diary September 19, 2018

Fair and Folly

“I HOPE IT ISN’T TOO DISTURBING,” a well-dressed white woman said to her friend as they considered whether to enter a sound installation about police violence at the Eleventh Joburg Art Fair earlier this month. The installation, placed right by the entrance to the fair, was the work of Haroon Gunn-Salie, the 2018 winner of the fair’s annual FNB Art Prize. It featured a black box in which an immersive soundscape was suspended from the ceiling, making listeners feel as if they were underground. We sat on the floor, and soon the voices of mine workers washed over us, in an anti-apartheid protest

print September 2018

Andrew Esiebo

In Accra, Ghana; Lagos, Nigeria; or Dakar, Senegal; beneath bridges under construction, on market streets choked with carts, merchants, and customers, in open palace courtyards, at dusk, on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, glory is a round leather ball kicked successfully into a net—even if the ball is a makeshift version formed of crumpled paper or tin cans bound together by tape. Little children, teenagers, or young adults are usually the players. They are following the tradition of a sport beloved across the continent. They toss the ball in the air, move it nimbly among themselves, on

picks May 17, 2018

Abraham Oghobase

Abraham Oghobase is making an understatement. In “No Matter Who You Are,” an exhibition of photographs shot from 2007 to 2016, a story unfolds tentatively at first, with careful restraint. The artist is showing something by barely telling anything.

Oghobase is his own subject in these mostly monochrome images. We see him suspended over skyscapes, against an azure sky; washed into seascapes, in a cascade of frothy waves; soaring above land and over a bushy shoreline. At first glance, the works are easily mistaken as ones of mere beauty, of man imprinted in nature. But look again. This is a story

picks April 21, 2018

Ibe Ananaba

Ibe Ananaba does not suffer metaphors. For his latest exhibition, “Long-Drawn Shadows,” Ananaba—who has explored fashion and the rise of social media—continues to document contemporary Nigerian culture. This show finds him working within a geopolitical framework, as he pays close attention to Nigeria’s problematic natural resource: oil. There are no doubts about his thoughts on the topic; the works’ titles and scenes leave little room for the viewer to interpret meaning outside what the artist has clearly intended.

Watercolors of men and women in pensive, broody poses welcome the viewer. They

Ayodeji Rotinwa