At the ninth edition of ART X Lagos, FORBES AFRICA witnessed a convergence of artists, collectors, and creatives, each contributing to the dynamic rise of Africa&#8217;s art scene.



César Schofield Cardoso, an artist from the quiet shores of Cape Verde, found himself in the middle of Nigeria’s pulsating art scene — a world away from his island of 562,000 people where the art scene is almost nonexistent.



“People actually buy art here?” he blurts out, half to himself, half to FORBES AFRICA, amidst the eclectic bustle of ART X Lagos, West Africa’s international art fair. He&#8217;s here with five other artists from the continent and the Caribbean, their creations displayed in a 45-square-meter booth with walls clad in gold — a hint of the opulence that now weaves through the Nigerian art world. Around him, top officials, social figures, and curious collectors fill the hall, their interest in art anything but fleeting.



Patty Chidiac-Mastrogiannis, founder of Alexis Galleries, which is just a short drive from the fairgrounds, nods knowingly as she says, “Art is growing very quickly in Nigeria.” Within three days of the four-day fair, her gallery has moved $50,000 worth of work, despite inflation gripping the nation. Her clientele — seasoned art lovers who appreciate pieces ranging from $9,000 to $65,000 — reflects a new trend in African art collecting that speaks to both exclusivity and passion.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="819" height="1024" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/A-work-by-Nigerian-folk-artist-Abe-Odedina-Image-courtesy-Art-X-Lagos-819x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-63633" style="width:405px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/A-work-by-Nigerian-folk-artist-Abe-Odedina-Image-courtesy-Art-X-Lagos-819x1024.jpg 819w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/A-work-by-Nigerian-folk-artist-Abe-Odedina-Image-courtesy-Art-X-Lagos-240x300.jpg 240w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/A-work-by-Nigerian-folk-artist-Abe-Odedina-Image-courtesy-Art-X-Lagos-768x960.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/A-work-by-Nigerian-folk-artist-Abe-Odedina-Image-courtesy-Art-X-Lagos-1229x1536.jpg 1229w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/A-work-by-Nigerian-folk-artist-Abe-Odedina-Image-courtesy-Art-X-Lagos.jpg 1440w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 819px) 100vw, 819px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A work by Nigerian folk artist Abe Odedina (Image courtesy Art X Lagos)</figcaption></figure></div>


Nearby, the works of Ethiopian artist Fiker Solomon sell out almost immediately, with pieces ranging from $5,000 to $8,000. Ugandan gallery owner Daudi Karungi, who brought pieces from Solomon as well as other African artists, finds himself busy with inquiries. “There’s a strong interest in African art,” he says. His gallery, a long-time exhibitor at ART X Lagos, represents Solomon, Kaleab Abate from Ethiopia and Odur Ronald from Uganda.



Nigeria’s art market has endured despite the fluctuating naira, asserting the country as a regional leader in African art. Cardoso couldn’t help but wonder if his own Cape Verde might one day match Nigeria&#8217;s vibrancy. In his current work, Alga C, a cyanotype that explores Cape Verde’s post-colonial transformations, he considers the displacement of traditional fishing communities to make way for the demands of tourism. Here, his piece invited art lovers from all walks of life to consider the stories of the less seen, the overlooked.



At another corner of the fair, O’DA Art Gallery, located a short drive from the venue, was showcasing the pieces of Nigerian folk artist Abe Odedina, priced at around N3 million ($1,825). “Collectors here used to be mostly older, but now we&#8217;re seeing younger people with a taste for contemporary art,” shares gallery founder Obida Obioha.



“There’s a new pride in ourselves,” he says. “People want to dress in their own labels, listen to their own music, and buy their own art.”



For Chidiac-Mastrogiannis, art may target specific buyers, but for Karungi, art is for everyone. “It’s about accessibility. I’ve seen the value of African art grow from three figures to six figures over the last five years. This value expansion is vital for keeping the art scene vibrant and growing,” shares Karungi.



Founder Tokini Peterside-Schwebig dreamed ART X Lagos would inspire and elevate Africa’s art world. Watching collectors and artists exchange stories, she felt that her vision was being realized. As she prepared to welcome David Lammy visiting Africa for the first time as United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, she reflected on the fair’s significance. “We’re building something more than monetary value here; we’re creating projects that take these artists’ voices to the world stage. These are ideas that will flourish, even decades from now.”



Cardoso felt it — the cultural electricity, the unspoken pride — a first experience in Lagos he wouldn’t soon forget.

Aspirations (Image courtesy Art X Lagos)

Nigeria’s Art Market Shines Even As Naira Wavers, Setting New Standards For Collectors

An exhibition of contemporary African photography is on at the Tate Modern in London. This writer left not with a sense of a completed narrative, but with a feeling of energized possibility, and the rush of discovering fresh, reconfigured horizons.



How to find the common in the uncommon, the unifying oneness in a disparate whole? Can Africa’s thousands of cultures and languages ever be distilled into a comprehensible photographic representation of an entire continent’s creative impulse? This is the challenge courageously and pugnaciously accepted by the exhibition A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography running through to January 2024 at the Tate Modern gallery in London.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="683" height="1024" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Leonce-Raphael-Agbodjelou-Untitled-Egungun-series-2012.-Copyright-The-Artist.-Courtesy-Jack-Bell-Gallery-2-683x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-60200" style="aspect-ratio:0.6669921875;width:419px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Leonce-Raphael-Agbodjelou-Untitled-Egungun-series-2012.-Copyright-The-Artist.-Courtesy-Jack-Bell-Gallery-2-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Leonce-Raphael-Agbodjelou-Untitled-Egungun-series-2012.-Copyright-The-Artist.-Courtesy-Jack-Bell-Gallery-2-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Leonce-Raphael-Agbodjelou-Untitled-Egungun-series-2012.-Copyright-The-Artist.-Courtesy-Jack-Bell-Gallery-2-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Leonce-Raphael-Agbodjelou-Untitled-Egungun-series-2012.-Copyright-The-Artist.-Courtesy-Jack-Bell-Gallery-2-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Leonce-Raphael-Agbodjelou-Untitled-Egungun-series-2012.-Copyright-The-Artist.-Courtesy-Jack-Bell-Gallery-2-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Leonce-Raphael-Agbodjelou-Untitled-Egungun-series-2012.-Copyright-The-Artist.-Courtesy-Jack-Bell-Gallery-2-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou, Untitled (Egungun series), 2012. Copyright The Artist. Courtesy Jack Bell Gallery </figcaption></figure></div>


“African photography is recognizable, to those aware of the history of studio portraiture, or of the way Africa is portrayed in documentary photography,” says the exhibition’s curator, Osei Bonsu. “But I was interested in all of the ways in which artists, particularly over the last 10 to 15 years, had completely blown open the perception of what African photography might be; ways that challenged and confounded many of those assumptions about the relationship between photography and the continent. So it was less about this idea of an overarching survey, as this slightly amorphous and impossible-to-define area of activity, and more about locating multiple perspectives that would come together to illuminate some of the key topics and ideas that these artists are engaged with.”



The result is a dizzying whistle-stop tour across three thematic territories: Identity and Tradition, Counter Histories, and Imagined Futures. The viewer is thus drawn and signposted through the exhibition aboard imaginative platforms, rather than the formal conventions of a linear retrospective, in a sort of taster menu of African inspiration: Hassan Hajjaj’s kinetic fusions of fashion photography and the roadside kiosk; Leonce Raphael Agbodjélou’s arrestingly charismatic portraits of quasi-monstrous Yoruba ‘Egungun’ costumes; Mário Macilau’s monochrome double-takes on the horrors of photojournalism; the serenely melodramatic staging of Maïmouna Guerresi’s scenes of prosaic ritual. The exhibition closes with an immersive video installation by Julianknxx, featuring a hypnotic, thrumming dance sequence, shot like a communiqué from a viridescent African Atlantis.



A consistent identifiable dichotomy arose during the exhibition’s research phase, between the commercial bread and butter of the photographers’ everyday practice and the more experimental work they had developed. 



“These artists embraced photography in ways that undermine or question some of the colonial or exoticizing assumptions around the relationship between African peoples and the photographic medium. This ‘B-roll’, the flip side of what they were doing, was much more subversive than their commercial work,” Bonsu says. 



“And what that revealed is that this idea of the split between the conceptual and the documentary is an arbitrary one.” There is an implicit provocation to the audience embedded in this confident, confrontational demand for the artists’ output to be apprehended on its own terms; much of the work playfully exploits a thrilling tension between an observer’s expectations and the creative authenticity of the photographer’s vision.



Bonsu says that the exhibition has benefited greatly from the evolution of the medium and its new plasticity; work can not only be sourced from all over the continent and the diaspora, but also be presented in formats that blur and expand photography’s traditional framings. “I think this has liberated contemporary photographers from many of the limiting structures that we know 



many African artists face, whether it be lack of government infrastructure, or lack of mobility,” he says. “Those reductive estimations that Africa wasn’t a space of invention, of intellectual and cultural innovation, are of course a myth.



And it’s a myth that serves much of the colonial history that the exhibition also deals with.” To that end, the show shifts the audience’s perspective through a range of vantage points, media and scales, though there is perhaps an opportunity missed to fill one of the Tate’s gigantic spaces with the kind of colossal image its ambition deserves – an outsized encounter with the teetering sublime of Africa’s infinite complexity might have served as an emotional approximation of the overwhelming vastness of its subject.


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<figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="741" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/George-Osodi-HRH-Queen-Hajiya-Hadizatu-Ahmedu-magajiya-of-Knubwada-2012.-Courtesy-of-George-Osodi-and-TAFETA-1024x741.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-60202" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/George-Osodi-HRH-Queen-Hajiya-Hadizatu-Ahmedu-magajiya-of-Knubwada-2012.-Courtesy-of-George-Osodi-and-TAFETA-1024x741.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/George-Osodi-HRH-Queen-Hajiya-Hadizatu-Ahmedu-magajiya-of-Knubwada-2012.-Courtesy-of-George-Osodi-and-TAFETA-300x217.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/George-Osodi-HRH-Queen-Hajiya-Hadizatu-Ahmedu-magajiya-of-Knubwada-2012.-Courtesy-of-George-Osodi-and-TAFETA-768x556.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/George-Osodi-HRH-Queen-Hajiya-Hadizatu-Ahmedu-magajiya-of-Knubwada-2012.-Courtesy-of-George-Osodi-and-TAFETA-1536x1112.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/George-Osodi-HRH-Queen-Hajiya-Hadizatu-Ahmedu-magajiya-of-Knubwada-2012.-Courtesy-of-George-Osodi-and-TAFETA-2048x1483.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">George Osodi, HRH Queen Hajiya Hadizatu Ahmedu magajiya of Knubwada, 2012. Courtesy of George Osodi and TAFETA</figcaption></figure></div>


There is still much to admire about this exciting, expansive exhibition, with its democratic embrace of both the vibrantly aesthetic and the viscerally provoking. “There are histories of struggle and resistance that are ever present,” Bonsu says. 



“But there are also the histories of difference that exist within the fabric of how cultures communicate: through language, through images. That notion of ‘in-betweenness’ is not so much physical, but the psychological in-betweenness that many African diasporic communities can relate to. It’s quite particular to a history of colonial violence, bound up in a deep knowing of one’s heritage, but also this desire to move forward. The exhibition doesn’t try to glaze over the realities that undergird these contemporary histories. The story is still unfolding, and we tried to really embrace that. It’s a challenge for our audiences to really go on that journey with us. They’re not going to have a conclusive sense of a kind of beginning and ending.”



Thus you leave the exhibition not with a sense of a completed narrative, but with a feeling of energized possibility, the rush of discovering fresh, reconfigured horizons.



“It’s that positivity, weighted with this idea of agency – many of the artists are almost suggesting that changing the world isn’t entirely out of reach, that photography itself, at some level, has the possibility to reach into the realm of the imagination,” Bonsu says. “And in doing so, maybe that liberates us – as viewers, as audiences – to think differently about the world we experience.”

Mario Macilau, Breaking News from The Profit Corner series, 2015.© Mário Macilau, Courtesy Ed Cross Fine Art

History, Identity, Imagination: African Photography In London

Textile artist Nike Davies-Okundaye worked as a construction laborer and carried water and firewood to survive. The art of adire gave her global fame and she is now educating generations of women in Nigeria.



There was no way Nike Davies-Okundaye could look the other way. For after all, she too had been a victim in her early teens.&nbsp;



Too many women were being pushed down the traditional path of marriage and child-rearing in her country.



Born in 1951 in Ogidi-Ijumu, a small village in western Nigeria known for its spectacular rock formations and traditional art industry, Davies-Okundaye resolved to fight this practice four decades ago.



“By the age of 13, they wanted to marry me off because my father had no money. I had to run away from home and join a traveling theater. I said I didn’t want to marry and wanted to pursue art,” recalls the internationally-renowned Lagos-based artist.



Not wanting to become one of six wives to a minister, Davies-Okundaye found her escape through adire, the name given to the Yoruba craft of tie-and-dye where indigo-dyed cloth is made using a variety of resist-dyeing techniques. Growing up in a predominantly art and craft household, Davies-Okundaye is a fifth-generation artist who decided to take the craft seriously due to poverty.



“I had no money to go to school and the first education parents give you is to teach you what they do. So, when I finished primary six and I had no support to go to secondary school, I said to myself, ‘let me master art so I can teach other women to also use their hand to make a living through their own artwork’.”



Davies-Okundaye was forced to work in the male-dominated construction sector, carrying concrete in pans to builders in order to save one shilling, just enough to buy a yard of fabric to create what she called wall-hanging art.



Her goal was to use the traditional wax-resist methods to design patterned fabric in a dazzling array of tints and hues. The adire design is the result of hand-painted work carried out mostly by women and through that, Davies-Okundaye saw a way to help women to become economically empowered. After all, her first break in life came as a result of that.



“There was no other job I was doing apart from adire. I was lucky the American government came to Nigeria to recruit an African who will teach African Americans how to make traditional textiles or crafts in the state. That is how I was lucky and got picked.”



Davies-Okundaye was the only woman in a class of 10 men who were flown to Maine in northeastern United States in 1974. That is where her whole outlook on life changed.



“Before I went to America, I used to carry three drums of water every day and carry firewood to be able to survive. It was like a breakthrough in my life when I reached America. I said ‘is this heaven?’ I was the only woman in the class and all the men were learning women’s looms and I kept telling them ‘this is for women’ and they said ‘yes, in America, what a man can do, a woman can also do’.”



This was in stark contrast to what she knew to be true in Nigeria at the time.



“If your husband is an artist, you are not allowed to do art. In the 1960s, if your husband has a PhD, you are not allowed to also have a PhD. You had to give room for your husband to be your boss.”



She decided to beat those age-old stereotypes.



As one of 15 wives to her then-husband at the time, Davies-Okundaye, with her newfound knowledge gained in America, started a revolution at home. She encouraged the other wives to create their own art business using adire.



“I said ‘if you learn this, you can earn a living by yourself and get your power because your money is your power’ and that is how they also started learning it. I didn’t stop sharing the knowledge there. I gathered girls on the streets who were selling kola nuts and peanuts and started training them. I said ‘if this textile can take me to America, let me teach other people’,” says Davies-Okundaye.



And that has been her calling ever since. Davies-Okundaye is the founder and director of four art centers, which offer free training to 150 young artists in Nigeria in visual, musical and performing arts.



One of the centers is the largest art gallery in West Africa comprising over 7,000 art works.



“They used to get the police to arrest me because they said I was trying to teach feminism in Nigeria because I went to America. They said I was going to corrupt our Nigerian women but I believe God sent me to liberate a lot of women who have the passion for what makes them happy but are afraid to do it because of what people will say. I say do what makes you happy always!”

Nike Davies

The Art Of Survival: The Art Of Adire Gave This Textile Artist Global Fame, She Now Educates Generations Of Women In Nigeria

Imagine bringing the best of all academic disciplines, artistic creations, activist experience and health care knowledge to bear on understanding and addressing current health care concerns. Rather than silos of people working in their specific areas of interest, imagine collaborations committed to listening and learning from all participants.



This is the vision of Medical and Health Humanities in Africa. It’s a field that grew out of <a href="https://wiser.wits.ac.za/medical-humanities">the medical </a><a href="https://wiser.wits.ac.za/medical-humanities" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="humanities  (opens in a new tab)">humanities </a>in the US and <a href="https://www.dur.ac.uk/imh/research/">UK</a>. It brings together academics, researchers, practitioners, creative artists, health care seekers and providers.



Essentially, it straddles disciplines and practices in an effort to address health concerns. Artists compose music to open up understandings of health care and specific conditions, such as <a href="https://victoriahume.com/delirium">delirium</a>. Some academics open up new conversations about existing health concerns like <a href="https://uct.academia.edu/CarlaTsampiras">AIDS</a> or use everything from yoga to photography to <a href="https://www.lateralleap.co.za/publications/">observation and drawing</a> to help educate health sciences students. Others pair academics and artists to help young people talk about <a href="https://wellsexuality.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)">sex and sexuality</a> or <a href="https://ehwoza.com/">tuberculosis</a>.



At its core, Medical and Health Humanities is about conversations and collaborations between people who are interested in health. This encourages new understanding, practice and knowledge. It also seeks to provide “translators” who can make often complex ideas in science and humanities accessible. They can also use creative arts to change perceptions, frame new questions and direct new discussions that result in more nuanced answers to health issues.



While still a relatively new field on the African continent, it is growing and gaining momentum. The latest milestone is the first English-language special issue of the globally respected&nbsp;<a href="https://mh.bmj.com/">BMJ Medical Humanities Journal</a>&nbsp;to deal exclusively with work on and about medical and health humanities in Africa.



The special issue came out in December 2018. It showcases work from various countries in Africa, among them Nigeria, Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa.



The projects profiled in this special issue, and others elsewhere on the continent, reveal the vital role Medical and Health Humanities can play across Africa in bridging the gaps between disciplines to improve people’s experiences of health care.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Beyond disciplinary boundaries</h4>



One of the Medical and Health Humanities projects highlighted in the BMJ’s special edition deals with digital storytelling and antiretroviral adherence in&nbsp;<a href="https://mh.bmj.com/content/44/4/239">KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa</a>. Another article shows how&nbsp;<a href="https://mh.bmj.com/content/44/4/253">opium, thalidomide and contraceptives</a>&nbsp;contributed to the making of modern South Africa.



The projects and articles themselves are, of course, important. But another critical element that must not be overlooked is how the field exemplifies inter-, trans- and multidisciplinary research and practice. It removes people from their disciplinary silos.



This is becoming increasingly important across academia. In the worlds of medicine and health, people often work on similar concerns in familiar ways; in doing so, they miss out on <a href="https://mh.bmj.com/content/41/1/2">new perspectives</a>. Working across disciplines and practices is a way to learn from each other and reflect on how things could be changed for the better.



And, crucially, it creates conversations about how we might improve our collective understanding of health and wellness.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Different forms</h4>



On the African continent, the Medical and Health Humanities community is also trying to do things differently when it comes to how research is conducted and presented.



If a field is genuinely committed to collaboration, collective engagement, building networks and relationships, it must do more than work quickly to “produce measurable outcomes” limited to academic articles. It must spend time building connections that extend beyond one event or “outcome”.



We attempted to do this during the writing of the special issue of the BMJ Medical Humanities journal. We were among a group of practitioners in South Africa who pooled resources from two universities to bring as many people who were working on the special issue together as possible. We wanted to ensure that experienced and emerging writers from multiple disciplines and practices had a chance to benefit from each other’s knowledge and experiences.



A workshop was held in 2017 at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER). Participants came from Zimbabwe, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Malawi, Swaziland, South Africa, the UK and Canada and presented and discussed their work.



From this, people put together a range of material for the journal and the <a href="https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humanities/">blog</a> linked to the special edition. Some of this material took the form of academic articles; there are also podcasts, photographs, pieces of music, images and poetry.



This allowed us to present creative and academic work in a format that was more accessible to those with digital access and moved beyond academic journals. After all, part of what the field is concerned with is maintaining critical, intellectual rigour while making information available to people in a number of ways. In doing this the field tries to break down some of the barriers that prevent people from sharing work or ideas.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">New networks</h4>



There is more to come for the Medical and Health Humanities field in Africa. A group called the <a href="https://medicalandhealthhumanitiesafrica.wordpress.com/">Medical and Health Humanities Africa network</a>has been established. CODESRIA, the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, among others, has been drawn into discussions about growing the field’s networks on the continent. The second conference organised by the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" href="https://malawimedhumsnetwork.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Malawi Medical Humanities Network</a> will be held in Zomba, Malawi in August and a workshop in Johannesburg in March called State of Dis-ease will continue these exciting new conversations.



-Carla Tsampiras; Senior Lecturer in Medical Humanities, University of Cape Town



-Nolwazi Mkhwanazi; Senior researcher, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand



&#8211;The Conversation

gettyimages-1042696628-170667a

New Ways Of Thinking On Health, Arts And Humanities Are Emerging In Africa

Africa Writes, the Royal African Society’s annual literature festival, dwelt on Afrofuturism and where black British artists see themselves in the burgeoning new aesthetic.

June fries itself to an end; London is sticky with the combustible residue of unseasonable heat, lager, and irrational, tabloid-whipped World Cup optimism. It’s too absurd to be an African summer; temperatures above 30 degrees are tearfully embraced, red-raw and half-naked, by the English, with a stunned but gleeful alacrity at the entrance of a jolly, party-starting relative believed long-dead.
A hundred and fourteen years earlier, the Sierra Leonean writer A.B.C. Merriman-Labor, astonished to discover the religious void in the heart of the greatest metropolis on earth, sends a letter home from London in which he decides, with horror and affection, that “the Britons are barbarians and heathens”.
This motif of seeing – by Africans of the British and of British Africans of themselves – is one of the more urgent themes of 2018’s Africa Writes event, the Royal African Society’s annual literature festival. Merriman-Labor’s biographer for An African in Imperial London, Danell Jones, is discussing ‘African Literary Figures in Georgian &amp; Edwardian London’ at the British Library with Ade Solanke, author of the play Phillis in London (about the visit to London in 1773 of the “prodigy, poet, celebrity and slave” Phillis Wheatley), and the writer S.I. Martin, who “works with museums, archives and the education sector to bring diverse histories to wider audiences”.
It’s a crackling and challenging panel, with evocative and haunting subjects as its focus. “Forgotten voices have important things to teach us,” says Jones, echoing Solanke’s entreaty for writers to “exhume these stories” and Martin’s to “not enshrine, but internalize”.
Now no longer forgotten, these are ardent tales, tragic and cautionary. Merriman-Labor’s dazzling deconstruction of the contradictions of Edwardian London – its wretched penury cowering at the feet of its titanic opulence – was published in 1909, for which he achieved a degree of literary eminence, but he was to die in poverty at the age of 41, in a state-run hospital for the poor, his legal and artistic careers eviscerated by racism.
<blockquote>“Forgotten voices have important things to teach us,” &#8211; Danell Jones</blockquote>
Wheatley’s patron in Boston – her ‘owner’ (Wheatley had been abducted in Senegambia at the age of seven) – orchestrates the publication of her poetry in London, and she is “plunged into English high society”, but Wheatley dies shortly after her emancipation, at just 31, too poor to publish the second volume of poems that may have saved her. Both Merriman-Labor and Wheatley have vexing facets to their personalities. Is the former an arriviste, as starry-eyed as any narcissistic creative, with fame and adoration beckoning on the horizon of his mind’s eye? Is the latter a malleable apologist, in her poetry, for cultural and religious imperialism? These human beings are complicated; they are impressive. But they are not always likeable.
Which begs the question: how does a writer ‘exhume these stories’ with both compassion and honesty? How can these voices be reanimated, without committing further violations upon their memory, since we can never know how they ever really felt? Even if, as Solanke quotes from William Faulkner, “the past is never dead – it’s not even past”?
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/sometime-in-africa/2017/09/29/awesome-awkward-african-night/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read more: An Awesome, Awkward, African Night</a>
“You know, I’m against that whole redemptive arc of black literature,” says Martin. “Yes, there has to be redemption, but that comes from the reader, through self-examination, rather than the character.”
Solanke agrees. “I don’t want simple people,” she says. “Phillis is problematic. I came close several times to abandoning her story. She wasn’t the Phillis I expected. But it’s actually been transformative for me as a writer. It’s the drama of facts – and then the drama of imagination.”
In An African in Imperial London, Jones places Merriman-Labor at a political march in London which he may or may not have attended – she has no supporting evidence either way, but argues that the artist is at liberty to fabricate experiences if they support a rational truth. “I can’t prove that he was there,” she says. “But to me, it made sense in the larger story.”

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				 Ade Solanke
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Merriman-Labor is mesmerized by London’s transport technology – “Overhead and Underfoot, Overground and Underground, Terrestrial and Celestial” – which shuttles me across the city for a second Africa Writes event at Rich Mix in East London. What would Merriman-Labor – or Wheatley – have made of the phone-scrolling throngs queuing for a salt-beef bagel on nearby Brick Lane, or the homeless man outside the restaurant gifting his incredulous dog a polystyrene tray overflowing with chips and ketchup? This is the gristle of the city, the marrow of poetry.
Rachel Long, Theresa Lola and Hibaq Osman, three members of Octavia, “a poetry collective for women of color founded in response to the lack of inclusivity and representation in literature and academia,” are sparing a few minutes to chat before rushing back to rehearsals for the evening’s show. It’s a credit to the Africa Writes programming that the events pull the festival’s central threads long and taught through centuries, across genres. And it’s striking that this collective of young female artists eschews the use of social media to promote its shows. Long, Octavia’s founder member, calls these platforms “unsafe spaces for women of color,” after a successful past event attracted a batch of abusive comments on its Facebook page.
“For me it was just like, how dare you?” she says. “How could you dampen something that was that beautiful?” The event later that evening is indeed exquisite and irresistible, both in execution and atmosphere – the boundaries of performance poetry are stretched and explored across several sets of poems which are by turns funny, tragic and uplifting.
“I feel like because so much of what we do is almost in secret,” says Osman, “that when we’re on stage, it becomes more intimate than other things I’ve been a part of. Everyone’s a bit more likely to take in the words in a way that maybe they weren’t expecting.”
It’s a night about woke female power, and the vibranium-hard Afrofuturism of the black creative economy – a widening path to artistic and financial success that was so cruelly curtailed for trailblazers like Wheatley and Merriman-Labor. Where do these black British artists see themselves in this burgeoning new aesthetic?
“What I think is so beautiful about Afrofuturism is this merging of different cultures,” says Lola. “I feel like before there used to be isolated identities. Afrofuturism will be this space where everything is embraced.”
‘An African in Imperial London’ is out now and published by Hurst Publishers. Ade Solanke’s new play ‘The Court Must Have a Queen’ runs through to September 2 at Hampton Court Palace in the UK.
&#8211; By Alastair Hagger

Rachel-Long-Africa-Writes-2018-image-by-Erefua-Boakye-picture-1

Talking African Writing in London

Imagine a pinup calendar that revisits history through color, and woven in a manner that depicts your past and future in an amusing way. Confused?
Well that is what the future looks like for South African performing artist Athi-Patra Ruga, known for his flamboyant performances and tapestries that challenge social norms.
Growing up in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, Ruga knew at a young age he would become an artist, taking lessons, after school, at Belgravia Art Centre. He then received a scholarship to the Gordon Flack Davidson Academy of Design in Johannesburg.
“I had always known my body would be a site for telling stories. I feel the drive to tell stories, [I] overcame my fears – about it never been done before,” he says.
When he cut his teeth in art, he dabbled in fashion designing, incorporating fashion and art into one.
“Fashion has the power to dictate our movements physically and socially, to [a] great consequence. I have never seen it as a huge leap as both those mediums are concerned with the body,” says Ruga.
His current body of work is Queens in Exile, addressing issues of belonging and identity. However, it is his piece on the queens of Azania that put him on the cultural map.
“I feel it sparked something in the audience that [binds] our generation together. Witnessing the betrayal to the constitution I was raised with and also rainbowism, a utopian construct, played out in the country that is economically the most unequal in the world,” says Ruga.
Ruga was the Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year in 2015 and has done work for luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton. Believing the world is alive with possibilities, he held on to the hope he would one day travel the world.
“I had always dreamt of going to the south of France and now for the past five years, my husband and I have been going to Toulon for the Hyères festival,” says Ruga.
The Eastern Cape has produced some of South Africa’s great political leaders, from Nelson Mandela to Steve Biko, so it is little wonder Ruga’s work has strong historical references.
“History has the ability to arm us as a dispossessed youth, with knowledge that our forefathers went through the same things we are going through and we need that knowledge to arm us to find sophisticated ways of mobilizing for economic and cultural currency,” says Ruga.
He desensitizes “uncomfortable” topics using vibrant colors. His work is represented by the WHATIFTHEWORLD gallery in Cape Town, and in Paris, by InSitu Fabienne Leclerc.
There is also a lot of story-telling in his work which comes from his father being a journalist.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-36739 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/©_RENE_HABERMACHER_ATHI_PATRA_RUGA_PORTRAIT.jpg" alt="" width="768" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/©_RENE_HABERMACHER_ATHI_PATRA_RUGA_PORTRAIT.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/©_RENE_HABERMACHER_ATHI_PATRA_RUGA_PORTRAIT-300x400.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/©_RENE_HABERMACHER_ATHI_PATRA_RUGA_PORTRAIT-600x800.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/©_RENE_HABERMACHER_ATHI_PATRA_RUGA_PORTRAIT-225x300.jpg 225w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/©_RENE_HABERMACHER_ATHI_PATRA_RUGA_PORTRAIT-768x1024.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" />
“I come from a family of people who enjoyed telling stories and I gravitate to that tradition of storytelling in my art,” says Ruga.
His industry is faced with numerous challenges, but Ruga chose early on in his career to not focus on the negative.
“I’m honestly not concerned with focusing on challenges, that’s not how I got here. It is the attitude that defines how I will overcome that is ultimate. Our education system is something we all need to face and improve as that leads one to art and in return empathy for others,” he says.
Ruga encourages upcoming artists to venture into different spheres such as photography, art and designing as they are lucrative.
He says there are more than enough role models across the continent one could look up to such as Nicholas Hlobo, a South African contemporary artist who creates sculptures and explores ethnicity, masculinity, and sexual identity. He too looks up to him.
Despite the global exposure and success at home, Ruga is convinced the best is yet to come.
“I always feel my big break hasn’t happened yet,” he says. That will be a story for another time.

Athi

Challenging Social Norms Through Body Art

The Wonders of Rock Art: Lascaux Cave and Africa exhibition is a recreation of the world-renowned Lascaux caves in southwestern France where an estimated 17 000 years ago, humans painted wild animals on the rocks of the caves. For the first time in Africa, the exhibition replicates these outstanding paleolithic masterpieces and the cave itself.
The Nave, seen here, is the exact replica of a chamber or cavern 66 feet long and 23 feet high. In this picture, a viewer peeps into the artwork.
There couldn’t have been a better setting for this exhibition than South Africa, with its own iconic prehistoric art, and famed for its Cradle of Humankind site and the deep, dark Sterkfontein caves in Maropeng.
The exhibition is on until October 1 at the Sci-Bono Discovery Centre in Newtown, Johannesburg, South Africa.
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Big Shots is a new section in FORBES AFRICA that captures offbeat moments in business, politics, art and life, using a single image to tell the story with a short blurb. These images throb with life and color.

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Cave Art From 17,000 Years Ago

“A lot of people think that I succumb to this ditsy blonde role,” discloses performance artist Jana ‘Babez’ Terblanche. We’re sitting in a chic coffee shop on Kloof Street in Cape Town in South Africa; her pink highlights are a vivid counterpoint to the starchy white walls and tablecloths.
“But actually, I’ve used it as a vehicle, to push things further. Almost to see how far people will accept it.”
Winner in 2014 of the Simon Gerson Prize for outstanding student work at her alma mater, the University of Cape Town, Terblanche has created a striking portfolio that “interrogates the strains on the modern female body, using the breakdown of female archetypes to shift the way that we think about female agency and desire.”
It is fizzing pop culture unbottled and forensically analyzed, repurposed for a fluid feminist agenda. Her preoccupation with the icons that populate the macabre landscape of celebrity glitz and media voyeurism – Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Dolly Parton – has its roots in formative years spent in sparsely-populated mining towns in Namibia, where her only access to a cultural elsewhere was the radio.
“I’m South African, I’ve spent most of my adult life here, but my childhood seems disconnected from everything else,” she says.
“I also feel almost like my childhood was another life, another person. The first time I heard Britney Spears I was like, ‘What is this?’ I didn’t understand. I was in this tiny town in the middle of nowhere, dreaming about an American reality, because I didn’t know what cities meant. So I actually had quite a warped interpretation of the outside world.”
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2017/11/23/king-kong-musicals/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The King Kong Of Musicals</a>
Her Namibia Series revisits these desert moonscapes where the well of her creativity was first mined; she appears in flowing chiffon against the spectacular umber backdrop of the Fish River Canyon. Her face is hidden – a recurring motif in many of her photographs.
“I cover the face because I want it to stand in for every woman,” she says. “I don’t want it to be personal.”
In Bride, her face is obscured by a mask of roses, swarming like bees; in Hollywood Cerise, she is covered head to toe in a magenta body stocking, her ponytail spilling out like an insistent yellow question mark.
Her work is luridly confrontational but archly self-aware, a good-humoured, interrogational pop feedback loop.
“Initially people thought I was joking,” she laughs. “What is this little girl doing, making art about Britney Spears? She’s walking around in a pink suit, what does that mean? It took a lot of perseverance to say I’m going to stick to my guns, and only if you carry on do people say, oh, she’s still doing this, there must be some merit to it.”
<div id="attachment_34604" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34604" class=" wp-image-34604" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Jana-Babez-Terblanche-Hollywood-Cerise-photo-Jody-Brand-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="450" />Jana &#8216;Babez&#8217; Terblanche (Photo by Jody Brand)</div>
There is plenty of a salty sort of grit too, and a fierce determination to expose misogyny and patriarchal oppression. Nightfall, a performance piece in which she strapped bricks to her feet and walked across Company’s Garden, a famous local heritage site, was inspired by the March 2017 brutal street-corner murder of sex worker Nokuphila Khumalo by the famous photographer and artist Zwelethu Mthethwa.
“After that incident, his work was still being sold in galleries,” she says. “I was so infuriated, I couldn’t believe this. Someone literally profiting off the back of a woman he had murdered. I was going mental. There has to be a point where publicity is bad, but no, there isn’t. So I did this work, in memory of her and in solidarity with sex workers.”
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2017/09/20/three-women-three-wives-one-true-story/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Three Women, Three Wives, One True Story</a>
The fallacy of neutral space, the idea that women can ever feel safe outside their own homes, is something she interrogates with passion.
“Space is not neutral at all. On a certain level, men navigate the world without having to be afraid,” she says.
“Walking on the way here, there were three guys in front of me. And I hate the fact that my mind immediately has to go to walking a bit slower – honestly, I had to stop around the corner. I consider this hyperawareness a form of repression that’s not spoken about.”
She talks about the common phenomenon of women feeling compelled to wear ear buds when on the street, just to deter unwanted attention.
“All the space in the world is male space. If there were women-only spaces, men would just get angry about it – men are so fragile. Isn’t that scary, that my mind went there? I thought about men, before I thought about the woman. God, that’s so messed up!”
Terblanche warns also of female complicity, of women who seek to appease male aggression.
“I’ve had so much kickback from women, and I’ve gotten very upset about it, thinking, wow, aren’t we supposed to stand together? But then I realized how strong internalized misogyny is. We’ve all been conditioned, and we have to unlearn these things.”
At its best, with its polaroid tang of glamor and grime, Terblanche’s work stands toe to toe with its clear influences – performance artists Marina Abramovic and Ana Mendieta, and the shape-shifting roleplay of photographer Cindy Sherman. It is provocative and playful, but with a dangerous, hidden razor’s edge.
“I’m always playing a version of myself. We are all playing versions of ourselves,” she says, as the busy Cape Town café characters come and go. “That’s what’s so exciting about performance art. You can be someone else tomorrow.” &#8211; Written by Alastair Hagger

The Performance Artist Playing Everyone

It is very rare that altruism and art find a common meeting place.
We find both on the 22nd floor of a Sandton skyscraper, where businesswoman and philanthropist Saloni Wahi is hard at work.
There’s aesthetics everywhere in her bright, beautifully-appointed home – the paintings on the walls, the handcrafted pottery in the foyer, even the orange fruit basket she has made with clay.
Unflattering balls of clay turn into ebullient masterpieces in her hands. At this moment, by the kitchen counter, she is moulding what looks like a golf hat, “inspired by a Saturday game of golf”.
This yen to seek inspiration in everyday objects, tapping into her talents, be it pottery or golf, to create “templates” for her work, is perhaps what makes Saloni the purposeful aesthete she is – giving her all to art, and giving her art to all.
Over the last decade since she first became a “potter by chance” in Johannesburg – and it went from pastime to passion – she has made over 70 pieces of an eclectic range of ceramics she calls The Collective that are “often whimsical and light, identifiable by their intricate patterns and fusion of color”.
These contemporary creations will all be part of her exhibitions coming up – on November 9 in Dubai and January 8-9 at the Gallerie Ganesha in New Delhi.
All proceeds from the sale will go to fund another passion Saloni holds dear to her heart – the ABN Education Trust set up in 2011 by her husband, Rakesh Wahi, the co-founder of the hugely-successful CNBC Africa and FORBES AFRICA brands.
As the Trust’s patron, Saloni has tirelessly worked to help the lives of the less privileged. And every pot she makes, no matter how arduous the process of creation, is for them.
In the living room of her home, she shows us Effervescence, a glazed work of art inspired by a paper cup, which took her a tenacious 15 hours to craft. She was at the gym one day holding a paper cup after a workout session when the idea hit her: why not translate it into ceramic?
“When the clay is not talking to you, you cannot make something that satisfies you,” she says, of her intuitive art. “It’s like doing yoga. Pottery stills your mind and is almost like meditation.”
<div id="attachment_34354" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34354" class=" wp-image-34354" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Saloni-Wahi-Effervescense-e1510303686435-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" />Effervescence, Wahis work inspired by a paper cup, that took 15 hours to create. (Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla)</div>
The pieces are like her babies, she says.
“Except you don’t give your babies away, but for me, rather than possessing the piece, it’s the actual process of creating it, and sharing it that makes me happy. I am very passionate about the Trust, and pottery is my second passion, and it was sometime earlier this year that I said ‘why don’t I just combine these two passions’?”
Thus, the concept of “ceramics that care” was born.
“God has been kind to us, so I don’t want to create money from my art, but if I can create funds and use it for my other cause, then I would consider my mission successful,” says Saloni.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2014/08/01/going-above-beyond/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Going Above And Beyond</a>
It is something she truly enjoys, as you hear her speak of the chemistry and science – and the infinite patience – that goes into each creation. No piece is like the other.
“I am very adventurous as far as clay is concerned. Pottery is a very loose word for what I create; some of my pieces have minute holes, almost 500-600 holes a piece.
“In fact, I stretch the clay, and push it to its limits. And very often my first teacher Charmaine, and Denise, my second teacher in Parktown North, would always keep a watchful eye on me as they knew that Saloni would always be up to something dangerous with the clay. So I find it works, and there have been instances where I have spent a minimum of four hours on a piece and after making it, it completely collapses but for some strange reason, it’s never put me down. I just start all over again… It makes you resilient towards life in a strange, bizarre way.”
<div id="attachment_34353" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34353" class=" wp-image-34353" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Saloni-Wahi-753-e1510303405687-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" />Saloni Wahi at work. (Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla)</div>
When not in Johannesburg, Saloni continues her work in Dubai, where she has been based since 1989.
Originally from Delhi in India, Saloni moved to Johannesburg in 2007 after her husband, Rakesh, along with Zafar Siddiqi, set up the ABN Group, of which CNBC Africa and FORBES AFRICA are a part.
CNBC Africa is celebrating its 10th year, and Saloni has had a stellar role in its success, supporting Rakesh and the business in every way.
Living between their homes in Delhi, Dubai and Johannesburg, Saloni is always on the move.
“I am thankful for the opportunity to experience three different lives in one lifetime. And the three lives are so diverse – our life in India is completely in contrast to the life we live in Dubai, which is again completely different to the life in Johannesburg.”
Whenever she is in South Africa, her first ports of call usually are the orphanages the Trust supports.
“It doesn’t matter whether you are in India or Africa, children are the same everywhere. To me, giving back is integral to my being,” says Saloni.
Despite being a small business, and very conscious of its corporate social responsibilities, the ABN Group has participated in several charitable causes in sub-Saharan Africa since 2007.
The Trust gets its funding from the Wahi family, the ABN Group companies, Trans National Academic Group and through the efforts of Saloni. The Group’s Managing Director Roberta Naicker, along with other trustees, have worked hard to raise funds through various initiatives including ladies events, golf days, auctions and appeals to corporates and individuals who help the needy.
<div id="attachment_34355" style="width: 235px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34355" class="size-medium wp-image-34355" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Saloni-Wahi-trust-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" />Saloni Wahi with a beneficiary of her Trust. (Photo supplied)</div>
The group’s focus is three principal activities.
The first is to support orphanages and give opportunities to children in desperate situations for no fault of their own. The Trust mandated to support orphanages that were small and rudimentary and didn’t receive any government grant or corporate support.
When Saloni speaks about Thuthuzela in the township of Alexandra, you can tell this is an orphanage close to her heart. Through her diligent efforts, the Trust first gifted it a minibus in 2012 and then in 2014, helped to move it to a permanent home in Kelvin from “their one-room facility at the back of a local factory”.
“It is creditable how the founders and caretakers of the orphanage have worked tirelessly to help children who would otherwise have died or ended up on the street,” says Saloni.
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Over the years, through the Trust, Saloni has committed significant resources for children in need. The Trust is currently assisting Abangani Enkosini, another Day Care Center in Alexandra, and has provided it a daily soup kitchen, freezers, cupboards, clothes and books, and also waterproofed its facilities.
The Trust’s second objective is to provide bursaries to students, particularly women, for tertiary education including but not limited to financial journalism in universities such as University of Johannesburg and University of the Witwatersrand. Over the last six years, it has provided bursaries to over 30 students to complete their graduation, and has also provided support to the children of its own staff through bursaries for their university studies. Similar bursaries have been provided to students in Ghana, Rwanda and South Africa.
The Trust’s third aim is providing internship opportunities to young Africans for invaluable work experience within the ABN Group companies. Over the last 10 years, over 250 internships have been disbursed by the group. Christina Mhundwa, a recipient of the ABN bursary, is currently in Germany working as a journalist for a leading news broadcaster.
Saloni’s support for all the work has come from the team at the ABN Group including Nola Mashaba, Celeste Meidecen, Thameshan Sooriah and Sue Gounden.
In addition, the Trust participates in other activities that resonate with the core values of the founders. One such was supporting an organization in Kenya working to get young girls off the streets to re-settle them from an existence of abuse into a dignified life.
“It was at CNBC Africa’s All Africa Business Leaders Awards in Rwanda last year that I was introduced to Damaris Too, a successful businesswoman doing amazing work in Kenya. She was one of the contenders for the ‘Philanthropist of the Year’ award. I was so touched by her story – she basically worked with getting young girls off the street. It was very sad to hear that for want of a pretty dress or just a bag, these girls were led astray,” says Saloni.
Back in Dubai, Saloni got to work, creating a WhatsApp group, and mobilizing her friends and their friends to make donations in kind for the girls.
“I was hopeful I would get a few suitcases of assorted clothes and bags and shoes. But lo and behold, thanks to the power of social media, I had almost a container-load of stuff. The entire consignment was sent to Kenya, and since then, we have sent a second load,” says Saloni, proving a kind gesture can go a long way.
Philanthropy is not new for the Wahis. Hailing from an illustrious business family in India, Saloni says she has seen acts of kindness from a young age. Marrying into an equally-philanthropic family has allowed her to continue to do social good all her life.
“My great grandfathers had established charitable trusts in India and I have seen the family’s involvement in schools and hospitals in North India that benefitted children from disadvantaged families. Their work has outlived their time on earth… For me, as a woman, if the work my husband and I are doing is carried forward and built on by our children, I would consider myself blessed. Both children have been involved with the Trust through their own contributions. Sidharth, our son, is a Trustee, while our daughter, Shweta, a young fashion designer, has raised significant funds through her own initiatives,” says Saloni.
Last year, in India, Saloni and Rakesh set up “a corpus for Class 4 employees at the National Defence Academy” and earlier this year, set up “a fund for caddies in Dehradun” (near the Himalayan foothills), as they are both “passionate about golf”.
“We set up a trust in the name of my mother-in-law [Shobhana Wahi], again in Dehradun. Wherever we get an opportunity, we always try and give back.
“You come alone, you leave alone. What you take along with you is your name,” she says.
Saloni’s mission for the next few years is to do as many exhibitions as she can across the cities she travels and lives in.
“I know in South Africa, a lot of people are doing good work, and if anyone has a charity event and is looking for pieces, I would be very happy to give my pottery, so long as I know the funds these pieces generate, are going for the right cause. I have set a very high target for myself,” says Saloni.
As we conclude our meeting, it’s hard not to ask Saloni how she manages to live in so many cities and call each of them home, to which, she laughs: “I have a non-conventional entrepreneurial husband, and just as I create pieces of pottery, his passion is developing people and creating businesses. I mould clay, he moulds people!”

Hands That Care

Glen Ridge is a small, quiet suburb in the center of the vibrant Soweto township, south of Johannesburg. Here, Isaac Mojalefa Sentso stays alone in a four-room home that doubles as his art studio. This late morning FORBES AFRICA found him perched on a leather sofa facing a makeshift easel made of a piece of wood supported by an ironing board. A picture of the beaming United States’ President Donald Trump appears on his laptop next to him. He wakes up every day at 3AM and works throughout the day.
“I don’t do art after sunset because I use natural light,” says Sentso, as he welcomes us into his home with an open heart.
Soon, after briefly exchanging banter, Sentso recounts with glee the morning he met Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe in 2015. After spending two weeks drawing the portrait of Mugabe, he took a taxi to the Zimbabwean Embassy in Pretoria, with the wrapped picture tucked under his arm. A week later he secured an appointment with the president.
“I was there at 7:35AM because I like being early all the time. The ambassador ushered me into the room where he was having his tea. Mugabe asked me how long the picture took me ‘because I can see there’s no charcoal’. The way he understands art amazed me. &#8230; ‘I know art I was at Fort Hare and I am a collector’, he said. He asked me how much I wanted for the picture, I said R25,000 ($1,900). He scolded me for being cheap, he said it’s worth far more than that. Mugabe taught me a lesson about valuing and pricing my work,” recalls the unassuming Sentso.
Later, Sentso joined the president’s blue-light entourage visiting the Hector Pieterson Memorial in Soweto – a tribute to casualties of the 1976 students’ uprising. At a gathering that included South Africa&#8217;s Minister of Arts Nathi Mthethwa and Mugabe’s entourage, Sentso was asked to present his picture to Mugabe there and then.
“The very same evening R35,000 was deposited into my bank account,” he says.
<div id="attachment_33832" style="width: 519px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33832" class=" wp-image-33832" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Ike-685-e1507795146670-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="509" height="339" />Isaac Mojalefa Sentso (Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla)</div>
But why did Sentso do a portrait of a man viewed as a villain around the world?
“I knew Mugabe appreciated arts. When I looked at all the pictures on Mugabe on internet, I saw they were insulting to him. I worked on a picture that will make him look beautiful and young. I don’t want controversy in my life, I only focus on positivity. I don’t want to be caught in politics,” he says.
Sentso says his target customers are the rich; businesspeople, monarchs, billionaires and heads of state. Most of his work isn’t commissioned; he sends the portraits to the subjects hoping they will send money in return. But, even though most of them are wealthy, some of those he sends his pictures to don’t give a cent. Those among his fruitless endeavours are: Carlos Slim Helú, one of the richest men in the world; Alisher Usmanov, the Russian business magnate; and Haji Hassanal Bolkiah, the Sultan of Brunei. Sentso delivered his portrait to Mexican tycoon Slim through the South African embassy. At the time, South Africa’s Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa was due to visit Slim and the packaged portrait was to be delivered by him, but Sentso said it was the last he heard of his work.
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Sentso normally sells his portraits for over R100,000 ($7,360), but if you have a good rapport with him, the price may go down to R50,000 ($3,800). When we met him, he was at wit’s end because he had hoped to sell a portrait to South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe. In late 2015, Sentso hand-delivered a picture to the Mamelodi Sundowns Football Club offices in Pretoria, a club that Motsepe owns.
It seems that the portrait was lost before it could reach Motsepe and Sentso had not been able to reach out to the businessman. But just before we went to press, Sentso was hoping the frustrating story of the lost portrait would have a happy ending after he met Sandile Langa, the Legal Compliance and Stakeholder Relations Executive at Motsepe’s African Rainbow Minerals. On hearing about Sentso from FORBES AFRICA, Langa contacted him to find an amicable solution to what seemed to be a mishap.
<div id="attachment_33833" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33833" class=" wp-image-33833" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Ike-679-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="450" />Some of the portraits adorning Sentso&#8217;s bedroom wall. On top is the Queen Mother of the Royal Bafokeng, Semane Molotlegi. Below her is a portrait of her son, Kgosi Nyalala Pilane. (Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla)</div>
Even though he struggles to sell his work and earn a living, Sentso refuses to put his work in galleries as he thinks they are cheating artists.
Trouble has followed Sentso, and his drawings, since day one.
“My older brother would bring home his homework to draw something. I would attempt to draw the same thing he was drawing and my pictures were far better than his… In those days I was happy to draw in school books and he was happy to take advantage of me,” he says.
Two years later, Sentso enrolled at the same school as his brother. His brother’s secret of asking Sentso to do his homework was exposed by the same teacher who taught them both.
“The teacher said ‘no, it cannot be it’. She called him in class and instructed us to draw while she was watching. My embarrassed brother had to confess that I had been doing his homework for him,” he recalls.
Growing up in the townships of Johannesburg under apartheid, it never dawned on Sentso that he can go to art school and make a living. So, like many black people in his community, he took a job as a clerk in an insurance company after leaving school.
“When I got bored I would draw at work. But I later destroyed those pages. It wasn’t a serious thing,” he says.
It took him 25 years to take his talent seriously. He enrolled for a part-time arts course at the University of the Witwatersrand, but that only lasted a few weeks. Sentso realized that wasn’t going to work for him and registered at the Johannesburg Art Foundation.
“They liked my style of art at the Johannesburg Art Foundation. I decided to quit my job and study full-time. But when I was in that class I was very slow to finish my work because I was too much of a perfectionist. The course facilitator suggested I change to graphic design. To my surprise, I liked this graphic design and designing on a computer was fun. The title itself, graphic design, was appealing,” says Sentso.
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In 1992, between chopping and changing courses, Sentso obtained a certificate and went to work as a graphic designer. He worked from home and reported to an editor. It was a team of two.
After two years of working from home as a lonely designer, Sentso needed a fresh challenge and joined advertising agency FCB South Africa, where he worked as multimedia designer and video editor for 12 years.
“When 9/11 happened in the US, I was assigned to Nigeria to train those guys in animation and video editing and all that. I was the only black multimedia designer in the company,” he says.
By 2004, Sentso had saved enough money to start on his own. In 2012, a break-in in his new home in Soweto saw him lose everything he had.
“I was distraught but I needed to earn a living. I didn’t start my life with computers. God gave me talent, not computers. I had already started visiting the so-called top galleries around Johannesburg. It is from that point I said to myself ‘there’s no work of my mine that is going to be sold there’,” he says.
In 2014, Sentso realized he did not need a job from anyone, he was going to make a living on his drawings. So, he started drawing influential people and couriered his pictures to them. But he has not always been lucky as some have tried to swindle him.
As Sentso was busy with the portrait of President Trump when we visited him, he can only hope he won’t suffer the same fate.

‘I Tried To Make Mugabe Beautiful And Young’

“I will not give up on them. I will bring light to their darkness,” announces the feisty, damaged hero of Lola Shoneyin’s poignant, gripping, jaw-to-the-floor hilarious 2010 novel The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives. 
Set in Shoneyin’s home town of Ibadan, Nigeria, it shadows the academically gifted but domestically naive graduate Bolanle (a Yoruba name, pregnant here with irony, meaning “find wealth at home”) and her struggle to adapt to, and escape from, her life as the fourth and youngest wife of Baba Segi, a prosperous, corpulent building materials dealer.
After two years of marriage, Bolanle has failed to add to the offspring provided by the three other matriarchs, and a visit to a maternity clinic with her fretting husband is the catalyst of the pungent crisis to follow.
The book has now been adapted into a one-woman show by storyteller Maimouna Jallow, who performed the piece on June 15 to a full house at Nairobi’s Goethe Institute.
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The event was the latest in the ongoing Artistic Encounters series organized by South African novelist and journalist Zukiswa Wanner, and with Shoneyin also in attendance, there was a unique opportunity to talk to all three women about the prickly, convoluted drama inherent in the internal politics of polygamous marriages.
The novel is based on the bare bones of a true story related to Shoneyin by a childhood friend.
“So, what I then had to do was decide what each wife’s story was going to be,” she says.
“What do I want this character to embody? Bolanle’s situation, for me, was very much about sexual violence. And depression, which sometimes people would rather not admit exists.”
Bolanle is a complex persona, occasionally abrasive in her condescension towards the illiteracy and feral guile of the other wives, but never less than exhilarating – we cannot but cheer her defiant intellect and resolute grit. Her decision to squander her education and surrender to a smothering polygamous union is rooted in the open psychic wound of her rape by a wealthy stranger, committed when she was still in high school, and the subsequent backstreet abortion recommended by a callow paramour.
“I knew Baba Segi wouldn’t be like younger men who demanded explanations for the faraway look in my eye,” she narrates. “I chose this family to regain my life, to heal in anonymity.”
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Her pain is exacerbated by the frequent and sourly-articulated disappointment of her mother, who is unwilling to believe that a daughter equipped with such rare and precious intelligence would move in with “an overfed orangutan”.
Confronted with the burden of dashed maternal aspirations, Bolanle yearns for societal solace; instead, she discovers only an oppressive new universe of strife, before her resilience – and a delicious key twist in the plot – delivers a rousing psychological and emotional triumph.
“There is this pressure on a woman of the expectation of marriage,” says Wanner.
“The one thing that really struck me about Bolanle is that she would rather be in a polygamous relationship than not being married at all – because she doesn’t know whether she’ll still be able to conceive.”
<div id="attachment_33533" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33533" class=" wp-image-33533" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Maimona-Jallow-e1505897362380-300x229.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="382" />Jallow performing the adaptation at the Goethe Institut, Nairobi. (Photo by Donald Gregory)</div>
It is striking that many of the characters in the novel, male and female, hunger for the reassurance of love, driven by the terror of abandonment.
“After having performed it several times, I then re-read the book a few weeks ago. And there was a layer to Bolanle that I realized I had completely excluded from the performance,” says Jallow.
“I saw her as a victim, but she’s still very much a strong woman who believes in the power of education, and who can still have a positive influence in this household.”
Jallow’s electric adaptation strips the narrative down to the individual histories of Bolanle and the three older wives: the tyrannical and materialistic lesbian Iya Segi, the kind and unworldly Iya Tope, and the cunning, weaponized glamour of Iya Femi, arguably the novel’s most fascinating personality, whom Jallow brings to life with particular swagger and relish.
“When I am transitioning from Iya Tope to Iya Femi, I do a little dance in front of the mirror,” she says. These histories are the empathetic heart and soul of the story, providing psychological context for the characters’ most mischievous, startling, horrifying choices.
“Baba Segi’s wives spoke to me the minute I read the book,” Jallow says. “All I could think about was that these women needed to be given a physical body and voice, to be accessible to new audiences. Lola’s writing is so vivid, her characters so alive, that it just seemed natural that they should be adapted into theater.”
While the novel’s depiction of polygamy, and, by implication, the swelling phenomenon of the ‘benefactor’, ‘blesser’ or ‘sponsor’, is almost uniformly unflattering (at one stage, Bolanle even refers to the other wives as ‘inmates’, in what is probably the novel’s most unambiguous reference to enslavement and subjugation), Shoneyin says her feelings about these practices have softened.
“I shy away from being prescriptive, where consenting adults decide to engage in transactional relationships,” she says. “However, this continent needs leaders who recognize how critical it is that girls have access to the quality education, skills and opportunities they need to attain the economic independence they have a right to.”
She says she is aware that her own life has been blessed.
“I feel there must be something about my upbringing, or my country, that have put me in a situation where I am never afraid to break into spaces women didn’t occupy before. When I want to do something creative, I do it. I force my way and I make it happen.” She smiles her blazing smile. “And that’s how I’m raising my daughters.” &#8211; Written by Alastair Hagger
– Jallow will perform The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives at the Scottish International Storytelling Festival, Edinburgh, from October 20 to 31

Three Women, Three Wives, One True Story

It was a passion for art. He quit his job after being influenced by international street art. He started small then grew to spraying walls in the city of Johannesburg. Now he travels the world spraying more walls for nature and conservation.
It’s a sunny midweek afternoon and FORBES AFRICA is off to meet Sonny in Rosebank, Johannesburg. He is a self-taught artist, painting murals big enough to challenge the animal poachers in Africa.
“I decided to teach myself how to paint; had to start from scratch. Had to learn to mix colors, learn to airbrush with a gun; my main passion was just to make things bigger and better,” says Sonny.
<div id="attachment_32693" style="width: 319px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32693" class="wp-image-32693 " src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/The-Buitengraght-Wolf-Cape-Town-by-Sonny1-200x300.jpg" alt="The Buitengracht Wolf, Cape Town (Photo by Sonny)" width="309" height="464" />The Buitengracht Wolf, Cape Town (Photo by Sonny)</div>
Sonny never went to art school. It all began when he started losing interest and slacking at his sales job. He started digital art and mixing PVA paint at the age of 23. That’s when he started getting commissions for indoor murals. It led to his first street mural, using a spray can for the first time, three years ago in Maboneng, the art heart of Johannesburg.
Sonny never looked back to his desk days in sales; he has become an international artist.
What gives him a kick is seeing passers-by – who might have never stepped into an art gallery – stopping to stare at his work.
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A few years after his first painting, it’s now his living. He charges between R1,000 ($75) and R2,000 ($150) per square meter and some of the murals can be as large as 400 meters squared.
The long-haired, short and soft-toned 30-year-old’s work is influenced by Africa, where he was born and bred. His work focuses on nature and animals, combining realism with fantasy.
“At the moment, I’m busy bringing more abstract elements in my work which hasn’t been seen in my paintings yet, but all my new murals will slowly have abstract elements and incorporate people,” he says.
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Sonny recently completed a body of work for a solo exhibition titled <a href="http://sonnyonline.com/tothebone/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">To The Bone</a>.
This work combines wildlife imagery with a social message about the importance of animal conservation; a passion he truly has. He hopes to create international awareness of the fragile state of wildlife in the world.
<blockquote>“I aim to inspire people through the pure beauty of these animals, while reinforcing their importance in shaping our cultural identity.”</blockquote>
<div id="attachment_32694" style="width: 680px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32694" class=" wp-image-32694" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Transkei-Cheetah-Transkei-by-Sonny_Photo-by-Tessa-Cunliffe-300x200.jpg" alt="Sonny's Transkei Cheetah artwork, in Transkei (Photo by Tessa Cunliffe)" width="670" height="447" />Sonny&#8217;s Transkei Cheetah artwork, in Transkei (Photo by Tessa Cunliffe)</div>
Sonny has partnered with <a href="https://www.google.co.za/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwi8pKmwxvHUAhViKsAKHX5RBpYQFggiMAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifaw.org%2F&amp;usg=AFQjCNFOanECt8D37Y251dlwq0POsaorzg" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">IFAW</a> (International Fund for Animal Welfare) to raise awareness through the murals and artworks and has a campaign to sell artwork online where a portion of the proceeds will be given to this fund.
“Anybody that sees the murals and follows the link will see what it’s about, and can give R10 or R20 ($1.50),” he says.
He also has a sponsorship drive, where companies or people can sponsor a wall or part of it. The money will be used to spread graffiti to more parts of the world. The sponsorship will enable him to fly over and paint a wall.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2017/06/26/no-reservations/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Future Of African Women In Art</a>
He has recently painted in New York and other parts America. He will be moving on to Canada, London and then Amsterdam. He also has a series of murals to sort out for the rest of the world.
<blockquote>“I paint in third world countries where they have the animals but struggle to see the importance, but I also paint in first world countries where they have power over the rest of the world to try change legislations to help protect the animals,” he says.</blockquote>
African art is been noticed around the world thanks to the likes of Sonny. Not only is he making an income, he is making a difference in society by conserving nature with a spray can and walls.
(Featured photo by <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/author/tlhabi-monnakgotla/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Motlabana Monnakgotla</a>)
Stay up do date with Sonny&#8217;s latest work on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/sonnyartist/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/sonnyartist/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Instagram</a>
<div id="attachment_32696" style="width: 658px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32696" class=" wp-image-32696" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Little-Girl-Johannesburg-by-Sonny-300x240.jpg" alt="Little Girl, Johannesburg (Photo by Sonny)" width="648" height="518" />Little Girl, Johannesburg (Photo by Sonny)</div>
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<div id="attachment_32695" style="width: 660px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32695" class=" wp-image-32695" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Speakers-Corner-Cape-Town-by-Sonny-300x200.jpg" alt="Speakers Corner, Cape Town (Photo by Sonny)" width="650" height="433" />Speakers Corner, Cape Town (Photo by Sonny)</div>
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Spray It Out – Graffiti To Protect Animals

Indian billionaire and chairman emeritus of Max Group, Analjit Singh, a <a href="/cover-story/2015/07/01/man-pouring-millions-rich-slice-africa/">FORBES AFRICA cover in 2015</a>, says he is increasing his investments in the hospitality sector in South Africa. On a visit to Johannesburg mid-May, Singh spoke to FORBES AFRICA of his bias towards the Cape. In four years since setting up a base and “home away from home” in the Franschhoek winelands of Cape Town, he has “17 land holdings here and substantial hectarage under wine cultivation”. He established the Leeu Collection here, and now owns three hotels, five restaurants and an award-winning wine business.
<blockquote>
I am a citizen of the world. Why must I only be in India?
</blockquote>
says the Founder and Chairman of Max India Limited with diverse interests in life insurance, healthcare, health insurance and senior living.
He has been ranked by FORBES as one of India’s richest, with a net worth of $1.2 billion. Singh is a partner in Mullineux &amp; Leeu Family Wines, which produces wines in the Swartland wine region, some 800 kilometers north of Cape Town. This is overseen by winemaking duo Chris and Andrea Mullineux. He runs a 17-key country house and winery on Leeu Estates, a 68-hectare farm in the Franschhoek valley, and secures wine from 50 vineyards in Franschhoek and Stellenbosch. In the charming one-road village of Franschhoek, he also renovated Leeu House into a 12-room hotel that’s “very Cape Dutch” featuring thatched roofs, gables with plaster art, shutters and stable doors. He has also installed on both sides of the large garden, statues of Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi – bought at the Everard Read art gallery in Johannesburg.
<div id="attachment_31779" style="width: 1031px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31779" class="wp-image-31779 size-full" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Analjit-Singh-Leeu-Estate-Manor-House-Façade-photo-supplied-e1496233976739.jpg" alt="" width="1021" height="512" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Analjit-Singh-Leeu-Estate-Manor-House-Façade-photo-supplied-e1496233976739.jpg 1021w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Analjit-Singh-Leeu-Estate-Manor-House-Façade-photo-supplied-e1496233976739-300x150.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Analjit-Singh-Leeu-Estate-Manor-House-Façade-photo-supplied-e1496233976739-600x301.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Analjit-Singh-Leeu-Estate-Manor-House-Façade-photo-supplied-e1496233976739-768x385.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1021px) 100vw, 1021px" />The Leeu Estate Manor House. Photo supplied</div>
Incidentally, the gallery has just opened in Franschhoek as well, in partnership with Leeu Collection. At the Heritage Square piazza a few meters away, he opened Marigold, the town’s first Indian restaurant, and, again a first for Franschhoek, he set up Tuk Tuk, a craft beer microbrewery. He says it is now the most happening place in Franschhoek. “I am not done yet in Franschhoek,” says Singh. “I was looking for new vistas and personal renewal, so Franschoek appealed. I have found such connect and sense of place here.”
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With a “substantial, high-end presence” in the winelands, Singh’s boutique winery targets the export markets of the United Kingdom, some parts of America, Europe and is just about making an entry into Asia.
Singh, who fell in love with South Africa when he first visited the country in 2010 for the FIFA World Cup, spends more than three months a year here. “I fired myself as the chairman of most companies [in the Max Group], I have no operational responsibilities. My level of involvement is almost negligible,” says Singh.
South Africa’s recent downgrading and all the noise in the current political environment is clearly no deterrent for the international investor. “We can be victims of analysis paralysis… If you spoke to someone in France 10 days ago, they would say don’t invest in France. Look at it now, they say ‘invest in France’,” he says.
He has also now acquired properties in Lake District, Florence and London. With a total of “68 keys combined in all properties” around the world, he says this will grow to 105 by the end of next year.
Singh’s long-term vision is to venture into game parks and safaris in this part of Africa, and he is also currently looking at the education space in South Africa.

Analjit Singh

Indian Billionaire Singh Not Done Yet In South Africa

Lot 234, the Preller, Space Angel, signed and dated ’71, oil and gesso on canvas.
“I have three million one hundred thousand. Three two, thank you. Three four, three five, six, seven, eight, nine, four million. Four million two hundred thousand with you, four million four, four six, yes, I saw that nod, go ahead, five. Now five two, five four, five six, I’m at the back of the room now, she’s got it at five eight, it is with you madam, at five million eight hundred thousand rand, at five eight, all done? This is fair warning, I’m going to sell it …”
Bang, goes his gavel on the desk. “Your number please?” asks auctioneer Dendy Easton in his plummy British accent. We are at the Wanderers Club in Johannesburg on November 7, 2016.
It has taken one minute, 40 seconds for somebody to spend R5.8 million ($440,000) for Alexis Preller’s painting. There is scattered applause.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4643" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/original-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />
“Lot 235, the Edoardo Villa …”
Bidding continues for nearly 300 lots until the final one, Lot 293, a Keith Alexander painting, goes for R360,000 ($27,000).
There is a lot of money in art, and a lot of it in this particular room. Here in Johannesburg, among these bidders, the South African economy looks pretty robust. Apartheid  marginalized South African artists, which means that collectors from China to New Zealand, America to Britain, South America to Europe, are now greedy for South African art. Greediest of all, it seems, are South Africans themselves. While the country’s economy may be stressed, the wealthy have cash for pretty things to hang on their walls. A lot of it.
Of course there are good artists in Africa. Some of the best from the continent are South African.
“The fact that there is so much money for art now is to some extent because we were marginalized. And our artists are good. Very good,” says Emma Bedford, Senior Art Specialist and a Director of Aspire Art Auctions.
“We have a history of good art schools in this country. The rest of Africa doesn’t,” interrupts Ruarc Peffers, the tall, suave and experienced auctioneer of Aspire, a brand new South African auction house that on Halloween night in Johannesburg sold over $2.2-million’s worth of South African art, at an auction a week before the big Strauss one. Discovery boss Adrian Gore is a major Aspire investor, as is Brian Joffe of Bidvest.
It’s a funny business, art collection and auctions.
Frank Kilbourn, Executive Chairman of the biggest and oldest South African auction house, Strauss &amp; Co, which sold the Preller mentioned above, tells me he is reluctant to tell people art is an investment. “But it is,” he adds. “If you bought South African art a decade or two or three ago, you have made a lot of money, or could make if you sell now.”
“The whole world is waking up to our art. It is reaching record prices. If you did invest, you made money. But that’s not what art is all about.”
It is about appreciation, culture, civilization, aesthetics, collecting, pride, knowledge, historicity, philosophy.
To show just how the market is booming, Kilbourn, who has separate degrees in law, commerce and philosophy, explains that three huge new galleries are being built in South Africa.
In Cape Town there is Zeitz MOCAA (Museum for Contemporary Art in Africa) at the Waterfront – old grain silos with a five-star hotel on top of an eight-story gallery; Javett is being built in Pretoria, in collaboration with the University of Pretoria, and the third is a private one being built at Steenberg in the Cape.
“This is a wonderful thing for the country, and for art,” Kilbourn, a collector himself, says with a happy smile. His team tell me I mustn’t fail to mention that their auction in Cape Town earlier this year realized $4.2 million, the second highest ever for an art auction. “And that’s in Cape Town!”
At the Strauss auction in Johannesburg exactly a week after Aspire’s auction, Kilbourn buys two paintings himself. One is an Erik Laubscher Still Life with Pumpkin Slice which was expected to reach R300,000 ($22,000) to R400,000 ($30,000).
At R400,000 the auctioneer pauses, Kilburn just nods, “420?” Easton looks around the room … “430!” he says triumphantly. There is another bidder, bidding against Kilburn. Now it is rapid fire from the auctioneer, finger pointing left then right, like watching tennis at Wimbledon: “440, 480; 500, 520; 550, 580; 600, 620; 650, 680; 700, 720; 750, 780; 800… 820. Fair warning… R820,000, I’m going to sell it, here in the second row.”
Bang goes Easton’s gavel. In half a minute, the price doubled.
While interviewing Kilbourn after the auction he greets somebody mischievously, giving him a big smile, asking “Were you the bastard pushing me up on the Laubscher? I thought you were my friend?”
Small auction rival Aspire has been in business since July this year. They are a chip off the older Strauss house, for which most of them worked. The four Aspire art specialists have qualifications in fine art, art history, art theory, criticism and curating.
Aspire Auctioneer Ruarc Peffers, a graduate of the famous Michaelis School of Art at the University of Cape Town, tells me he has done “Oh, over 100 auctions” in his career, but the Johannesburg one was his first for Aspire. He describes how it is “left foot, right foot” stuff: the auctioneer must ensure he has the momentum on his side, as he goes up in about ten percent increases.
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In South African law the auction house is allowed to bid, so one of the auctioneer’s tasks is to get the bid to a real bidder, not the house. There are a bunch of bidders on phones from New York, Australia, even New Zealand – and they are not ex-South Africans, he says. Plus there are internet bids being controlled by Aspire staff member Rafael Powell. Hunched over his computer, every now and then he lifts his bidding number to bid for somebody on the net, who is bidding from somewhere on the planet to get South African art.
If the reserve price is in the millions, the auctioneer goes up in hundreds of thousands.
Estimates in the catalogue usually have the reserve price as the bottom estimate. If that’s not reached, the item is not sold. Although the auctioneer ‘closes’ at say R450,000, if the ‘estimate’ was R500,000 to R1 million, the item is probably going to remain with its owner.
After the auction a lot of buying and selling activity takes place, people making offers, bringing down reserve prices, offering to buy an already bought item. Frenetic stuff for staff for the 24 hours after the final hammer falls.
I went to both auctions, a week apart, one by Strauss and one by Aspire.
Emma Bedford says: “Modernist artists on our sale who performed best included JH Pierneef, Hugo Naudé, Alexis Preller, Edoardo Villa, Erik Laubscher and Douglas Portway. But what really excited us was how well the contemporary artists did, many breaking records. Like photographers David Goldblatt and Pieter Hugo, as well as artists Peter Schütz, William Kentridge, Diane Victor and Athi-Patra Ruga.”
The top Preller on Aspire’s sale Profiled figures (Mirrored Images) reached $468,000 on the auction.
I ask the Aspire auctioneer: “Why don’t you say something about the painting during the auction? You only say ‘Lot 14, the Irma Stern. I have a bid of 500 (thousand)’ but nothing about the work?”
He says: “Bidders know the works, there were three days of viewing, they have the catalogue. And you only have about three minutes for each lot, otherwise ‘bidders’ fatigue’ sets in, and you don’t want that. We did 121 lots in two hours.”
At the Strauss auction, I realize how right he is. I find myself nodding off when we get to lots 260, 270, 280.
Lot 249, a Preller Woman with Red Hair goes for R2 million ($150,000) although it was expected to only reach R200,000 ($15000), and Lot 248, another Preller, Revelation which was expected to get R400,000 ($30,000) goes for R2.4 million ($180,000) to a telephone bidder. A tiny Preller painting, Ritual Bull, only 7.5cmx9cm, goes for R550,000 ($41,000).
Strangely enough, the real star of the Strauss auction, the so-called lost Preller Adam – a heavy piece of art the size of a big coffin, absolutely exquisite in my untutored opinion, goes for a bid of only R6 million ($450,000), a huge bargain. (Commission of about  $59,000 will be added to the price the bidder will actually pay.)
“This was the wrong audience for that work. It is a museum piece, not really for a public auction,” Kilburn shrugs and says. It was expected to reach $490,000 to $680,000.
This is a world of wealthy people, who acquire art to enjoy it on their walls, invest in it, and show it off. Their disposable income is serious money. Strange then, after watching these folk jump up bidding in hundreds of thousands of rands without blinking an eye, to hear them in the Wanderers’ parking lot debating whether to give the car guard a R5 coin or a R10 note.

Art For Art’s Sake – but give us your Cash

It’s just another day for Mervyn Dowman, carrying a leather bag he made with his own hands, with a laptop inside, to show potential clients his work.
”I’m not very shy; I just let my work speak for me.”
Those are the words of Cape Town-born Dowman, a mosaic artist from the day he discovered magic in his hands.
The long-haired, green-eyed Dowman, who speaks fast and soft, strangling his syllables, walks me through the streets of Maboneng lighting one cigarette after another.
Maboneng is the art precinct east of the Johannesburg city centre. It’s far from where Dowman learned to use his hands.
As a young boy, he had to rake the double plot they lived in with his grandparents for pocket money; he also had to make compost from chicken manure. Dowman knew too well the idea of working for money.
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He got his first casual job at the age of 13 as a packer at a Shoprite supermarket on weekends.
In his teenage years, Dowman met new friends who had a messy, but arty room with fishing nets and footprints going up to the ceiling. It awakened the artist in him.
Dowman moved around the Western Cape province as a boy and often went camping with friends. His childhood wasn’t rough but he didn’t finish high school because he got bored, he says.
“Then I applied for three kinds of apprenticeships; I [spent] a year at home and my friend’s brother was telling me it’s time to get out,” he says.
He got a plumbing apprenticeship for five years; at the end of the first year, his boss told him he was ready. He was given a box of tools and felt like a pro. Fixing roof leaks was his speciality.
Dowman loved the neatness of the plumbing trade but was determined to become a teenage entrepreneur.
”I was bored of plumbing, I’ve done it, I know it. And I had a love for leather work. At 14, I had made my first girlfriend a purse,” he says.
His aunt’s father-in-law was a shoemaker; he showed him how to make a purse and Dowman went on to make boots for hippies. It was very fashionable at the time, he says.
“Then I asked the girls at school for old earring studs, I used that to make patterns on the leather.”
Between the apprenticeship and entrepreneurship, Dowman received back pay from his first year worth R109 ($7.50) and bought tools to make belts and purses and sold them to neighbors.
Colleagues started ordering belts and purses for their wives and daughters as well.
At the age of 21, he resigned. He left plumbing and moved to Johannesburg. He had a stand at the Market Theatre Flea Market – the first of its kind in Johannesburg – selling tripod leather stools, bags and belts.
He made a tidy profit; selling about 10 stools a week. Out of one skin he’d make eight stools; the skin cost him about R100 ($7) and he sold each stool for around R30 ($2), he says.
“When you make something, you must make it like a jewel, put effort into it, because we can see, people are not stupid, we can see that effort is put into that.”
He made enough money to move into a commune, that’s where he made new friends who were set builders in the movie industry. Dowman thought he could try his hand at this and got a job backstage making props, like life-size dinosaurs made of fibreglass.
He moved back to Cape Town where films are a big thing. He was so good that he started doing sets for adverts in the United States.
“We took a 1976 Cadillac and cut it up, stretched it, put a pool in it; it was like a fantasy drive with kids in bikinis,” he says.
Dowman was a specialist in the set building industry and made good money. One morning, he decided to drop everything, move back to Johannesburg and try something different.
“One day, I switched on the TV with the intention to watch sport and up comes this doccie, in Italian, with subtitles saying ‘a large family still doing mosaics’. Like a eureka, a boom, a lightbulb in my head, this is my new job,” he laughs.
He found a contact and experimented making mirror frames from mosaics. With a friend he started a mosaic company in a factory in Bezuidenhout Valley, near the center of Johannesburg.
They had enough money to employ 30 people, whom Dowman trained. He believes this company changed the lives of the people they employed, out of the 30, 17 were women focusing on mosaics while the men made tables and chairs from metal.
The company went to Decorex, a lifestyle, design and décor viewing event, where they won an award for the best stand in 2001.
The company was doing well but clients didn’t want to go to Bezuidenhout Valley because it was seen as a crime-ridden area. The business moved to Newtown and that’s when he left the company.
“I was a partner but nothing was signed on the bottom line. Verbal things never really work,” he says.
Dowman soldiered on with mosaics.
He worked from his garage flat with four youngsters who learned the trade. They later moved to a bigger space in Houghton. By then, Dowman was known as the ‘Mosaic Guy’ in Johannesburg; his name was on everyone’s lip.
Today, Dowman is a solo artist with numerous works around the Maboneng Precinct, among other areas in South Africa. He works from a studio not far from Hartbeespoort Dam in the North West province.
His company is called Just Mosaic. The magic in his hands means his work is seen in clubs, bars, offices and graves.
He is an ever-growing solo artist with no debts, willing to explore anything that he can turn his magic hands to.

Tag: Art

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