Work of Nomusa Makhubu is shown in:
‘Silk and Steel’
Gallery Noko, 109 – 111 Russell Road, Richmond Hill, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
Opening: August 28.
From the series ‘Self Portrait’, 2007/2014.
About the exhibition:
The SILK AND STEEL EXHIBITION is a re-examination of the intrinsic roles and invaluable contributions of women in transcending history. The exhibition is a gender dialogue that is only purposed to facilitate the discourse around, expressions and views on women’s contributions, and how these are located in contemporaneity but also seeks to showcase the artwork that has emerged from a different perspective and sensibility .
From the sries ‘Dream Sweepers’, 2010.
Our expectations as a gallery is to through this exhibition explore and interrogate the idea of an interdisciplinary panorama in which the various forms of the arts, across the creative spectrum are produced by women. In conceptualization, the exhibition focuses on media and , the language of art expressed through its diverse forms.
August is significantly set aside throughout the world annually to celebrate and highlight issues and exigencies regarding women, this thematic exhibition which focuses solely on female artists only is designed to stimulate a diverse discourse in visual metaphor . In addition, the exhibition by focusing on women, intends to facilitate the understanding of the key role women have played historically in the arts through history promoting dialogue and combating prejudice.
From the series ‘Dream Sweepers’, 2010.
The SILK and STEEL exhibition interrogates political history and ideology criticisms through the lens of contemporaneity richly grounded in cultural and historical contexts. The exhibition extends debates around women in general but also looks at women through the lens of other women, as well as at on going debates between traditionalists and modernists.
Artists include – Mary Sibande, Ivy Kulundu, Florine Demosthene, Zanele Muholi, Tanisha Bhana, Euridice Kala, Phumla Matolo, Emma Minkley, Busi Mcomanzi, Nomusa Makhubu.
About Nomusa Makhubu:
Makhubu has established herself as one of the new generation of lens based artists to explore issues of identity, culture, land, rights, economy and religion. Her acclaimed series, Self-Portrait Project alludes to the continued alienation and estrangement in an era where the focus is inclined toward self and individual identity as opposed to collective and communal life.
From the series ‘Selfportrait’, 2007/2014.
Nomusa Makhubu’s mode of address in Self-Portrait involves inserting herself into several colonial-type photographs. It allows the artist to explore South Africa’s socio-political, economic, religious, and cultural histories through her own individual body and the bodies of black subjects from the past. In fact, Makhubu time-travels to a colonial past, seeking its connection to the evolving nature of black self-representation and forms of social identity and identification in post-Apartheid South Africa.
From the series ‘Selfportrait’, 2007/2014.
Makhubu’s latest series The Flood has received deserved critical acclaim. It marks a departure from her previous work, shifting from the personal to the public.
From the series ‘The Flood’, 2013.
In November 2013, she was selected as one of fourteen female photographers from around the world invited to participate in the Semiha Es – Women Photographers International Symposium, in Istanbul, Turkey. Her paper, The Power and Terror of the Enactment of Collective Memory in Performative Photography commented directly on her own work, particularly the Self Portrait Project series.
Born 1984 in South Africa, Nomusa Makhubu currently lives and works in Grahamstown. Makhubu is an award-winning artist, currently completing a PhD in Art History and Visual Culture at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. Identity, culture, land, rights, economy and religion are some of the issues explored by Makhubu. She is not afraid to explore South Africa’s dark and murky history.
Courtesy: Erdmann Contemporary, Capetown.