Latitudes Online is hosting over 50 African visual artists and its diaspora
BY Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor
There is no doubt that African contemporary art has in recent years been holding its own on the market, whereas in the past it has been those in the North and later from Asia that collectors found attractive.
But now, though the global percentage of African art sales is still low it only constitutes 1 percent of the global art market. However given the sustained interest of contemporary art from Africa by collectors from around the world, this sales figure is bound to increase in the coming years.
African artists both those who are resident and are practising on the continent and the African Diaspora can no longer be ignored by a serious art collector or an art enthusiast for that matter. Besides the stories told by the art works created on the continent and about the Motherland, are just as rich as the continent itself. In a way therefore, it is no surprise that the global art market is increasingly looking at Africa for fresh art, fresh visual perspectives and fresh ways of telling the stories of and about the continent, which has the distinction of having birthed humanity itself.
From Cape Town to Cairo, as well as from London to New York, African artists and artists of African origin are making an impression on the art market, as writers, painters and multi-media story tellers representing a diverse continent that needs a complex way of telling its stories as African stories have many layers and several nuances.
South Africa with no doubt has contributed to popularising contemporary art from Africa as the country is a host to several art fairs, such as the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Turbine Art Fair, FNB Art Joburg and RMB Latitudes Art Fair, which runs an online version as well as bringing back the physical version this year after the disruption of Covid-19 in 2020. The arrival of the global pandemic forced Latitudes to go online. However this year with a headline sponsor RMB, Latitudes will give collectors an opportunity to look for fresh art from the continent by attending the art market in person this year.
However its online version has been a success ever since it launched in 2020, boasting success stories of curation and new art talent that has been discovered on its platform. Latitudes Online is therefore an ongoing platform hosting various curated exhibitions.
The platform is currently hosting one of its biggest African art market on its platform for the convenience of collectors from wherever they might be.
The platform is currently hosting REVERB 23 | Abstract Resonances // Contemporary Voices
REVERB is a group exhibition that showcases the work of over 50 contemporary artists from Africa as they collectively forge a sensorial map of sight, sound and texture through abstract art.
The show, which runs from 8 February to 24 March on Latitudes Online, brings together 70 artworks by 51 artists from Africa and the Diaspora.
Art enthusiasts can engage in a multi-sensory experience by listening to Latitudes’ Afro Jazz-inspired playlist while browsing the Reverb online exhibition, and reading art critic Sean O’Toole’s article on uncovering the love affair between art and music.
Thematic Curation:
● Paper Phenomenon: This selection of works celebrates the transmutation of paper into two-dimensional and three-dimensional artworks. The experimental fragility that anchors the processes of visual artists Isheanesu Dondo and NomThunzi Mashalaba is rediscovered, while Karla Nixon and Sunali Narshai seek to distort paper altogether, experimenting with the addition (and removal) of dimension.
● Textural Alchemy: Texture embeds meaning in the structural compositions of Dela Anyah’s rubber tyre tube tapestries, Benjamin Salvatore’s perforated pine wood and Atang Tshikare’s wooden sculpture of a brain. This facet of the show aims to expand upon the understanding of the malleability of material, but also to evaluate the ways in which the meta-abstract ideas of the artists make their way into the physical.
● Surrealistic Allegories: Symbolism, form and figures combine for artists processing the bizarre and confusing aspects of their lives as they seek resolution. For Keabetsoe Makgoane and Nicola Holgate, a journey of self-discovery is illuminated, whereas painters Blessing Ngobeni and Lwando Dlamini include a mutation of landscapes in pursuit of serenity. The artworks selected highlight the inextricable link between the power of Abstraction and its relationship with the unknown.
● Chromatic Vibrations: By means of a colour spectrum that is not only visually appealing but mood-provoking, this part of the show prioritises one of the most fundamental aspects of Abstraction: the emotional range that different artworks provide to cater to the vast human experience. The high vibrational energy of the bright colours moving on the canvas of Khotso Motsoeneng, Justin Southey and James de Villiers is evident, but the inclusion of more muted vibrational artworks by artists such as Virginia Mackenny, Juria Le Roux and Kirti Ranchod balance out a need for retrospective solitude as an equally powerful measure of emotional perceptiveness.
Reverb 23 | Participating artists are as follows:
Ablade Glover
Khotso Motsoeneng
Akshar Maganbeharie
Kirti Ranchod
Andiswa Bhungane
Lwando Dlamini
Atang Tshikare
Maia Lehr-Sacks
Babalwa Tom
Matt Slater
Bastiaan van Stenis
Mbali Tshabalala
Benjamin Salvatore
Mfezeko Gumada
Blessing Ngobeni
Mika Marffy
Boemo Diale
Natasha Norman
Dela Anyah
Nicola Holgate
Dewald Bruwer
Nicollette von Wiese
Dumisani Mabaso
Nkuli Mlangeni
Emma C. Aspeling
Nomthunzi Mashalaba
Frans Smit
Ogorogile Nong
Georgina Gratrix
Petra Shutte
Hedwig Barry
Ros Koch
Hemali Khoosal
Rose-Marie Shultz
Isheanesu Dondo
Sera Holland
James de Villiers
Sunali Narshai
Jo Roets
Thembalethu Manqunyana
Juria Le Roux
Tony Nkotsi
Justin Southey
Virginia Mackenny
Karla Nixon
Vusi Khumalo
Kay-Leigh Fisher
Water Dixon
Keabetsoe Makgoane
Zarah Cassim
Kedirile Kemaketse