La Tesi / The Thesis - Final Presentation.

The day has finally arrived for the final presentation. And with this I would just like to thank the people who  played an important part in this:

I would to thank my advisor Bert Theis for his guidance and inspiration. Then I would like to thank all the people who granted me interviews. Thank you to Ra Hlasane and Malose Malahlela from Keleketla!, Ravi Govender, Jacki McInnes, Louise van Zijl at Assemblage Studio, Francios Venter from Goethe and Hayleigh Evans and Bheki Dube from Maboneng Precinct. Thank you also to Joseph Gaylard,Alice Nevin and Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon for sharing your research with me. I would like to thank my dear friends Edith, Leah, Jessica, Wei-Ning and Sibi, for the humour, the support and just being my family here, without you I wouldn't have made it through with all my sanity in tact. Lastly but most importantly my parents for both the financial and emotional support for the two years studying in Italy.

Stuff lately!

Instagram obsessed!Some studio pics and a porcelain dog found on midnight excursions.

A pledge for Isola: Fight Specific publication

So one of the projects I've been following here in Milan and that has inspired my own research is the projects of Isola Art centre. They have tracking and resisting and fighting the neighbourhoods gentrification which has drastically changed the characteristic of Isola from an old industrial and mixed area to a skyscraper wasteland where any guy with a power trip seems to want a skyscraper erected.  So, Isola is publishing a book, called "Fight - specific Isola.

Art, Architecture, Activism and the Future of the City."  In order to get the book distributed and available at a low cost, they are making use of crowd funding to support the project. Make a pledge and if it reaches its goal of $5,500 dollars, transaction is approved. In return for your pledge, you will receive something back. The quilts from my Isola: Progress and development picnic; are also up for grab.These quilts are hand made and reflects the building skyline of Isola. So go to Kickstarter and make pledge..

My work for Isola Art Centre on Kickstarter.

In order to raise funds for their new  publication Isola Art Centre  has launched a Kickstarter. My work Progress and Development is one of the works that you can receive for making a pledge. 

Projects that inspire me: South Africa you rock!!!

My research is taking me to such good places! Can't wait to visit home! The discovery of projects that goes beyond what I could possibly imagine, makes me feel like an inadequate and lazy artist. While I'v been indulging in what it means to make art for myself, these artists and curators were moving comfort zones and doing things. I would like to mention some of these amazing people and projects here, because they are really inspiring me to do something. Look at the Keleketla!Library project, The Centre for Historical Re-enactments, Assemblage Studios, Cuss collective and Gugulective

If anything the arts in SA at the moment shows that we are in transformation, young artists and curators looking for new languages to express this identity that we are seeking and to respond to the conditions that South Africans live in. It is clear that art is reviving the public realm, that it is looking towards the community and no longer looking to hang on the walls in Mooikloof and Sandton.

I like what Rangoato Hlasane one of  the creators of Keleketla! is saying here in Liberator magazine:

“I have no intentions of spending time in [an] isolated studio making images for galleries as a devotion or career... I really do feel that art for walls is sometimes overrated. I feel that it creates disillusions [sic]. I make art, and I find value in the process; it is a method for my sanity, my reflection on things and a chance to imagine a different world. I hope that my work does that, enables... contemplation on things.”

 "The general society knows very little about art and the art that is being created with assumptions of changing the world. We have an inherent self-importance. It's unhealthy, makes us defensive, inflates egos and brings us all down when it all falls down. There can only be a few art superstars. This may sound like sour grapes and it would be if I wasn't doing well with my work, but I am. I just don’t have any illusions and consider it a waste of time to lock myself in a studio only to spend my life drinking wines and distressing over capitalist gallerists. My point is that art processes, rather than outcomes, have the potential for impact".