Witsies with the art edge
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Three alumni from Wits’ prestigious art programme turn heads internationally.
Senzeni Marasela
Senzeni Marasela (BA FA 1999) was born in Thokoza and lives and works in Johannesburg. In 1992 she took a day trip to Wits and then decided to enroll for her fine art degree. She completed a residency at the South African National Gallery soon after graduating and her work has been widely exhibited in South Africa, Europe and the United States. In 2015 she was part of the Johannesburg Pavillion at the Venice Biennale. Her work explores the experiences of black South African women using photographs, video, embroidery, prints and mix-medium installations. In her most memorable six-year performance work Ijermani Lam – she wears the same red dress every day (from 1 October 2013 till 1 October 2019). She performs Theodorah, a fictional character based on her mother. Theodorah searches for her husband, Gebane – much like other South African women separated from their partners for long periods. Her traditional dress is made from isishweshwe cloth to signify her married status. She recently told Ocula Magazine: “In performing Theodorah, I wore the same red dress daily, and it frustrated people. They couldn't handle it as I moved from one space to the next…At times it offered protection, because it's not the most attractive dress on the market. Other times some men would comment on how proper I looked in the dress and if only all women could dress just like me, which I thought was quite absurd!” she says.
Waiting for Gebane
Where and when: Solo Show, Zeitz Mocaa, Cape Town, Runs until – 29 August 2021
See more: https://zeitzmocaa.museum/exhibition/exhibitions/waiting-for-gebane/
Teresa Kutala Firmino
Artist Teresa Kutala Firmino (BA FA 2016, MA FA 2019) is part of the art collective Kutala Chopeto – who hosted her first London show at Everard Read recently called Manifestation Oku Yongola. This she says is “a statement about women reclaiming their bodies, their histories, their power.” Oky Yongola comes from the Umbundu, an Angolan language, which means wanting. “For me, to make a statement of wanting as a woman is beautiful. It is beautiful for me to say that I want something, not because I need it, not because it is for service, not because I am a mum, or a daughter or a wife, but just me, a human being…women are not supposed to want. You are supposed to wait to be given something,” she said.
Born in 1993 in Pomfret, to a Congolese father and Angolan mother, Kutala Firmino grew up in the community of former 32 Battalion soldiers and their families. She remembers her time as a student at Wits: “I was a laughing stock because everyone came from the technical school where they’d learnt how to draw portraits and landscapes and I just couldn’t. When things became conceptual she excelled: “Suddenly you become a storyteller. And so I started telling my family history and then African history and from then, I became one of the top students.”
Manifestation Oku Yongola
Where and when: 28 April – 25 May 2021
See more from the exhibition and her work: https://www.everardlondon.com/exhibition/92/
Chris Soal
Early in May 2021, Witsie Chris Soal (BA FA 2018) was the youngest artist to unveil a large-scale sculpture as part of the Nirox Winter Sculpture Fair Exhibition Margins of Error. It is a collection of new sculptures, installations and performances from South Korea, Morocco and South Africa. It is co-curated by Jessica Doucha and seems a perfect setting for his work that evokes images of dead coral, rough tree bark, eroded marble and concrete sections of various sizes. He was awarded the PPC Imaginarium Award in 2018, alongside being named the winner of the sculpture category. Most recently Soal’s first international solo exhibition at the Montoro12 gallery in Brussels, Belgium, at the end of April 2021, sold out before it opened. He was also the youngest artist to participate in the fifth edition of the Dior Lady Art project, a collaboration between the fashion house and 10 selected artists from around the world who were invited to reinvent the Lady Dior bag (April WITSReview 2021, pg 22-23). The collaboration has landed him invitations to exhibit worldwide.
Margins of Error
Where and when: Nirox Winter Sculpture Exhibition 2021
Explore more here: https://www.niroxarts.com/sculpture-park