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Soft Architectures

28 November - 16 January 2020
Goodman Gallery, Cape Town

Goodman Gallery Cape Town 28 November – 11 January 2020

Goodman Gallery presents Soft Architectures, a group exhibition interrogating the intersection of architecture and structures of power and resistance.

Through sculpture, drawing, print, lens-based media and performance, the work of seven artists each explore the subtle and overt ways in which architecture has been implicated into forms of racialised surveillance, segregated accessibility and the discipline and comportment of bodies, and in turn how architecture has been subverted towards forms of resistance such as strategic concealment and networks of defiance.

Artworks

Terracotta, steel, raffia, porcelain
Unavailable
Shade cloth, steel and wood
Work: 300 x 300 x 7 cm
Cardboard, carpet, aluminum lamps
Variable Dimensions
Framed archival pigment print on paper
Work: 25.5 x 101.5 cm
Framed archival pigment print on paper
Work: 25.5 x 20.5 cm
Framed archival pigment print on paper
Work: 25.5 x 47.5 cm
Framed archival pigment print on paper
Work: 25.5 x 61 cm
Framed archival pigment print on paper
Work: 25.5 x 20.5 cm
Framed archival pigment print on paper
Work: 25.5 x 34 cm
Framed archival pigment print on paper
Work : 25.5 x 47.5 cm
Framed archival pigment print on paper
Work: 25.5 x 115 cm
Framed archival pigment print on paper
Work: 25.5 x 34 cm
Framed archival pigment print on paper
Frame: 26.7 x 49 x 3 cm
Wood, metal, microphones stands, tuners and guitar strings
Work: 274.3 x 138.4 x 138.4 cm
Digitally printed curtains and fish tanks containing various aquatic non-indigenous species of plants
Work: 145 x 410 cm
Single-channel video projection, HD and in colour
Variable Dimensions
Steel and bronze
Work: 58 x 90 x 25 cm

About

Mateo López image

Mateo López

Mateo López (b. 1978, Bogotá, Colombia) lives and works between Bogotá and New York. He studied architecture for two years at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá before switching to Visual Arts at Bogotá’s Universidad de Los Andes.

López’s work engages with cartographies, journeys and con-struction processes while grappling with themes of chance, encounter and time. His practice traces a conceptual ap-proach, expanding from drawings to installations, architec-ture, films and sculptural choreography. Key international solo exhibitions include Sin Principio / Sin Final Museo de Arte Universidad Nacional, Bogota, Colombia (2018); Undo List, The Drawing Center, New York, USA (2017); A Weed is a Plant Out of Place, Lismore Castle Arts, Lismore, Ireland (2016) and Deriva at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain (2009). Important group exhibitions include United States of Latin America, curated by Jens Hoffmann and Pab-lo León de la Barra at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit, USA (2015); A Trip from Here to There, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (2013) and Ha sempre um copo de mar para um homem navegar, 29 Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2010).

Major awards and residencies include the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. William Kentridge’s Protégé, Geneva Switzerland in 2012 and the Gasworks Residency Program, London, UK in 2010, which was followed by an exhibition.

López’s work can be found in public collections around the world, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; Banco de la Republica, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, Bogotá, Colombia, Inhotim, Minas Gerais, Brazil and Museum of Mod-ern Art (MoMA), New York, NY.

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Naama Tsabar image

Naama Tsabar

Naama Tsabar’s practice fuses elements from sculpture, music, performance and architecture. Her interactive works expose hidden spaces and systems, reconceive gendered narratives, and shift the viewing experience to one of active participation. Tsabar draws attention to the muted and unseen by propagating sound through space and sculptural form. Between sculpture and instrument, form and sound, Tsabar’s work lingers on the intimate, sensual and corporeal potentials within this transitional state. Collaborating with local communities of female identifying and gender non-conforming performers, Tsabar writes a new feminist and queer history of mastery.

Naama Tsabar (b. 1982, Israel) lives and works in New York. She received her MFA from Columbia University in 2010. Solo exhibitions and performances of Tsabar have been presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), Museum of Art and Design (New York), The High Line Art (New York), Nasher Museum (Durham, NC), Kunsthaus Baselland (Switzerland), Palais De Tokyo (Paris), Prospect New Orleans, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, The Herziliya Museum for Contemporary Art in Israel, MARTE-C (El Salvador), CCA Tel Aviv (Israel), Faena Buenos Aires, Frieze Projects New York, Kasmin (New York), Paramo Gallery (Guadalajara), Dvir Gallery (Israel and Brussels), Spinello Projects (Miami) Shulamit Nazarian (Los Angeles). Selected group exhibitions featuring Tsabar’s work include, The Andy Warhol Museum, The Jewish Museum of Belgium, Ballroom Marfa, Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Elevation 1049 Gstaad (Switzerland), TM Triennale, Hasselt Genk, Belgium, ‘Greater New York’ 2010 at MoMA PS1, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens (Belgium), The Bucharest Biennale for Young Artists, Hessel Museum of Art at CCS Bard, Casino Luxembourg (Luxembourg), ExtraCity in Antwerp (Belgium). Tsabar’s work has been featured in publications including ArtForum, Art In America, ArtReview, ARTnews, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Frieze, Bomb Magazine, Art Asia Pacific, Wire, and Whitewall, among others.

Tsabar’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Pompidou Centre, Seattle Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Bass Museum, PAMM, Kadist Collection, Jimenez-Colón Collection, Tel Aviv Museum, Israel Museum, and Coleccion Dieresis.

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Yto Barrada image

Yto Barrada

Yto Barrada (Moroccan, French, b.1971, Paris) studied history and political science at the Sorbonne and photography in New York. Her work — including photography, film, sculpture, prints and installations, — began by exploring the peculiar situation of her hometown Tangier. Her work has been exhibited at Tate Modern (London), MoMA (New York), The Renaissance Society (Chicago), Witte de With (Rotterdam), Haus der Kunst (Munich), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Whitechapel Gallery (London), and the 2007 and 2011 Venice Biennale.

She was the Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year for 2011, after which her exhibit RIFFS toured widely. Barrada is also the founding director of Cinémathèque de Tanger. A comprehensive monograph was published by JRP Ringier in 2013. She is a recipient of the 2013-2014 Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography (Peabody Museum at Harvard University) and was awarded the 2015 Abraaj Prize.

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Paul Maheke image

Paul Maheke

Paul Maheke (b.1985, Brive-la-Gaillarde, France) graduated from Cergy School of Fine Arts and is an Open School East (London) alum. His practice spans performance, video, sound and installation incorporating simple gestures placed in public space. His work examines entrenched stories and representations often emerging from the Western imagination.

Recent solo exhibitions include “Shifted Realities” at Galerie Rudolfinum (2023), “You and I” at Kunsthalle Bratislava (2022), “We took a sip from the devil’s cup” at Project Arts Centre in Dublin (2022), “A fire circle for a public hearing” at High Line in New York (2022), “As the days move into nights” at Diagonale in Montreal (2022), “A fire circle for a public hearing” at Chisenhale in London (2018), Vleeshal Middelburg (2019), and “I Lost Track of the Swarm” at South London Gallery (2016).

Selected group exhibitions include “Le souffle des ancetres” at the Biennale du Congo in Kinshasa (2022), “Temporary Atlas: Mapping the Self in the Art of Today” at Mostyn in Wales, “Future Generation Art Prize 2021” at the 59th Venice Biennale in Italy (2022), “Afterness at Art Angel London” in Orford Ness (2021), “Le centre ne peut tenir” at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris (2018), “Ten Days Six Nights” at Tate Modern in London (2017), and the “Diaspora Pavilion” at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017).

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Jeremy Wafer image

Jeremy Wafer

Jeremy Wafer (b. 1953, Durban, South Africa) grew up in Nkwalini in what was then Zululand. He studied Fine Art at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg (B.A.F.A.1979) and at the University of the Witwatersrand (B.A. Hons. in Art History 1980, M.A. Fine Art 1987 and PhD 2016). 

Wafer taught in the Fine Art Departments of the former Technikon Natal (now DUT) and Technikon Witwatersrand (now UJ) before being appointed  Professor of Fine Art in the Wits School of Arts of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.  He retired from full time teaching in 2019.
 
Wafer is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, notably the Standard Bank National Drawing Prize in 1987 and the Sasol Wax Art Award in 2006. His work featured on the South African Pavilion of the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. Wafer has exhibited in South Africa and internationally, his work is represented in the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC, the South African National Gallery, the Johannesburg Art Gallery as well as in many other museum, private and corporate collections.

Wafer lives and works between London UK and Johannesburg, South Africa.

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Kapwani Kiwanga image

Kapwani Kiwanga

Kapwani Kiwanga (b. Hamilton, Canada) lives and works in Paris. Kiwanga studied Anthropology and Comparative Religion at McGill University in Montreal and Art at l’école des Beaux-Arts de Paris.

In 2020, Kiwanga received the Prix Marcel Duchamp (FR). She was also the winner of the Frieze Artist Award (USA) and the annual Sobey Art Award (CA) in 2018.

Solo exhibitions include Haus der Kunst, Munich (DE); Kunstinstituut Melly – Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (NLD); Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel/Bienne (CHE); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (USA); Albertinum museum, Dresden (DE); Artpace, San Antonio (USA); Esker Foundation, Calgary (CA); Tramway, Glasgow International (UK); Power Plant, Toronto (CA); Logan Center for the Arts, Chicago (USA); South London Gallery, London (UK); and Jeu de Paume, Paris (FR) among others.

Selected group exhibitions include Whitechapel Gallery, London (UK); Serpentine Galleries, London (UK); Yuz Museum, Shanghai (CHN); MOT – Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (JPN); Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (DE); Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden – MACAAL, Marrakech (MAR); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (CA); Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (USA); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (USA); Centre Pompidou, Paris (FR); Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal (CA); ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Aarhus (DK) and MACBA, Barcelona (ESP).

She is represented by Galerie Poggi, Paris; Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, Cape Town and London; galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin.

Kapwani Kiwanga is a Franco-Canadian artist based in Paris. Kiwanga’s work traces the pervasive impact of power asymmetries by placing historic narratives in dialogue with contemporary realities, the archive, and tomorrow’s possibilities.

Her work is research-driven, instigated by marginalised or forgotten histories, and articulated across a range of materials and mediums including sculpture, installation, photography, video, and performance.

Kiwanga co-opts the canon; she turns systems of power back on themselves, in art and in parsing broader histories. In this manner Kiwanga has developed an aesthetic vocabulary that she described as “exit strategies,” works that invite one to see things from multiple perspectives so as to look differently at existing structures and find ways to navigate the future differently.

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