The CAPE Africa Platform presents CAPE 2006: South Africas first ever large-scale contemporary African art exhibition.
23 September-22 October 2006
Exhibition Title: TRANS CAPE
Art Director: Gavin Jantjes
Curators : Khwezi Ghule & Gabi Ngcobo
Cape Town, South Africa
For more information on TRANS CAPE and the fringe exhibition, visit the CAPE website at www.capeafrica.org or to phone 27 21 488 3064 or e-mail info [at] capeafrica.org
The city of Cape Town is set to host CAPE 2006, the first ever large-scale exhibition of African contemporary art to be staged in South Africa. CAPE 2006 opens on September 23 and runs for four weeks, filling the city with the work of approximately 70 contemporary artists across Africa and its Diaspora.
The exhibition is the first in a series of contemporary African art exhibitions planned by the CAPE Africa Platform, a Non-Profit Organisation that aims to culturally connect Cape Town, South Africa, Africa and the Diaspora.
The CAPE programme includes ongoing public discussion sessions and a rotating two-year cycle of large-scale contemporary African art exhibitions leading up to a major Pan-African art event to coincide with the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup in South Africa.
This years exhibition is art directed by South African born and internationally acclaimed artist and curator, Gavin Jantjes. Jantjes will be working together with two young South African curators, Gabi Ngcobo and Khwezi Gule, as well as an international advisory team that includes Manuel Borja-Villel (Dir. Macba Barcelona, Spain), Prof Sarat Maharaj (Lunds Uni Sweden), artist Kendell Geers, Dakar Biennale curator Koyo Kouoh and writer Yvonne Owuor to explore movement and change on the African continent.
The title of the exhibition is TRANS CAPE referring to the shifts, changes, disruptions and re-locations of people on the African continent, as well as the movements and changes in contemporary African visual culture.
Movement and change are significant to any understanding of Africa in our time, says Jantjes. These are also fundamental ideas in the making of the TRANS CAPE exhibition.
TRANS CAPE aims to shift preconceived ideas about centre and peripheral modernity and change exotic, archaic and neo-colonial notions of Africas art by exploring how contemporary African artists relate their work to current realities. It will involve emerging and established African artists, working in a variety of mediums – including painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, photography, video, film and performance.
TRANS CAPE also aims to transform the publics idea of an exhibition by offering alternate modes of presentation and encounter with the art of our time.
The exhibition will be choreographed across the city of Cape Town, inviting visitors to actively engage and re-read the cities geography; as represented through artistic intervention in the urban fabric, histories and everyday life of the city.
It is conceived as a journey that uses public spaces and locates new site-specific and outdoor locations along a route that traverses Cape Towns diverse communities and challenges the hierarchical division between the city centre and its peripheral townships and suburbs.
Moving TRANS CAPEs audience along this route is an essential part of the curatorial concept. Alongside the traditional public transport system, specially created art vehicles will be commissioned to transport visitors to exhibition sites.
An exciting program of Pan-African music events, film screenings, discussion sessions and workshops will be held over the duration of the exhibition.
The curatorial team will select artists and artworks for the exhibition based on an intensive research process. For more information on TRANS CAPE and the fringe exhibition, visit the CAPE website at www.capeafrica.org or to phone 27 21 488 3064 or e-mail info@capeafrica.org
For accommodation and flight bookings to TRANS CAPE in Cape Town, South Africa contact:
Cape Town Tourism
103 Louis Building, 4 Regent Road, Sea Point, Cape Town
(tel) 27 21 434 1750
(fax) 27 21 434 8597
bookings@cape-town.org
For press information contact:
Deborah Weber
Head of Communications
CAPE Africa Platform
0835195668
deborah@capeafrica.org