David Nthubu Koloane (1938–2019)

Made Visible: Contemporary South African Fashion and Identity curated by Kathryn Gunsch

Gifts from Our Elders: African Arts<i>and Visionary Art History</i>

African Modernism in America, 1947–1967

The “Black Art” Renaissance:African Sculpture and Modernism Across Continents

The staging of the first Comic Con Africa in Johannesburg, South Africa in September 2018, which was a sold out event, confirmed the progressive maturation of the comics industry in South Africa and Africa generally. Despite this welcomed advancement, the traditional printed comic book modality remains exclusionary for a majority of black South African comic artists interested in generating and publishing their own material. This paper is interested in how comic animations disseminated via the Internet have emerged as an alternative and redemptive practice for black South African comic artists seeking to insert their content into the creative industries mainstream. Through a reading of Jonas Lekganyane’s The adventures of Noko Mashaba animated series, I show how black South African comic artists have, through online and virtual platforms, circumvented the difficult to access comics publishing terrain in South Africa – and the rest of Africa generally – to contribute much needed creative plurality related to imaging of contemporary Africanity. The online animations have also cultivated a new cyber-space-based fan culture within South Africa’s comics landscape.

The Long View: Leadership at a Critical Juncture for “African Art” in America

The end of each decade of democracy has seen periods of reflection in the South African visual art world through numerous initiatives, especially exhibitions and book publications. In 2024, after 30 years of democracy, the field is poised for another such moment of introspection. This article considers the first decade of democracy from the perspective of writing in the art world. Through a Constructivist Grounded Theory Method extant text analysis, a reading is conducted across various prominent South African art publications reflecting on the first decade, and these texts are coded to discern the major categories, or themes, that emerge through them, thereby distilling the period’s main features and concerns for influential writers and thinkers in the field at the time as themes. These include, (1) emerging onto the international art scene after the boycott, (2) navigating international demands and local challenges, (3) government failures, (4) presuming equality under democracy and globalism, (5) race and the persistence of white dominance, (6) challenging Western- and Eurocentricism, (7) questioning visual arts education, (8) lacking engagement with art, (9) questions around moving on from resistance art, (10) negotiating and representing identity, and (11) the rise and critique of the gallery system. Not only are the major concerns and their textures succinctly revealed through the rigorous Grounded Theory Method coding process, but their crystallisation also deepens our understanding of how the art world has interacted with the periods of democracy, and which particular sets of preoccupations have informed its discourses.

African Vernacular Symbols of Black Intersex Children in Sinethemba Ngubane's Installations (2007-2016)

ABSTRACTUsing the notion of centers and peripheries, Paula Girshick explores the emergence of the collecting and marketing of African art in South Africa. South Africans have been players in a broader market through the involvement with African objects not only from Southern Africa but from Central and West Africa as well as Europe. The article will explore the beginnings of collecting and marketing in the 1950s and trace their development through the 1970s, roughly overlapping the first part of the apartheid regime, the impact of which she considers. Girshick's central focus in this essay is on the social, economic, and political factors that shaped this period as well as the motivations and activities of key individuals and institutions involved.

African Art Studies: Are They No Longer Taking the Paths Less Traveled?

“The Bag Is My Home”: Recycling “China Bags” in Contemporary African Art

L'influence des chasseurs-cueilleurs en Afrique du Sud est a l'origine de l'expression artistique des concepts et des rites religieux des fermiers africains, resultant d'un echange de culture et d'ideologie entre les 2 groupes

A Visual Critique of Racism: African American Art from Southern California

William Kentridge: Process as Metaphor &amp; Other Doubtful Enterprises

Cutting Edge of the Contemporary: KNUST, Accra, and the Ghanaian Contemporary Art Movement