Muhammad began his apprenticeship with Master Hasan Çelebi in 2009 with the help of IRCICA. Upon completing his tuition, he obtained the Ijazah (licence/diploma) in the Thuluth and Naskh scripts in 2013. In March 2017, he was awarded citizenship by the Turkish government due to his dedication to his work in the Islamic arts. Hobe has since continued to work as a professional calligrapher, participating in numerous exhibitions both in Turkey and internationally as well as passing on his knowledge by teaching his own students. He currently resides in Istanbul, Turkey where he continues to benefit from his teachers, Hasan Çelebi and Efdaluddin Kılıç.
For more information on Muhmmad Hobe, click here.
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Carlos Garrido Castellano completed a BA in Art History (2007); another in History (2010) and two Masters Degrees, one in Art History and Heritage and another on History and Archaeology in Granada. In 2013, he went on to complete an international Ph.D. on contemporary Art History for which he was awarded the distinction Cum Laude and an excellence award in 2017. In his
dissertation, he summarised the results of five years of research through long term residencies in the United States, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and the United Kingdom. After completing his Ph.D. in June 2014, Castellano joined the Centro de Estudos Comparatistas and the Instituto de História de Arte of the Universidade de Lisboa as FCT-funded Postdoctoral researcher. Since then, his research has focused on exploring how collaborative and curatorial creative practices deal with difference and reproduce and/or challenge coloniality. Dr Castellano joined the University College Cork in 2018 where he spent his first year coordinating the research events of the Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies Department.
For more information on Carlos Garrido Castellano, click here.
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ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE
We also welcome Juan Orrantia as our first artist-in-residence to join us as part of the UJ Arts & Culture Artist-In-Residence programme.
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Juan Orrantia approaches photographic practice as a reflexive interrogation of histories and experiences of looking and being seen. Working through colour, appropriation, mixed media and the photobook, he strives to make images with a sense of uncertainty, vulnerability and reflexivity as forms of destabilisation of canons and representations.
Orrantia is also a committed arts educator, having been a lecturer at the Wits Fine Arts Department, and having recently taught at universities such as Bard College (NY) and The International Center for Photography (NY).
For more information on the UJ Arts and Culture residency programme click here.
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CONGRATULATIONS!
Huge congratulations to our Research Associates on their outstanding achievements over 2022. Well done to all!
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ALBERTA WHITTLE
deep dive (pause) uncoiling memory
THE 59TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION
LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA
The deep dive (pause) uncoiling memory installation by artist Alberta Whittle was commissioned on the occasion of the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, by the Scotland + Venice partnership. Whittle presented two additional exhibitions in 2022, Congregation (creating dangerously) (May 19 2021 - Dec 16 2022, Minerva Works Garden, Birmingham) and Respectability won't save you: a Caribbean haunting (May 18 2022 - Jun 25 2022, Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York).
She was nominated for two awards, the Film London Jarman Award and the New Worlds/Women to Watch Award respectively. Whittle was also the recepient of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists.
Visit VIAD's Reading the Moment feature on Alberta Whittle here.
Read more on Congregation (creating dangerously) here.
Read more on Respectability won't save you: a Caribbean haunting here.
For the nominations read here and here.
Visit the Paul Hamlyn Foundation website here.
Image credit: Jaryd Niles-Morris
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ASHRAF JAMAL
SOLO AUTHORED BOOK
Strange Cargo: Essays on Art
Ashraf Jamal's latest publication, Strange Cargo: Essays on Art (ed. S Christian, SKIRA) was released early in 2022, to critical acclaim. The volume features a selection of essays on contemporary South African artists. For more information, click here.
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EDOUARD DUVAL-CARRIÉ
SOLO EXHIBITION
THE WORLD AS I KNOW IT
GRISSOM ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE
FOR 2021-2022
The exhibition, THE WORLD AS I KNOW IT (Coral Gables Museum, Florida, Nov 4, 2022 – Jan 29, 2023), featured recent works by the Haitian-born artist Edouard Duval-Carrié. Read more information on the exhibition, here. He is also the Grissom Artist-in-Residence for the 2021-2022 academic year. For more information the residency, click here.
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JENNIFER BAJOREK
PROMOTION TO FULL PROFESSOR
RESEARCH GRANT, MARION AND JASPER WHITING FOUNDATION
SENIOR VISITING RESEARCHER, EHESS PARIS
Jennifer Bajorek has been promoted to Professor of Comparative Literature and Visual Studies at Hampshire College. She also received a research grant from the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation to support travel to Ghana for research related to an exhibition of art and artifacts connected with the material histories and legacies of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery in West Africa. This is a collaboration with Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann.
Bajorek has been invited to be a Senior Visiting Researcher (Directrice d'Études Associée), through the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, France (April - May 2023). While in residence, she will continue her current research on representations of im/migration in contemporary France, with an emphasis on worker solidarity, colonial and postcolonial labor histories and African perspectives. For more information on the researcher invitation, click here.
Image credit: Mow 504, Untitled I, from Monnaie de singe, 2021. Digital photomontage, dimensions variable. © Mow 504. Image courtesy of the artist.
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MARIO GOODEN
DISTINGUISHED APPOINTMENT
Mario Gooden has been appointed as the president of Architecture League of New York. He was elected at the League’s 141st Annual Meeting at the Harlem School of Arts. For more information, click here.
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SIPHO MDANDA
CO-CURATED EXHIBITION
Sipho Mdanda co-curated Yakhal’lnkomo: The Bongi Dhlomo Collection (Javett Art Centre, Pretoria, Mar 26 2022 - Jan 15 2023). The Bongi Dhlomo collection features pieces by some of the most important artists working in South Africa between 1960 and 1990. The works were collected between 2017 and 2019 by artist and curator Bongi Dhlomo on behalf of the Javett Foundation, and is a unique, educative assemblage of more than 100 classical 20th-century artworks produced by black artists in South Africa. For more information, click here.
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ALEXANDRA KOKOLI
CO-EDITED VOLUME AND SPECIAL ISSUE
Alexandra Kokoli co-edited volume titled Tracey Emin: Art into Life (Bloomsbury Visual Arts, London, 2022), in which the authors examine how bodily and personally affective aspects of human life form an integral aspect of Emin's work. She also edited the a special issue of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society (vol. 27, 2022), in which authors deal with issues of trauma and repair in the museum.
For information on the edited volume, click here.
For information on the edited special issue, click here.
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ERICA MOIAH JAMES
CURATED TWO EXHIBITIONS &
RECEPIENT OF NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS GRANT
Erica Moiah James curated the seminal exhibition Didier William: Nou Kite Tout Sa Deye (Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami , Nov 2 2022 - Apr 16 2023) and Nari Ward: Home of The Brave (Vilcek Foundation, New York, May 31 2022 - Feb 3 2023). Read more about the Didier William exhibition here. For more information on the Nari Ward exhibition, click here. She also received a National Endowment for the Arts Grant with MoCA-NoMI for the exhibition Didier William: Nou Kite Tout Sa Dèyè.
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KIMBERLY LAMM
TWO HIGH-LEVEL APPOINTMENTS
Kimberly Lamm now holds two prestigious new positions: she has been appointed as a member of the CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts and as a member of the Art, Art History and Visual Studies Department at Duke University.
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FIONA SIEGENTHALER
CO-EDITED VOLUME & NEW APPOINTMENT AS CURATOR AT THE AFRICA DEPT. LINDEN MUSUEM, STUTTGART
Fiona Siegenthaler co-edited the volume titled
(Un)sighted Archives of Migration (Routledge, Oxfordshire, 2022). With its transversal perspective across the fields of art, anthropology and social activism, the volume offers new perspectives on the enormous potential of migratory archives as resourceful spaces for encounter and remembrance, how they can function and can contribute
to the plural collective memories and identities of post-migratory societies. For more information, click here. She has also been appointed as the curator at the Africa Dept. Linden Museum, Stuttgart.
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CHERYL FINLEY
CO-EDITED VOLUME
CO-AUTHORED VOLUME
CURATED AN EXHIBITION
Cheryl Finley co-authored the seminal volume Free as they Want to Be: Artists Committed to Memory. The publication, which takes its name from James Baldwin's 1961 book Nobody Knows My Name, presents the work of 20 artists working in photography, video, silkscreen, projection and mixed-media installation, all of which explore the possibilities of freedom. Their quest to be “as free as they want to be” is envisioned in the subject matter they explore, as well as in their drive to innovate aesthetic practices in photographic mediums.
Finley also curated an exhibition of the same title at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (Sept 30 - Mar 5 2023). The exhibition formed part of the Foto-Focus Biennial of Contemporary Photography in Cincinnati, Ohio. It featured more than 20 artists working on the frontlines of the events that have shaped the world over the past several years. Working in photography, video, silkscreen, projection and mixed media installations, the artists’ works reflect defining moments of the past in the struggle for racial justice and equality. For more information on the exhibition, click here. For information on the publication, click here.
Finley also co-edited Women and Migration(s) II
(Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2022). This edited volume features a range of written styles, from memoir to artists’ statements to journalistic and critical essays. The collection shows how women’s experiences of migration have been articulated through art, film, poetry and even food. Read more here.
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MICHAEL MACMILLAN
RECEPIENT OF THE INTERNATIONALISATION OF THE CURRICULUM AWARD
RECEPIENT OF ARTS COUNCIL FUNDING
Michael Macmillan received the Internationalisation of the Curriculum Award from the Arts Student's Union. For more information, click here. He was also awarded Arts Council funding for the public programme that accompanied his installation of The Front Room, which has now been permanently installed at at the Museum of the Home, London. For more information, click here.
Image credit: Gifty Dzenyo
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CHRISTINE CHECINSKA
LEAD CURATOR - AFRICA FASHION EXHIBITION
EDITOR OF THE AFRICA FASHION PUBLICATION
Christine Checinska is lead curator for the seminal exhibition Africa Fashion (V&A Museum, South Kensington, Jul 2 2022 - Apr 16 2023). Spanning iconic mid-20th century to contemporary creatives through photographs, textiles, music and the visual arts, the exhibition Africa Fashion explores the vitality and global impact of a fashion scene as dynamic and varied as the continent itself. For more information on the exhibition, click here. She is also the editor of the volume Africa Fashion (Abrams Books, New York, July 2022) that accompanies the exhibition. The publication is an unique exploration of how the cultural renaissance following independence evolved into today’s dynamic African fashion revolution. For more information on the publication, click here.
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M. NEELIKA JAYAWARDANE
RECEPIENT OF THE WARHOL FOUNDATION ART WRITERS GRANT
M. Neelika Jayawardane was the recipient
of the Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant (New York, 2022). She contributed one of the five thread-bound pamphlets that make up the inaugural volume of the grant titled Cookie Jar 1 | Home is a foreign place. In her contribution, 'This is not the correct history: Lacunae, Contested Narratives, and Evidentiary Images from Sri Lankas Civil War', she questions the evidentiary nature of documentary photography foregrounding the slippery ethics of reading images of the decades-long civil war in Sri Lanka. For more information on the award, click here. For information on her pamphlet, click here.
To order or download, visit cookiejar.artswriters.org
Press inquiries: cookiejar.artswriters.org
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CARLOS CASTELLANO
SOLO AUTHORED BOOK
Carlos Castellano is the author of Literary Fictions of the Contemporary Art System Global Perspectives in Spanish and Portuguese (Routledge, Oxfordshire, 2022). The primary objective of this book is to explain how contemporary literatures in Spanish and Portuguese are dealing with artistic creativity when artmaking is no longer a specialised field of cultural production, but rather an expanded field of socioeconomic interaction, personal and creative self-definition and collective imagination. The project positions the contemporary art novel as the most suitable place to understand how the economisation of cultural labour is affecting writers and artists alike. For more information on the volume, click here.
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RENÉE MUSSAI
CO-CURATED THREE EXHIBITIONS
Renée Mussai curated Care, Contagion, Community - Self & Other (Autograph, London, Sep 23 2021 - Feb 12 2022) as well as Monica de Miranda's The Island with Mark Sealy (Autograph, London, Jun 24 2022 - Oct 22 2022). Read about the respective exhibitions here. and here.
Mussai was also a consulting curator for the exhibitions Shifting Dialogues: Photography from the Walther Collection (Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, K21, Düsseldorf, Apr 9 2022 - Sep 25 2022) and Sasha Huber: YOU NAME IT with Mark Sealy and Bindi Vora (Autograph, London, Nov 11 2022 - Mar 25 2023). Read about Sasha Huber: YOU NAME IT here. Read about Shifting Dialogues: Photography from the Walther Collection here.
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MUHAMMAD HOBE
SOLO EXHIBITION
Muhammed Hobe held a solo exhibition at the tenth edition of the Sharjah Calligraphy Biennial (Calligraphy Square, Sharjah, Oct 5 2022 - Nov 30 2022) under the title Elevation. With distinguished craftsmanship and performance, artists from around the world approached the spirit of Arabic calligraphy, each relying on their diligence, culture, and approach to their historical aesthetic and civilisational heritage. The exhibition presents various artworks in authentic and contemporary scripts, as well as solo exhibitions, group exhibitions, and rich participation by a number of local institutions. For more information, click here.
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NATHANIEL STERN
TRAVELLING SOLO EXHIBITION
RESIDENCY
ART FESTIVAL
NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS APPOINTMENT
RECEPIENT OF THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION GRANT FOR CLIMATE ACTION STARTUP
Nathaniel Stern participated in the VerticalCrypto Art Residency and had work featured in the Refraction Festival at Art Basel Miami (Dec 1 - Dec 3 2022). Read more about the residency here.
Stern's groundbreaking exhibition The World After Us: Imaging techno-aesthetic futures is a staged photographic and video collection of temporary sculptures, which combine plant life with electronic waste, and scientific experimentation with artistic exploration.
The traveling solo exhibition of sculptures, installations, prints, and photographs takes the forms of a wall-hung jungle and literal towers of computer detritus and biological reclamation; artificially aged electronics; and computers and phones recovered as ink, manual tools, or paper. The exhibition premiered at the Museum of Wisconsin Art (Saint Kate Arts Hotel, Milwaukee, Jan – Mar 2020), traveled to NY, the Binghamton University Art Museum (New York, Jan – Mar 2022), the latter including a new commission, Circuit Boardwalk and semi-permanent installation of The Wall.
Stern was also appointed as PI and Executive Director on a National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab grant looking at Neurodiverse education with Creative Technologies. Read more here.
Additionally, Stern received the National Science Foundation grant for Climate Action Startup.
For more information, click here.
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SENZENI MARASELA
TRAVELLING SOLO EXHIBITION
Senzeni Marasela's major solo exhibition titled Waiting for Gebane at the Zeitz MOCAA (Dec 18 2020 - Aug 29 2021) and Johannesburg Art Gallery (Jun 19 2022 - Aug 19 2022). Through textiles, embroidery, photography, and painting, it provides a reflective overview of the artist's practice, which comprises a six-year durational performance featuring her fictional alter ego, Theodorah Mthetyane. The works speak of the invisibility of black women. She uses autobiography as a starting point of her work to reflect on the social, economic and historical positioning of women in her life particularly, her mother as well as historical personae such as Sara Baartman.
For more information on the Zeitz MOCAA exhibition, click here.
For information on the JAG exhibition, click here.
To watch Marasela's interview, click here.
Image credit: Senzeni Marasela, Waiting for Gebane. installation view: Zeitz MOCAA, 2020.
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NOLAN OSWALD DENNIS
BIENNIAL
ART FESTIVAL
TRIENNIAL
Nolan Oswald Dennis participated in the second edition of the Matter of Art Biennial (Prague, Jul 21 - Oct 23 2022). What is life imagined in violence? In other words, how can we let the soft be soft? Artists featured in the biennial were invited to explore to explore diverse artistic positions that reiterate these intertwined questions in various affective registers, media, and outputs. Read more information here and here.
He also participated in the Lofoten International Art Festival (Lofoten, Norway, Sept 3 2022 - Oct 2 2022) and the FRONT triennial (Transformer Station, Cleveland, Jul 16 2022 - Oct 2 2022). Read more here and here.
A Curriculum for Mud: Eroticeum, 2022, performative installation. Installation view
Image credit: Jonáš Verešpej
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