By engaging African ritualistic elements in order to invoke themes of historic healing, the artist demonstrates the measure with which what is perpetual about the moral putrefaction that characterizes society is persevered by what is ambiguous between the play of history and time, and between historic moments and contemporary examination.
In November last year Sasha Dees started travelling in the Caribbean region, researching the sustainability of contemporary art practices and the influence of international (exchange) projects, funding, markets and politics. During her research she will be keeping a travelogue for Africanah. Her first stop in the region was Ayiti (Haiti). In March she reported about her stay on Korsou (Curacao). In the April edition Aruba was reported on. Jamaica followed in May. Now the Cayman Islands and the US Virgin Islands are on.
My paintings are also a testimony to the beauty and intelligence of pre-colonial societies and a tribute to how these societies were organised. The way in which I place these societies in relation to the present is rather like tracing a traditional and cultural knowledge that was crushed by the rise of industrial power.
1990 is when I started doing the bead work in Uganda and practice has spread all over Uganda, to Kenya, Rwanda and now South Africa. The beads have now become a Ugandan brand and when you google ‘paper beads’, Uganda has to come up somewhere.
As was often the case with its predecessors, the role of social developments is very much apparent in the works of the participating artists of Dak’Art 2018. There is no lack of sensible content. Fortunately that does not lead to pamphletistic art. It is precisely the power of a lot of contemporary African art that content and form are integrated.
The Dak’Art remains a biennial that counts.