Personal Affects: Power and Poetics in Contemporary South African Art presents newly commissioned and recently produced works by an exceptional group of seventeen South African contemporary visual artists working in diverse media, including sculpture, drawing, photography, painting, installation, video, and performance.

The works represent the artists’ responses to a weeklong stay in New York and visits with the international team of curators. Subtle investigations of agency and affect inform this exhibition, as it explores works of art as the powerful and poetic expressions that artists leave behind. The common thread throughout the exhibition is the highly personal point of departure of the artists’ working methods – the use of the body, personal histories, and the construction of personal mythologies. After ten years of democracy, the personal narratives reflected in the work of South African artists today are complex and multi-layered, challenging audiences to recognize the subtle nuances and slippages of history, culture, economics, religion and personal experience that form the artists’ identities.

The exhibition catalogue is available for sale from the Museum for African Art. A special installation supplement will be available in November.

Artists:

Jane Alexander
Wim Botha
Steven Cohen
Churchill Madikida
Mustafa Maluka
Thando Mama
Samson Mudzunga
Jay Pather
Johannes Phokela
Robin Rhode
Claudette Schreuders
Berni Searle
Doreen Southwood
Clive van den Berg Minnette Vári
Diane Victor
Sandile Zulu

Curators:

David Brodie, South Africa
Laurie Ann Farrell, New York
Churchill Madikida, South Africa
Sophie Perryer, South Africa
Liese van der Watt, South Africa