Meet the participants of RMB Latitudes CuratorLab 2024
By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor
One of the most important developments on the contemporary art scene in South Africa in recent years, is the opportunity that art platforms that have emerged on the market, such as art fairs, is the opportunity such platforms offer to young artists, interested in the different areas of the art echo system.
For example, all the art fairs in the country focussng on contemporary art have some form of mentorship programmes, especially for emerging curators. This development is quite important in that it gives especially young art practitioners an opportunity to learn on the job while being mentored by experienced practitioners.
From The FNB Joburg Art, Latitudes Art Fair, Turbine Art Fair to Investec Art far-they all have a mentorship programme of one form or another, aimed at particularly up-skilling young practitioners by partnering them with experienced practitioners in some cases.
A case in point is the Latitudes Art fair’s curatorial programme called CuratorLab, which the art fair has just announced this year’s edition, again partnering you curators with experienced mentors.
“Curating in the African context is rarely a singular pursuit. Across much of the African continent, interest in curatorial practice is high, while sustainable opportunities and platforms for curators remain slim. As such, many contemporary curators adopt the hybrid, hyphenated modes of “artist-writer-curator”, pursuing curation part-time or whenever the opportunity arises.
RMB Latitudes CuratorLab emerges from this set of predicaments, and attempts to provide new ways of developing and sustaining curatorial practice on the African continent. Launched in 2021, CuratorLab takes the form of a facilitated online residency for aspiring curators.
The idea is to offer both practical experience in the industry and the opportunity to hone conceptual curatorial skills. With the support of industry-leading curators, the participants plan and conceptualise their own exhibition, hosted on Latitudes Online, and also gain experience in the commercial aspect of the industry, earning commission on sales.”
Speaking on the partnership with Latitudes for the CuratorLab programme, RMB’s Carolynne Waterhouse explains that, when looking at the African arts ecosystem, there’s a clear lack of curators from the continent, largely owed to a lack of sustainable platforms and institutions.
“Curators are essential in that they have the ability to look at the artistic and socio-political landscape – to be in touch with the times, to be in conversation with the world and with that arts landscape,” says Waterhouse. “So, it’s important that we have a diverse range of curators who are able to represent the tone and the spirit of the times, but it’s as important that we have systems in place to support that work.”
In 2024, Latitude and RMB are thrilled to announce ten chosen curators for the third iteration of CuratorLab. This year the programme’s reach extends to and from Botswana, Ghana, Nigeria, Namibia, Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa.
The programme runs from 23 January – 10 April 2024. Keep an eye out for the participants’ curated shows on Latitudes.
2024 Curators
Adeyosola Adeniran (Nigeria) Adeyosola Adeniran, an artist and curator based in Lagos, currently serves as Curatorial Assistant at the African Artists’ Foundation and LagosPhoto Festival.
Baoagi Keitshokile (Botswana) Baoagi Keitshokile is an artist, born and raised in the village of Serowe, Botswana. He is currently serving as a creative hub manager and operating a studio at Khama III Memorial Museum in his home village..
Bayron Van Wyk (Namibia) Bayron Van Wyk, writer, researcher and cultural worker, has been working at the Museums Association of Namibia (MAN) where he has been exposed to the intricacies surrounding Namibian collections, including cultural objects and artworks.
Giancarlo LaGuerta (Botswana) Giancarlo LaGuerta is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist and curator, born and raised in Gaborone, Botswana. His work (curatorship and art practice) attempts to destigmatise conversations around politics, masculinity, culture and heritage in the context of Botswana.
Kamogelo Sebopa (South Africa) Kamogelo Sebopa is a Johannesburg based emerging artist and curator, currently interested in drawing and printmaking and furthering her curatorial practice.
Kukua Kweku-Badu (Ghana) Kukua Kweku-Badu is an independent curator and poet, exploring decolonial and queer alternate realities and global contemporary art.
Ng’onga Silupya (Zambia) Ng’onga Silupya (b. 1996) is a Cultural Practitioner, Arts Administrator and Curator from Lusaka, Zambia.
Onyịnye Alheri (Mozambique) Onyịnye Alheri is a multidisciplinary artist and curator born in Lagos, Nigeria and living in Mozambique.
Raelee Seymour-Brown (South Africa) Raelee is a multimedia artist, designer and curator from Johannesburg, South Africa, with an aesthetic focus on novelty, irreverence and the unseen.
Tlotlo Lobelo (South Africa) Tlotlo Lobelo aims to work with multidisciplinary works from artists of the global south who present through movement, sound, and visual communication their most earnest expressions of art. Read more about the curators here.
Mentors
Anastasia Pather – Programme Manager
An artist and curator, Anastasia has over 10 years of experience working in the cultural sector and is a specialist in arts education, relationship-management, project-leadership and multi-stakeholder engagements. Anastasia’s work is held by several major collections including the Spier Arts Collection and the Sasol Art Collection. Anastasia is currently exhibiting at the Museum of African American Art (AAM) in Dallas, Texas, USA in an exhibition entitled, ‘If you look hard enough, you can see the future’. In 2022 she opened an art consultancy, AP.AD, that designs and manages corporate art collections with a specific focus on South African artist development; her clients include J.P. Morgan, South Africa.
Anelisa Mangcu
Anelisa Mangcu (b.1992) is a curator and interdisciplinary art practitioner based in Cape Town. She obtained an Honours in Curatorship from the Centre for Curating the Archive, at Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. She has curated over 40 exhibitions and
presentations for fairs such as FNB Art Joburg, Investec Cape Town Art Fair, 1-54 New York and RMB Latitudes Art Fair. In 2020, she founded Under The Aegis, which offers curatorial and art advisory services, and facilitates the relationship between artists, galleries, collectors and institutional collections from the African continent and the diaspora.
Nkgopoleng Moloi
Nkgopoleng Moloi is a writer based in Cape Town. She is interested in the spaces we occupy and navigate through and how these influence the people we become. Writing is a tool Moloi uses to understand the world around her and to explore the things she is excited and intrigued by, particularly history, art, language and architecture. She is the current Editor of Arrthrob. Her work has appeared in Art Forum, Elephant Art, Mail & Guardian and the British Journal of Photography. She recently curated “Practices of Self-Fashioning”, an exhibition exploring queer mobility, at the Goethe-Institut in Johannesburg.
Sana Ginwalla
Interested in politics of identity, home and belonging, Sana Ginwalla is an Indian-Zambian curator and archivist. She is the founder of Everyday Lusaka and Zambia Belonging, photographic platforms dedicated to shifting towards more considered visual representations of Lusaka’s past and present in order to build a contemporary archive for future generations. Zambia Belonging is a counter-archive of found and submitted archival photographs made in Zambia that are otherwise unseen in institutional archives. The collection has been presented at the Lusaka National Museum, the 13th African Biennale of Photography in Bamako, the Lusaka Contemporary Art Centre as well as the University of Cambridge.
Teboho Ralesai
Teboho Ralesai is a Johannesburg-based curator and artist. Having grown up between Sharpeville, Zone 7 Sebokeng and Boipatong, areas deeply marked by collective violence, Ralesai uses this sense of displacement and confusion as an opportunity to critically examine the weight of history and its enduring impact on individual and communal recollections within the context of post-apartheid South Africa.
Valerie Kabov
Valerie Kabov, is an independent scholar, art historian, art advocate and art entrepreneur focused on decoloniality and economic equity in contemporary art in Africa. She is the co-founder of First Floor Gallery Harare, Zimbabwe’s leading contemporary art space, as well as co-founder in 2016 of African Art Galleries Association and in 2019 the Emerging Painting
Invitational, pan-African painting prize (2019). She sits on the Advisory Board of East African Museum of Art Nairobi (EAMAN). Valerie holds a MA in Art History & Theory (Curatorship, Cultural Economics),University of Sydney, and LLB, B.Com from University of Melbourne, Australia. She has been based in Harare, Zimbabwe since 2010.