Women in Art: Looking at Art

Women in Art: Looking at Art

Zoom Panel Discussion

19/08/2021     Latest News, Events

 

The Art of Looking at Art

Time: Wednesday 25 August 2021 at 6 pm from Johannesburg

 

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In celebration of Women’s Month, we have invited a group of formidable women in art to share with us just how they look at art.

This visual and art focused discussion is presented alongside our Timed Online Auction of Modern & Contemporary Art and Books, and the Blessing Ngobeni Art Prize (BNAP) auction, both running from 24 August – 31 August 2021,  and will focus and engage with a selection of artworks from the auctions.

 


 
The Panel Discussion:

Research published in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts in 2017 shows that the average person spends over 27 seconds looking at a work of art (ARTCritique: Leonadis Kalai 4 April 2019). The aim of this discussion is to encourage people to spend more time engaging with works of art.

Selecting artworks from the auction, each panelist will reveal their thoughts on themes, styles and subject matter, detailing every aspect to encourage newfound appreciation and value.

To be hosted and chaired by Makgati Molebatsi, Senior Art Specialist, the discussion was inspired by Slow Art Day, a global initiative which aims to assist more people discover for themselves the joy of looking at and enjoying art.

 


 
The Panellists:

Dr Sizakele Marutlulle: Art Collector and Patron

For this multi-nationally anchored citizen, strategist, brand-builder, global speaker, teacher, and champion for fentrepreneursä, creative problem solving is her raisond’etre. Throughout her career (as an Executive in the public and private sectors as well as an entrepreneur) Sizakele has had the privilege to lead multi-national ad agencies, high impact corporates, public sector entities, social organisations, brands and management teams to growth to and prosperity through a structured intersectional strategy process.

She applies the experience amassed across Africa, in the Americas, her working knowledge of Asia and Europe, as well as deep international and continental insights to every assignment and engagement. She is a frequent world-traveller and highly sought-after keynote speaker, business analyst, published writer and contributor on matters of brand, diversity, fentrepreneurship as well as transformational leadership. When she is not solving for businesses, she invests much time mentoring and coaching the future-wave of female leaders through The Exchange – a mentorship platform that she founded and funds.

Sizakele holds a PhD in Critical Diversity Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand as well as a MA in Communications Sociology. She has also completed the Operational Excellence Executive Program at Harvard University, Strategic Management from New School for Social Research (NYC) and holds a Film Production Certificate from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She is an adjunct-lecturer on the MBA program at the Gordon Institute of Business Science. She also serves as Non-Executive Director on Boards for blue chip companies.

Sizakele is a considered art collector and patron of the arts.

 

Teresa Kutala Firmino – Artist and Co-founder BNAP

Teresa Firmino is a Johannesburg-based artist, whose work examines the construction of dominant histories and the absences they present. Firmino delves into the role of memory as the main repository of information for the act of rewriting histories. This act of rewriting unfolds through the artist’s multi-disciplinary process, where the layered interior scenes of her paintings alloy with acts of resistance to the hegemony of History that unfold in her performances.

Firmino was born (1993) in Pomfret, a former asbestos mine camp-turned military base in the Northwest province, where a group of former Angolan soldiers, who fought for the SANDF’s infamous 32 Battalion unit were relocated at the end of the South African Border War (1989). Her work surfaces from the collective trauma of the Pomfret community and seeks to investigate the ongoing trauma African people continue to experience in the wake of colonisation, civil war and neo-liberal white supremacy.

Teresa Firmino studied at the University of the Witwatersrand (BAFA, 2016) (MFA, 2018) in Johannesburg. Recent solo presentations include pseudo-Restitution, World Art gallery, Cape Town (2019); Children of a Lesser God, Mmarthouse, Johannesburg (2019); The War At Home, Everard Read, Johannesburg (2019); Emergence, Mmarthouse, Johannesburg (2018); Pomfret community stories, Mmarthouse, Johannesburg (2018); Thou art women, Mmarthouse, Johannesburg (2018); The people’s

exchange, IDC gallery, Johannesburg (2018); Now and then, Trent gallery, Pretoria (2018); Protagonist: Artists in Response to Sexual Violence, Studio Fracture, Johannesburg (2018). In 2020, Firmino presented Black Melancholy/ Negotiating Trauma at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, a series of paintings grappling with the ways women of the Pomfret community have survived, beyond the traumas enacted on their bodies.

Teresa Firmino also extends these questions of identity through a collective thinking process with artist and collaborator Helena Uambembe. Together, they form the collective: Kutala Chopeto meaning ‘to see beyond something soft’. Firmino’s project, is one invested in the recuperation of self through a confrontation with, and reconstruction of post-apartheid Southern African history.

 

Turiya Magadlela – Artist

Turiya Magadlela was born in 1978, Johannesburg. Her work balances politically charged narratives with exquisite aesthetic. Through the stitching, layering and collaging of commonly found objects, such as correctional uniforms and pantyhose, Magadlela creates powerful, original art pieces.

Magadlela has had seven solo exhibitions to date and has participated in numerous group exhibitions internationally, including Blue Black, curated by Glen Ligon (@pulitzerzrts Foundation, 2017), The Past is Present (@jackshainman Gallery NY, 2016), Les jours qui viennent, curated by Mariann Yemsi ( @galeriedesgalerie, Paris, 2017) Blackness in Abstraction ( @pacegallery NY, 2016).

In 2015, she was awarded the prestigious FNB Art Prize.