Sebastien Jean Born on March 17, 1980 in Thomassin (Haïti), Jean Sébastien lives and works in Haïti. In 2000, a visit to the exhibition of the artist Barbara Prézeau Stephenson gives birth to a new asthetic step in Sébastien’s work (…) « My work is inspired by crafts, particularly in the choice of the medium, sawdust, coffee grounds, sand. 2006 is an outstanding year ; his studio is destroyed by fire. Sébastien rescues from the fire what he is can, works it again, transfigures it and shows it at the Art Center of Jacmel. Then, with the support and the help of Mario Benjamin he shows his work at the French Institute of Port au Prince. The exhibition is a real success, his paintings where the black of the smoke mingles with colours are questionning and he gains the attention and the support of the Monnin Gallery in Petionville. In November 2010 he takes part in the exhibition « Caribbean Vibrations » at the Montparnasse Museum, then, some weeks later he is invited by the Egregore Gallery in Marmande where he shows his paintings and sculptures. From then on, his work becomes international. In April 2011, he takes part in a collective exhibition « Haïti Realm of this world », a tribute to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Edouard Glissant, showed in Paris by the Agnès b Foundation , then at the 54th Biennial event of Venice and finally in Miami. He also was in artistic residence at the Vieux Château.

As if to sound out two words 

Alexande Cadet-Petit

As if he wanted to sound out two words, horror and disgust dear to his island, at first sight, Sébastien Jean gets involved in the singular bestiary of Haïti. That’s not new in itself. But what is striking nevertheless is that the painter opens up at the same time the inner side and the outer side of his figurative pieces. Indeed, if he is still attached to the shape, yet, he characterizes his bestiary a bit more, since, according to me, it is better to be attached to the inner part, enabling the autopsy, or better the semiology spreading the spontaneous signs of the thousand-year-old cultures that are part of all the Caribbean Islands.

In fact, when you look carefully at the lines which sustain the outer side, you can guess a flying-buttress here, a fasciculated column elsewhere, sometimes a diagonal in the middle of an archway of the outlying vocabulary of Sébastien Jean whereas such a move has just been made out we are taken back once more to the new world he means, since, if the apparently gothic I have just mentioned are part of the inner, they sudddenly bump into the spine of the container, a monster as fiercely full of obstacles as today’s societies could be. 

Yet, despite the harshness of the association of the black and white, the bestiary remains soothed. One more time the phantasmagorical world of Sébastien Jean are derived from the thousand-year-old chats of tales, in which fear triggers off the promises of union, in the contemporary space of tyrannized cultures. 

Alexandre Cadet-Petit, March 12, 2012, in Le Moule, FWI 

Sébatien JEAN’s chimeras. 

Scarlett JESUS 

Sébatien JEAN’s chimeras. Scarlett JESUS « At moonlight, near the sea, in isolated places in the countryside, immerged in bitter reflections, you can see eveything take on yellow, imprecise, fantastic shapes. 

Sébastien Jean. Untitled, 2011. Soot, tar oil, oil painting, powder.

Painter and sculptor, Sébastien JEAN is a young bolt Haïtian artist who cultivates his chimeras. Without seeking to please at any rate. Enthusiast of disturbing contemporary art, he made the choice of showing reality as he perceives it, as a visionary. Besides, he mischievously calls himself a « lunatic » to define his work that he wants to be completely free. 

The work the artist did when he was in a three-month residence in LARTOCARPE in Le Moule(GUADELOUPE) is a confirmation of what he says and which is far from being naïve. Although he is a self-taught artist, Sébastien JEAN started painting in his early childhood and he could, on many occasions, confront his art with internationally known artists, in exhibitions from Miami to Paris through Marmand and lately, at the biennial of Venice. 

Talking of « chimeras » to call Sébastien JEAN’s work is being completely aware of the different meanings and the ambiguity of that word. Moreover in Haïti , where the word has particular connotations, since « the chimeras » recall a very special social reality, that of armed gangs serving President ARISTIDE and terryfying the population between 2001 and 2005. A Chimera meant, in Greek mythology, a monster spitting out fire ; its body was made of elements from different animals. That word can easily apply to the hybrid beings that haunt the artist’s world. Turning his back on a rational approach of reality, Sébastien JEAN, discloses an imaginative world which is, like most of Haïtians artists’work, steeped in voodoo beliefs inherited from Africa. The work of that artist shows us his apprehension of a world he perceives as being strange, weird, subjected to all kinds of evil spells, magic spells and metamorphosis. What looks uncommon can be due only to the action of invisible forces : evil spirits, errant souls, monsters or dragons. Some titles of GOYA’s work -you inevitably think of- in the Fancies « The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters » or « Witches’ Sabbah » could easily apply to the dark world of his paintings. The beings, sometimes with claws, with hooked beaks or threatening teeths, sometimes like ghosts, look as if they were coming out from a Chaos that the painter darkens furthermore, in a symbolic way, with dusts and ashes. The artist’s style is clearly recognizable by that chiaroscuro aesthetics, by the choice of a dark palette most of the time, or by the association of black with a violent colour like fluorescent red or yellow and also by the erratic and fleeting interlace left by the brush. 

Don’t those lines express the quest of an artist seeking to fix the visions inspired by an unstable world subjected to the action of supernatural forces ? An unsteady world as if split up, like some of his diptychs or triptychs. An unrestrained world that is only governed by the fancies and the fantastic convulsive movements of an unrestrained imagination. 

In the same way, the sculptures - which are like installations – let fate play a large part. Using salvaged materials, they show the wastes of a society and a time. Old batteries, rusty wheels and old irons, floated wood, shoes and ropes washed up on the shore are linked with goat skulls and bones. As if by magic, the artist gives those waste a new shape and a new lease of life. But those impure beings shaped from Chaos, will also appear like weird and disturbing monsters. Like Titans or Ogres, they look as if they wanted to show the remains of their unlucky victims. 

Maëlle Galerie

Nevertheless, all those characters, though ugly and terrifying at first sight, look quite funny. They remind us the monsters in the tales that delighted our childhood. Like tales, thanks to a biased approach, they enable us to face appalling reality. The one we live and above all the one Haïtian people live. At the same time and while confusing horror and laughter, Sébastien JEAN surreptitiously manages to do a kind of exorcism, his grotesque « chimeras » enabling him to externalize his own evil spirit, fears and obsessions. To free and -free himself from – the monster that is in each of us. Thus, beyond the reference to voodoo and the use of fantastic, Sébastien JEAN manages to create a very personal world, that is dreamlike and satirical at the same time. His work revives the sacred function art initially had, that of having secrete powers. That art, which offers little rational interpretation, acts like a magical spell.The choice of large formats contributes to emphasize the shock of the observer. 

With a position similar to André Breton’s, Sébastien JEAN joins the contemporary reasoning of another artist, the Austrian Alfred KUBIN. The twilight atmosphere of the paintings of both painters shows a world which, plagued by violence, is dehumanizing itself and going back to animality and savageness. Both ask the same essential question : can art act on the tragical course of events ? Or should we consider that its function is to propose « chimeras », « the last ressources of the unhappy » to take up Rousseau’s expression. 

Olivia Breleur, Maëlle Galerie director

After obtaining a DNAP (National Diploma in Visual Arts) and a DNSEP in fine arts (Superior National Diploma of Plastic Expression), Olivia Breleur decides to leave the practical side and deepen the theoretical knowledge. Sensitive to the fate of the artists she encounters, and the lack of professionals around them, she studied in Paris at the EAC, school of communication, culture and luxury, where she was awarded a master in art market. 

Always passionate by the production of contemporary Caribbean artists, she was surrounded by professionals for the writing of her research project. Giovanni Joppolo, specialist in contemporary art of the Caribbean was her director and Jacques Leenhardt, Director of Studies at the EHESS (School of Superior Studies in Social Sciences) and specialist in Latin American art, was her godfather.

The eligibility criteria for an international art market. What Place for the market of artists from Martinique and Guadeloupe? This was the title of her research project which provocatively announces the analysis and highlights of the barriers to the radiance of the evoked artists. She worked between 2010 and 2012 at the Frank Elbaz art gallery in the Marais in Paris and Drawing Now, a famous Contemporary Drawing Fair that takes place in the Carreau du Temple in Paris. In October 2012, at the age of 26, she founded and now runs the Maëlle Galerie which is installed since March 2014 in the district of Belleville in the 20th arrondissement of Paris

http://www.maellegalerie.com/

Hamid El Kanbouhi was born in Larache (Morocco) in 1976. He studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, the Sandberg Institute and the Rijksacademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. Hamid El Kanbouhi: “I was born in Larache (Morocco). When I was nineteen I moved to The Netherlands and stayed here to develop myself. I am interested in people, communication and social interaction. After a one year language course I started studying at the Social Academy, but soon I decided to apply for art academy. Since then I am an artist.” I draw and paint people. My work is an open laboratory with many possibilities. Sometimes I make huge installations that represent ordinary situations. 

For one of my last works I reconstructed the living room of friends of mine in a museum and iinvited them to live in this ‘museum living room’ for a couple of hours per day. For another work I created a Moroccan café in an exhibition space and asked the customers of the actual café to come over, drink tea and play Ludo.” His work is exhibited frequently, in The Netherlands and abroad. In the summer of 2013 he participated in the Biennale of Marrakech in Morocco. In 2015 a painting of Hamid was aquired by the Saatchi collection and it was included in the exhibiton 'Pangaea II – New Art from Africa and Latin America' at Saatchi Gallery London. In fall 2015 Hamid El Kanbouhi will present a curated solo show at SWAB Barcelona (curator : Eva Barois de Caevel), and in 2016 he will have his third solo show at Galerie Van De Weghe

Hamid El Kanbouhi - Hakkendak - Oil on canvas (2011) - 200x200cm

Eva Barois De Caevel - Hello Hamid, I am very interested in some features of contemporary painting in which you can find, encapsulated into a strong aesthetics, images that are — and it is a feeling conveyed by the artworks themselves — political. And even if you have no clue of the way they are political, or of what specific events or thoughts they may refer to. That is a feeling I have in front of your work. Can you tell me if I am right and give me some clues?

Hamid El Kanbouhi - The viewer is always right, as long as the artwork is a measure for his interpretative ability.

I try to be and stay an independent spirit who takes every liberty I consider necessary in order to depict what I want. My curiosity and need for communication are the guiding lights. I refuse to restrict me to familiar means of expression. I work with every media, including non-visual tools such as text and sound. I am not there to give the viewer aesthetic gratification. I consider beauty as a concept that has less to do with the eye than with the soul. The traditional boundaries between high and low art, whatever they may be, do not exist in my work. I don’t take notice either of the rules, customs and rituals of the various cultures. I bend art historical traditions to my own, individual will. Established facts are there to be tested.

I am fascinated by mathematics, physics, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, theology, history, and everything what has to do with 'man' and 'life'. But I choose deliberately to be an artist, not a politician or scientist or philosopher, I am an observer of the human condition, I am not a messenger, but I am looking for the dimensions of a question. I don't want to show you what my work is about, but I try to make you a part of it.

EBDC- I am particularly interested, for instance, in the way you represent women from North Africa (and its diaspora I assume), in your paintings or in your videos (for instance in Mobiel, 2012), which is an obvious issue in the Western world today, and a place of major conflicts, critics and misunderstandings. Is there something you would like to say about it?

HEK- The point of departure for the video installation Mobiel is a story that called up questions in my mind about the interrelations among culture, tradition, technology and privacy, and various social-cultural interpretations of these concepts. On the basis of these questions, I searched YouTube videos of dancing Arab women. I focused on collecting videos that show women who use YouTube as a mirror and a door to a new world with different rules about privacy. Viewers are invited to immerse themselves in these worlds of reflection, and reflect themselves on reflection.

I represent art in an objective, transparent, conflicting, humoristic and cruel way, simply art without color or border. Personal interests, framing, folklore, espionage and conservation of heritage, all those belong to other professions. My profession is art, I make art, I am an artist.

Hamid El Kanbouhi - Preek - Oil on canvas (2010) – 170x200cm

EBDC- I know that your practice also includes installation, video, performance, and drawing: what is the relation of your work of painting with these other mediums? What is the history of your relation to these different mediums?

HEK- I employ no rules or codes during the making of an art work, each work creates its own instruction manual, the factor that holds together all the resources that are used to create a complex art work (including the viewer) is 'communication'. The viewer is also looked at, every scratch on my work assesses the spectator. I am not a kind of masseur who wants to relax your brain.

EBDC- I love very much the dominance of black and white in your paintings. It is beautiful and powerful: is it something that is present in you work since its beginnings? Is there a special signification (conceptual and/or aesthetical) in this way of representing things?

HEK- I would like to skip this question. I don't want to disturb your view with my banality...

EBDC- As you may know, when asked by the fair to create a new program focusing on “African artists” I decided to propose a selection that would challenge the notion itself of “African artists” (for instance by questioning the geographical existence of this notion — by including the Caribbean, the diaspora, etc. —, or by questioning the assumed notion of  "Black artist" behind this category of "African artists"). I also decided to impose myself another «category» (to reflect on the first and imposed one) by choosing to focus on painting. Is it something you wish to comment (of course, you don’t have to and you have the right not to care!)?

HEK- As long as there are no African, Asiatic or South American academies that completely deliver themselves in writing their own art history, there is no African, Asiatic or South American art. Art is a profession, a human profession. There is a huge difference between art and theater, cinema, folklore. A dentist may not operate your eye!

Today more art professionals than ever come from Africa and the Caribbean: it is a logical development. I think that all nations are equally creative.

EBDC- I don’t know precisely what your personal history is, but have you ever been seen/invited/desired as the “African artist” and what kind of experience was it? Do you have the feeling that your painting is “from” somewhere, and how (because of the iconography within it, because of the places where you studied and what are your influences, etc.)?

HEK- I make Kanbouhian work. Nothing else.

Eva Barois De Caevel.- When we met in Paris in June you explained to me that your style — this fusion of different techniques that allows you to arrange surprising images — has been perceived as something extremely new when you presented your work, for the first time, in Kinshasa. Why, according to you?

SB - Yes, it’s true! I think this could be explained by three things:

First, the practice of collage on paper and of paper and the use of ink was something almost nonexistent in Kinshasa. I wanted to exalt paper as a valuable contemporary support of expression, a material ignored by many artists in Kinshasa where the idea that if you are a painter, you must use oil painting on a traditional canvas is very deeply rooted.

Another thing is my strong will to escape the many stereotypes that still exist in contemporary art produced in Africa. I have the feeling that in Africa, and specifically in Congo, artists feel encouraged to develop a form of aesthetic that could still be considered as « typically African ». I am looking for a more « balanced aesthetic » and, almost, a personal one. That is also why I tried to avoid the use of some materials.

The last thing is maybe the intellectual commitment that I try to convey through my work. I was trained with the idea that an artist is somebody who masters the harmony of colors, who masters the art of perspective… But I needed to develop a strong and convincing philosophy that could strengthen my art…

EBDC- Can you explain to me how you imagined and put in practice this fusion of different techniques?

SB - During the time I spent in South Africa, I was in a specific state of mind: training myself professionally and experiencing an identity quest. I was interested in the American avant-garde. I tried different mediums like installation, a bit of photography, performance… I was also inspired by many African artists like Barthélemy Toguo, Wangechi Mutu, or William Kentridge, to name a few. I think the will to melt different techniques you mention could be seen as the fruit of theses exchanges, of my personal and artistic path, and, most of all, of my curiosity. The choices of an artistic « genre » and of a medium are some of the more crucial ones for an artist; it will define him. I am a perfectionist and I tried to define very precisely a technique that corresponded to me.

Steve Bandoma, Pain (Triptych), 2012 - Series Lost tribe - 105 x 75 cm each - Collage and ink on paper.

EBDC - As you know, I decided to invite « painters » for this first edition of SWAB Gate, « painters » understood in a very broad way, specifically when it comes to your work.

How do you position yourself in relation to painting?

SB - First of all I must say that I don’t consider myself as a painter, but simply as an artist. Contemporary art offers an incommensurable freedom and I can’t work only with painting. I love the facts that some mediums produce great things when put together and it is something I love to explore.

EBDC- Did you paint in a more traditional way at first?

What are you relations with an aesthetic proper to the place where you produce your art, i.e. Kinshasa? And how do you position yourself in the artistic scene of Kinshasa, in aesthetical terms?

SB - During my training at the Fine arts school in Kinshasa, we learnt how to paint in a traditional way, but we were critical about this narrow academic system — that is still there, unfortunately — and had the desire to propose something else. We created for instance a collective, that was hosted by the Alliance Française: we called the movement « Librisme », then « Librisme synergie ». During my academic training I already started to experiment with collage and I liked it a lot. But the style of collage that became a key in my aesthetic is something I developed in South Africa.

Falling apart 2, Steve Bandoma

Mixed media on paper, 105x75cm, 2012

EBDC - What are the materials you use to obtain these very different textures that are present in your work? I have the feeling that this texture is pictorial in a way. It evokes some features of pictoriality: drips, stains…?

SB - Concerning the variation of textures you can see in some of my works I would rather say that it is something that is produced by my unsatisfied creative mind! I use Canson paper, cut papers from popular magazines (with various textures themselves), toilet paper, ink drops and stains, or cotton pads! I need these different textures to create hybrid characters, bizarre ones.

EBDC - You showed me recent works that were an evocation of the colonial history: are your works still related to political, historical, or topical questions?

SB - Art is something dynamic, man and society are moving, and so is the artist obviously. The link between my work and my society is present in the themes I choose to evoke. For instance, I sometimes want to evoke things related to Congo or Africa. It was the case with the series entitled "Lost Tribe" (2012): at this time I had the wish to revisit African culture and aesthetics through our art history, through the masks and ancient statues… I tried to contextualize these objects through a contemporary aesthetic that is my own and by adding a touch of humor and provocation like I usually love to do. But yes, most of my work is related to historical, political and topical questions as you said.

EBDC - What do you have in mind these days, what are the projects you would like to realize?

SB - I love to surprise people regularly. I try to produce new series, to push my creativity. I have the feeling that I have a lot to give, that I need to hurry! I am inspired by this latin sentence "Ars longa vita brevis": I would like it to be the title and state of mind of my next solo exhibition, that I would like to present in Kinshasa first.

STEVE BANDOMA
Born in 1981 in Kinshasa. 

Steve Bandoma graduated from Kinshasa Academy of Fine Arts in 2004 and then opted to move to South Africa. The start of his career in South Africa proved to be hard and anonymous. However, Bandoma gradually constructed his own style, raised his profile, began to exhibit regularly and finally managed to make a name for himself on the South African arts scene, which is a great achievement. In 2009, Bandoma hit the road again, travelling to Paris to take up a residency at the Cité Nationale des Arts. In 2011, he exhibited his work at Art Basel, in Pointe Noire and London, and finally moved back to Kinshasa in 2012 where he showed his work at the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles and at the French Institute. 

His return meant that the Kinshasa arts scene got to discover Steve Bandoma. And what a discovery it was! To quote the name of one of his exhibitions in Cape Town, it was the contempocalypse! Bandoma employs a mix of drawings, colour projections and collages, making for an incredible aesthetic of explosion or rather implosion, chaos and suffering, often against a backdrop of a clash of civilisations. Faces, limbs, body fragments, animated statuettes and fetish all fuse together to bring alive superficially wild and incoherent creations but that are in fact very well thought-out and carefully arranged; indeed most of the time Bandoma produces series. His creative and vibrant work moves and fascinates people. Several of Steve Bandoma’s artworks are on display at the Beauté Congo - Congo Kitoko exhibition at the Cartier Foundation (Paris, July-Nov. 2015).

Lincoln's vision. Mixed media on paper 150 x 140cm, 2014 Steve Bandoma. Angalia Gallery.

Wycliffe Mundopa. Mythst of Harare. Mixed media on canvas. 245cm x 178cm. 2014. 

VALERIE KABOV ON THE RISE OF NEW PAINTING FROM ZIMBABWE 

Valerie Kabov is director of First Floor Gallery Harare which was invited by curator Eva Barois De Caevel to take part in the first edition of the SWAB Gate programme where she will exhibit the work of artist Wycliffe Mundopa. Here is an excerpt of an article entitled « Committed to the Medium », published on the website of ARTsouthAFRICA on August, 27, 2015 and available in full in the most recent 'Painting's Not Dead!' (13.4) issue of ARTsouthAFRICA. In this article, she considers the rise of new painting from Zimbabwe, analyzing the work of Wycliffe Mundopa, Mavis Tauzeni and Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude.

Link to the article:

http://artsouthafrica.com/220-news-articles-2013/2496-the-painting-s-not-dead-issue-committed-to-the-medium-valerie-kabov.html

At the recent art fairs in Cape Town and Johannesburg this year, there was something almost peculiar in the cornucopia of art offerings from around the continent; the significant presence of Zimbabwean artists on the South African art scene. This presence has extended so much so that Zimbabwean artists Gerald Machona and Kudzanai Chiurai represented South Africa internationally at the recent 56^th Venice Biennale. Zimbabwe’s close proximity to South Africa cannot fully explain the prodigious flowering of talent in a country with a population of only fourteen million, whose economic woes have decimated its arts education, resulting in the absence of even a single internationally recognised Fine Art degree programme.

Of particular importance is the emergence of painters from Zimbabwe. Misheck Masamvu has become an established name in South Africa, represented by Blank Projects and presented at art fairs by Goodman Gallery. Artists like Portia Zvavahera, winner of the FNB Joburg Art Fair Prize (2015), and Richard Mudariki have found themselves a permanent home. Given Zimbabwe’s historical art reputation being cemented in stone sculpture practice, the rise of painting is somewhat unusual. While sculpture still delivers some heavy hitters, it is the ‘non–traditional’ and, as some have argued, ‘non-indigenous’ medium of painting that’s creating excitement in local and increasingly international art circles.

The conventional historical view is that the missionaries introduced painting and sculpture in Zimbabwe in the 1930s. Key to this introduction was Canon Paterson, who founded Cyrene Mission School in 1939 in Bulawayo, and Father Groeger, founder of Serima Mission. At both schools, young men were taught painting skills with a view to decorating churches and religious paraphernalia. Canon held the progressive view that given the opportunity African artists could reach the same heights as Europeans. The generation of artists that emerged from the Missions includes painters like Kingsley Sambo, whose works are in the MoMA in New York. In 1957 Frank McEwan, the first Director of the National Gallery of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) established the studio workshop, sponsored by British American Tobacco, which fostered the stone sculpture practice alongside painting. Still, the medium was not viewed as entirely indigenous.

Zimbabwe’s introduction to contemporary art came after its independence, with Gallery Delta’s Helen Leiros and artists like Berry Bickle and Tapfuma Gutsa seeking and promoting alternative ways of expression. Leiros in particular taught and fostered modern art techniques and mentored artists of the born-free generation, such as Lovemore Kambudzi, Misheck Masamvu, Richard Mudariki, Virginia Chihota and Portia Zvavahera.

While this history is important, it cannot explain the level of talent and quality of art production in Zimbabwe; these are contiguous with and true property of the culture, values and passions of the people and the times they live in. The medium – painting, poetry, sculpture or music – is in many ways a matter of convenience and availability. When conditions change so can the modes of expression. At its core, Zimbabwean culture is characterised by an ability to appraise life philosophically, with a measure of detachment and a big picture view. This culture manifests in many aspects of Zimbabwean tradition, from the immense importance of avoiding conflict and preserving social relationships, to the sophistication and conceptual structuring of Zimbabwean proverbs, monotheistic spirituality and belief in the sacredness of human life. This culture underpins the incredible perseverance and optimism of Zimbabwean people and continues to inform the new generation of painters, arguably even more so than all other artists. It can be said that presently in Harare, the medium of painting reflects the tensions, the complexity and the arduous path of the country better than any other available medium. Painting requires idealism – technical, artistic and personal. While the new generation of sculptors in Zimbabwe has, in many cases, opted for found and discarded objects as a resource, inventing their own medium and the method, the painters in Zimbabwe are required to forge ahead with technical, artistic and personal idealism and sacrifice.

Given the cost and availability issues, it is surprising that anyone takes up painting in Zimbabwe today. When making one painting can cost the same as the artist’s monthly rent, the choice between painting and eating becomes a real one. Capitulating to these economics, art schools such as the National Gallery Visual Art Studio or Harare Polytechnic have resorted to teaching painting with acrylics and in some cases, even poster paints. While some artists opt for print based techniques as an alternative, there is a younger generation of doggedly committed to the medium. Among those leading the charge are three young artists; Wycliffe Mundopa, Mavis Tauzeni and Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude.

Through the works Misheck Masamvu and Portia Zvavahera, audiences have come to associate new Zimbabwean painting with powerful metaphoric figuration and bold gestural statements in preference to finer detail. Although it is hard to speak about a ‘Harare School’ or a movement emerging, this ethos of place also informs the works of their younger colleagues, although each is making their own very distinct thematic imprint.

For Wycliffe Mundopa, the Hegelian dictum that art must be of its time and of its place is a most fitting description. Few artists are more passionately committed to being in Zimbabwe and sharing the pains and the struggles of its people than Mundopa. “This suffering is what makes us,” is his motto and the sentiment pulsates in each of his paintings, which spin like a whirlwind through the underbelly of Harare’s high-density areas and pain-points. His circus-like colours and twisted lines underscore the razor-sharp social commentary on a world where entertainment and poverty are close companions and where everything can be for sale. In his complex compositions, Mundopa displays his depth of historical research and admiration for the Dutch Masters, Rembrandt and Rubens in particular, by making us feel that if they had lived in Harare today, this is exactly what their paintings would look like. Mundopa’s recent show ‘Myths of Harare’ at Commune 1 Gallery (in Cape Town) and the selection of complementary works on paper at Ebony Gallery, (also in Cape Town) was a runaway success, displaying for the first time Mundopa’s prowess in tackling museum-size canvasses. We can only look forward to what happens next for this prodigious talent. (…)

Mavis Tauzeni produces, in many ways, a counter-balance to Mundopa’s frenetic subversive carnivals. Her canvasses are immersed in the unsettling stillness of introspection and waters that run deep. Deeply personal, Tauzeni’s imagery oscillates between the surreal, futuristic and dreamy. It bears some kinship to the world of Wengechi Mutu, who Tauzeni cites as a role model. Yet despite its surface otherworldliness, Tauzeni’s world is no less of a social commentary, speaking implicitly and explicitly to the difficulties of being a woman – and a woman artist – with an independent and individual journey. While she speaks to the realities of her life in Zimbabwe, the tones and sentiments engendered in her work are immediately empathetic, not only to women but to all of us yearning to break out of convention and social expectation. Tauzeni has already attracted attention for her works on paper, having been acquired by the Fondation Blanchere Collection in 2014, but the artist’s true passion is painting. Tauzeni is ready to emerge as a painter of note, with a new exhibition at First Floor Gallery titled ‘Eve’s Diaries’ and comprising major canvasses.

In stark contrast to Tauzeni and Mundopa is Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude. While no less informed by the drama and trauma of daily life in Harare than Mundopa, Nyaude’s practice is the epitome of the tongue-in-cheek street smarts that characterise the ‘ghetto ethos’of his native Mbare. Visually translating slang and vernacular, Nyaude works in waves to create series of obsessive, thematic paintings, exorcising each subject to exhaustion before subjecting a new victim to his keen wit. His past series include ‘The Midnight Shoppers’ based on the invisible and undocumented night-life of the Mbare ghetto; ‘Native Advertising’,’ which confronts us with how the news and media manipulate perceptions of Africans and particularly Zimbabweans, and how the media themselves are manipulated; as well as ‘Dog’s Life,’ in which dozens of gleaming canines stare down from canvasses, their grimaces simultaneously  accusatory, vindictive, victorious and prevocational, the spectral allegory of the ‘ghetto hustle.’ Nyaude has already garnered international interest, with works from ‘Dog’s Life’ having been shown at SMAC Gallery early in 2015 and ‘Native Advertising’ currently on show at F2 Galeria in Madrid, as part of a3bandas gallery festival in the Spanish capital.

Intellectually on point, emotionally powerful and technically adept, this trio of emerging painters is not to be underestimated. Together and individually, they are also role models for their peers to emulate and given what we know about Zimbabwean art and artists, there’s more to come.


First Floor Gallery

SWAB GATE

 Eva Barois De Caevel. Credits: Étienne Dobenesque

SWAB GATE consists of solo presentations of African and Caribbean artists, living and working in Africa and Europe, or between these continents, with a strong focus on painting.

The participating galleries for this section of the fair have been selected and invited by curator Eva Barois De Caevel.

The selected galleries are located both in Africa and in Europe.

This program aims first at presenting the work of four great contemporary painters, but it also hopes to question the history and the actuality of categories such as the one we use here — painting as a medium and the geographical origin.

Participating Galleries:

-Steve Bandoma

Born in 1981 in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Lives and works in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Gallery Angalia, France

-Hamid El Kanbouhi

Born in 1976 in Larrache, Morocco.

Lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Gallery Van De Weghe, Belgium

-Sébastien Jean

Born in 1989 in Thomassin, Haiti.

Lives and works in Haiti.

Maëlle Gallery, France

-Wycliffe Mundopa

Born in 1987 in Rusape, Zimbabwe.

Lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe.

First Floor Gallery Harare, Zimbabwe

The artists whose work I selected for this program inside SWAB are Congolese, Zimbabwean, Haitian, and Moroccan. They are painters or also painters.

If one remembers the historical and yet quite recent struggles during which the African and African-American artists had to negotiate their right to modern painting, to abstract painting, to conceptual painting, while having to answer for their (desired or criticized) “traditionalism”, thus one realizes that painting offers a fertile ground, at least as fertile as other ones, to question assignations, temptations of essentialism, appetite for exoticism, that any non-Western artist has to deal with.

This selection also hopes to produce a dialogue in the space of the fair itself, that could exist between the works, beyond the booth walls: Steve Bandoma, Wycliffe Mundopa, Sébastien Jean and Hamid El Kanbouhi are four artists who paint nightmares, fantasies, bodies on which we can read sufferings, haunted still lives.

They work on paper or canvas, with gouache, acrylic, pastel, oil, ink; they are — maybe — expressionists.

Kura Shomali, whose work I admire a lot, says: “Art is a straight jacket and I do not know how to wear it; an inner fear of not being able to meet the collective fears. Only art can soothe.”

I found interesting to bring together two categories — and their fundamental impotence as categories: one related to a medium, the other to a geographical area. 

I was happy to believe that this “African painting” conveys above all a Humanism, here, in Europe, where people collect it and give it prizes. A Humanism according to Edward Saïd, “a coming Humanism”, and not its substitute from the Enlightenment — the will to understand the others that, as long as it is fiercely authentic, excludes any domineering ambition.

Text by Eva Barois De Caevel

Hamid El Kanbouhi - Strand - Oil on canvas 2011. 200x200cm

About the curator:

Eva Barois De Caevel was born in France in 1989. She is assistant curator at RAW Material Company, Dakar, and works as an independent curator, researcher and art critic. She is based in Paris. She was the recipient of the ICI 2014 Independent Vision Curatorial Award.

Eva graduated from the Université de Paris-Sorbonne Paris IV in Contemporary Art History in 2011 and in Curatorial Training in 2012. Her research focused primarily on moving images. Her main interests were the evolution of experimental cinema, the history of production structures and the artistic entities behind them, and the question of the porousness of borders between cinematographic genres. During her first year of Master’s, she worked on a cultural study of the interactions between contemporary creative arts and cinema. During the second year, she wrote a critical history of structures dedicated to the production and promotion of artists’ films, while she was working for the production structure Red Shoes | SOME SHOES. She took part in the film shoots of Clément Cogitore and Neïl Beloufa. More recently, she worked with photographer and videographer Mohamed Bourouissa.

Jointly to this research, she has been working on postcolonial questions and socially engaged practices in contemporary art, and on their interaction: how socially engaged practices in contemporary art can become think tanks on postcolonial issues concurrently with academic research. This led her to travel to Morocco, Madagascar, and Senegal, and to study contemporary art exhibition structures in Africa and the modes of collaboration and relation between Western structures and African ones and more specifically the way otherness is dealt with and the issue of mimicry. Through these experiences, she started considering the necessity of specific curatorial presentations that challenge the Western patterns on which the design and making of exhibitions are globally based. Within this context, she completed a curatorial residency at RAW Material Company – centre for art, knowledge and society, Dakar, which consisted of coordinating a long year program (January 2014 to January 2015) on sexual liberties in Africa through contemporary African art. She curated the first event of the program: Who Said It Was Simple, a curatorial proposal based on archives. The exhibition included screenings, debates, a performance, and a seminar. She is currently working on an upcoming publication documenting the program. At the end of this residency, she was offered a position as Assistant Curator at RAW Material Company. She also continued her collaboration with its director Koyo Kouoh, working with her on several projects, such as Body Talk - Feminism, Sexuality and the Body in the Work of Six African Women Artists (at WIELS, Brussels, February-May 2015, currently at Lunds konsthall, June-September 2015, and to be held at Frac Lorraine, Metz, October-January 2015), Streamlines, a project which makes the oceans the metaphorical focal point for an international group exhibition which will examine the cultural repercussion of the global stream of goods and trade between the South and the North (to be held at Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, in December 2015), and the 37^th EVA International, Ireland Biennial of Contemporary Art (April-July 2015).

Eva was part of the first TURN Meeting “On Perspectives, Facts and Fictions” (June 26-28, 2014, Berlin), a project of Kulturstifung Des Bundes, Germany. The TURN fund was established in 2012 with the purpose of promoting artistic exchange and cooperation between German and African artists and institutions. During the meeting she hosted a talk with writer and curator Simon Njami about appropriation and rewriting of History according to postcolonial issues. Eva contributes to the online reviews Contemporary And (“Platform For International Art From African Perspectives”) and AFRIKADAA (“Afro Design and Contemporary Arts”). She was a member of the jury of the 60^th Salon de Montrouge in June 2015 and is a member of the jury of the upcoming 7^th Celeste Prize. As an art critic she recently wrote an essay about the artist Thu Van Tran. Her upcoming projects will focus on ways to display colonial legacies and contemporary imperialisms in vernacular and daily elements (sexuality, language, body image, garments, food, etc.) through art forms and specific curatorial tools.

Eva is also co-founder of Cartel de Kunst, an international collective of 10 curators based in Paris. Cartel de Kunst is an association created in 2011 whose members are Kuralaï Abdukhalikova (Kazakhstan), Viviana Birolli (Italy), Adélaïde Blanc (France, Mauritius), Manon Gingold (France), Éric Jarrot (France), Salma Lahlou (Morocco), Ana Mendoza Aldana (Guatemala), Alexandra Perloff-Giles (United Kingdom, USA), Gloria Sensi (Italy), Jaufré Simonot (France). Cartel de Kunst is a solidarity network of emerging curators, a tool for support and dialogue aiming to think about the very function of the curator and the opportunity to work as a group. Cartel de Kunst is deeply committed in working with independent places such as Mains d’Œuvres and La Générale en Manufacture, both located in the Parisian suburb and involved in developing communal modes of operation and community outreach. Cartel de Kunst works in close touch with the Parisian emerging scene and very young artists. It pursues since its beginnings a close collaboration with the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. Ana Mendoza Aldana was selected among 500 international applicants to be part of the 21 young curators (or curators group) invited to curate an exhibition during the “Nouvelles Vagues” season at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, in 2013. She invited Cartel de Kunst to present The Floating Admiral, an exhibition working as an exquisite corpse inspired by The Detection Club methods (a group of British mystery writers formed in 1930). The exhibition and the catalogue, written communally, retrace the death of painting. Each curator, through one section of the exhibition and an essay, takes up the investigation where it was left off by his or her predecessor to offer a depiction of contemporary painting.