Heat Festival ART: eBhish' Book Launch
Fri Jul 12, 16:00 - Fri Jul 12, 17:00
Under the Aegis
ABOUT
For the Cape Town launch of eBhish’ an anthology edited by Luvuyo Equiano Nyawose and published by Archive Books, Nyawose will be in conversation with the Cape Town based contributors, Nomusa Makhubu, Amogelang Maledu, Vusumzi Nkomo and Julie Nxadi.
eBhish’ presents a chorus of voices on notions of Black social life, public communion and humanities of the Indian Ocean. While some contributors respond to the ongoing series eBhish’ others share their critical perspectives and ponder on the intimacy and vastness of being Black at the beach. Contributions by Thulile Gamedze, Russel Hlongwane, Nomusa Makhubu, Amogelang Maledu, Kopano Maroga, Lindiwe Mngxitama, Maneo Mohale,Vusumzi Nkomo, Julie Nxadi and Luvuyo Equiano Nyawose
This event is supported by Creative Knowledge Resources, an Interdisciplinary project by the National Research Foundation & the University of Cape Town studying socially engaged art in Africa and its diaspora.
Nomusa Makhubu is Professor in Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Cape Town. She is the Chair of the AGI’s Advisory Board. Her works broadly cover art interventionism, popular culture, live art and social engagement in African visual art. She was the recipient of the ABSA L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award in 2006 and the Prix du Studio National des Arts Contemporain, Le Fresnoy in 2014. She received the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) African Humanities Program fellowship award and was selected to be an African Studies Association (ASA) Presidential fellow in 2016. In 2017, she was also a UCT-Harvard Mandela fellow at the Hutchins Centre for African and African American Research,Harvard University. In that same year, she was the First Runner Up for the Department of Science and Technology (DST) Women in Science Awards. Recognising the need for broader creative mentorship, collaborative practice and socially responsive arts, she started the Creative Knowledge Resources project. She co-edited a Third Text Special Issue: ‘The Art of Change’ (2013) and later co-curated with Nkule Mabaso the international exhibition, “Fantastic” in 2015 and “The stronger we become” in 2019 at the 58th Venice Biennale. Makhubu is a member of the South African Young Academy of Science (SAYAS).
Amogelang Maledu is an interdisciplinary art practitioner working between curating, research and sessional lecturing. Her research interests include Black popular cultures. She is a committee member of the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Works of Art Committee (WoAC), responsible for the institution’s art acquisitions and curations. She also co-founded curatorial collective, Re-curators. Two of her notable career highlights includes being a workshop participant for the 12th Berlin Biennale in 2022; and serving as the curatorial assistant for the South African Pavilion for the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019.
Vusumzi Nkomo is a writer, educator, musician, media practitioner, and political-cultural organizer based in Cape Town,South Africa. uVusumzi is the founder and researcher at iLiso Magazine.
Julie Nxadi is a narrative artist from Makhanda and Ngqushwa in the Eastern Cape, currently based in Cape Town. While Julie has spent recent years writing, and reading with research groups from University of Johannesburg, University of Cambridge, and University of Stellenbosch, she continues to work extensively and experimentally outside of the academic realm with projects such as The Mutha Ship Landing (a project space concept founded by Nxadi and collaborators), as well as through filmmaking with production company Brown Flamingo, and other film and video experiments that have been included in exhibitions as far afield as Angered, Sweden. With many works published across notable publications and having read work at festivals such as the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Nxadi’s fascination with story making, character construction, archive, and narrative continue to drive her towards new methods of storytelling, her current district of interest seeks to interrogate the precarity of legibility and fallacy of coherent ontological performance in post 1994 South African film, tv, and theatre making.
Luvuyo Equiano Nyawose is an artist, curator, and filmmaker. Nyawose is a PhD student in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, his interests include, Critical and Post-Colonial Theory, Political Philosophy, Modern and Contemporary Art, Performance Studies, Black Studies and Film and Media Studies. Nyawose was the University of Cape Town’s Institute for Creative Arts – Live Art Festival Curatorial Fellow (2022), the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg and Wits School of Arts History of Art Department – Young Curators Incubator Fellow (2022) and participated in the TURN2 curatorial residency programme at ZK/U – Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (2022). He is also the 2019 recipient of the Andrew Mellon Graduate Internship at Iziko South African National Gallery and served as a member of the University of Cape Town’s Works of Art Committee between 2019 - 2022. Nyawose is a Foam Paul Huf Award nominee (2022) and the Hariban Award Juror’s Choice recipient (2022). His work was recently featured in Der Greif magazine Issue 16 curated by Shirin Neshat (2023). Recent exhibitions include: the 13th edition of the Rencontres de Bamako - Biennale Africaine de la Photographie (December 2022 – February 2023), Indigo Waves and Other Stories – Zeitz MOCAA (June 2022 – February 2023), PHOTO 2022 International Festival of Photography (April - July 2022), eBhish’ KZNSA Gallery - solo exhibition (January 2022), eBhish’ blank projects - solo exhibition (July 2021).
Please arrive early to peruse the exhibitions at the gallery.