Hasan and Husain Essop, South Africa, winners Young Artist Award.
Facina-Qiblah, 2010.
This year’s prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art was awarded to twenty eight year old twin brothers Hasan and Husain Essop. This annual award includes sponsorships towards an exhibition which starts its country wide tour at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown before travelling on to Nelson Mandela Bay. This years’ exhibition titled UNREST opens in Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum on 24 July 2014 at 17:30 for 18:00. Associate Professor (Philosophy), Andrea Hurst from the School of Language, Media and culture at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University will open this prominent exhibition.
From the series Hallal Art, 2009.
Hasan and Husain Essop have worked together in multiple media since graduation from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2007. The artist’s work is presented in large scale photographs illustrating scenes reconstructed from everyday life in which they themselves are the main characters. Duplicated through photo editing, the twins play multiple roles within these photographic panoramas which are based on everyday life and deal with themes related to community, religion and popular culture. “Our series of work highlights a multi-cultural clash between religion and popular cultures,” say the Essops.
The Young Artist Awards were started in 1981 by the National Arts Festival to acknowledge emerging, relatively young South African artists who have displayed an outstanding talent in their artistic endeavours. These prestigious awards are presented annually to deserving artists in different disciplines, affording them national exposure and acclaim.
The exhibition closes on 31 August 2014
From the series Remembrance, 2012.
On their series REMEMBRANCE from 2012:
In a new body of work, Hasan and Husain Essop explore the notion of memory, specifically in relation to the history and practice of religion. In a series of 360º panoramic photographs, each consisting of hundreds of individual photographs meticulously stitched together, they explore the history of various landscapes, searching for the memory of what came before and examining its effects on the captured moment. In a series of smaller photographs, they resume their trademark performance style, using their bodies, costumes, and a variety of poses to enter into a dialogue with the landscape, simultaneously documenting what is seen and creating a different narrative altogether.
The work is concerned with the notion of remembrance, and with the act of memorialising – particularly with reference to religious sites, ancient and modern – and with the tensions inherent in the act of photographing and recording memory; and the exhibition raises a number of important and topical question relating to history, heritage, religious identity, and the politics of place in the context of globalisation and xenophobia.
Tracing their travels to Mecca, Jerusalem, Amsterdam, Hamburg and Senegal, the photos seek to uncover and engage with the particular and unstable memories of each location – the birthplace of Islam in Mecca, inaccessible to most non-believers, and now paved over with parking lots and luxury hotel chains; the sacred sites of Jerusalem, fought over, destroyed and restored time and again for centuries; the ostensibly liberal cities of Western Europe, where paranoia, surveillance and religious profiling are becoming the new normal; and Dakar, where the legacies of slavery and colonialism gave rise to unique Islamic identities and practices, which are increasingly under assault by globalizing forces.
Born and raised in Cape Town, the Essop brothers have been collaborating since their graduation from the Michaelis School of Fine Arts at the University of Cape Town. In 2011 they completed a three-month residency at the prestigious Thami Mnyele Foundation in Amsterdam. They have participated in numerous group exhibitions, including most recently Figure and Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography at the V&A Museum in London and Les Rencontres d’Arles 2012, a photography festival held annually in France. This is their second solo exhibition with the Goodman Gallery.
Courtesy: Goodman Gallery, South Africa.
Hasan & Husain Essop
The Dome of the Rock (Triptych Part Two), 2011
Pigment inks on archival paper
77.5 x 112cm
Edition of 5
Hasan & Husain Essop
Grave of Moses, Jericho, 2011
Pigment inks on archival paper
paper: 77.5 x 112cm; image: 67.5 x 102cm
Edition of 5
Hasan & Husain Essop
Guantanamo, Cape Town, South Africa, 2010
Pigment inks on cotton rag paper
Image: 67.5 x 102cm; Paper: 77.5 x 112cm
Edition of 5
Hasan & Husain Essop
Three Imams, Dakar, Senegal, 2010
Pigment ink on cotton rag paper
image: 67.5 x 102cm; paper: 77.5 x 112cm
Edition of 5
The Essops in the exhibition Unrest, 2014. Darsha Indrajith/Cue Online”