“Close to Home New Photography from Africa” Exhibition

The Walther Collection Project Space

poster for “Close to Home New Photography from Africa” Exhibition
[Image: Mimi Cherono Ng'ok "Chebet and Chemu in the garden, from The Other Country" (2008-2014) Courtesy the artist and The Walther Collection]

This event has ended.

The Walther Collection presents the second installment of its multi-year exhibition series on contemporary photography and video art from Africa. Presented thematically from 2015 to 2017, and expanding the collection’s longstanding focus on African photography, this program features a diverse range of emerging artists who are exploring new visions of social identity in Africa and the African Diaspora. It will culminate in spring 2017 with a major exhibition at The Walther Collection’s museum in Neu-Ulm, Germany, which will be accompanied by a catalogue co-published by Steidl.

Close to Home brings together five young photographers who represent a powerful new vision of portrait photography in Africa. Andrew Esiebo (Nigeria), Sabelo Mlangeni (South Africa), Mimi Cherono Ng’ok (Kenya), Musa Nxumalo (South Africa), and Thabiso Sekgala (South Africa) explore intense social relationships, vividly documenting the flawed beauty of everyday life.

Through intimate portrayals of friends and family, in-depth accounts of eclectic sub-cultures and communities, and typological studies of professions, the artists in Close to Home explore the emotional ties between subject and landscape, engaging with complex senses of belonging and self-identification. Together, working between familiarity and distance, self- discovery and generational portrait, these artists are at the vanguard of visual storytelling.

Andrew Esiebo (b.1978 Lagos, Nigeria; lives and works in Ibadan) portrays scenes of everyday life through in-depth photographic essays. His series Pride examines the dynamics at play within barbershops across West Africa, delving into the close-knit interactions between barber and customer. Through a multilayered and playful approach to composition and figural form, Esiebo documents the common aesthetic language of these local institutions and reflects on their position as sites of social transaction.

Sabelo Mlangeni (b. 1980 Driefontein, South Africa; lives and works in Johannesburg) creates intimate portraits of individuals and communities that convey the complex cultural identities found within contemporary South African society. Highlighting scenes of exuberance and glamour alongside those of strife and grit, his works are populated by individuals that are traditionally overlooked or disregarded, yet strike poses demanding dignity, regard and respect.

Mimi Cherono Ng’ok (b. 1983 Nairobi, Kenya; lives and works in Nairobi) makes melancholic, nostalgic photographs that invite complete immersion, whether into domestic interiors, everyday suburban scenes, or the textures of natural and man-made environments. Drawn from her experiences traversing the African continent, Ng’ok’s intimate compositions investigate themes of home, identity, displacement, and loss. In Close to Home, Ng’ok presents a site-specific projection featuring images that span a range of temporal, spatial, and emotional terrains.

Musa Nxumalo (b. 1986 Soweto, South Africa; lives and works in Soweto) documents moments of spontaneity and energy in the lives of black South African youth who identify with alternative culture. Raising questions about the nature of deliberate cultural deviation and contemporary modes of self-fashioning, Nxumalo forges a distinct visual language of his own-one of seemingly casual directness, yet penetrating discernment.

Thabiso Sekgala (1981-2014; Johannesburg, South Africa) explores the relationship between geography and social identity across a variety of rural and urban environments. Putting forth a meditation on collective memory, legacies of spatial politics and conceptions of home, Sekgala’s compelling and contemplative photographs bind the personal and political to invite new understandings of place and belonging.

Media

Schedule

from February 04, 2016 to March 12, 2016

Opening Reception on 2016-02-04 from 18:00 to 20:00

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