South Facing Exhibition

The Wits City Institute will host the opening exhibition by Ângela Ferreira with other partners.

South Facing is Ângela Ferreira’s first solo exhibition at a public institution in South Africa. The exhibition includes recent and previously unseen work as well as a commission in response to the Gallery’s Meyer Pienaar extension.

Built in 1989 during the final years of apartheid, the extension was intended to create a more accessible public threshold between the original neo-classical colonial-era building and the adjacent urban park. Inherent structural problems resulted in JAG’s temporary closure in 2017, providing an opportunity to re-examine the relationship between an institution once regarded as a symbol of elitism with its emergent multicultural post-apartheid urban context.

Continuing an oeuvre of architecturally-responsive critical artworks, the commission draws on the visual history of the construction processes of the extension, particularly the contentious barrel-like copper-vaulted roofs, extending Ferreira’s ongoing investigations into colonial-era mining in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Stone Free , 2012, and the Entrer dans la Mine , 2013).

Ferreira’s work is concerned with the ongoing impact of colonialism and post-colonialism in the present, particularly in the Global South. Her primary area of investigation has been the translation of modernism in the African-colonial context, and the complex social, aesthetic and architectural legacies of the modernist project. Ferreira’s practice draws its visual criticality from her dual African Portuguese identity, and the resulting body of work is rooted in South Africa, Mozambique and Portugal. The Johannesburg exhibition connects these three spaces, and provides an opportunity for audiences to engage with the artist’s multi-disciplinary research-based practice.

This exhibition is hosted in partnership with the Ministério da Cultura ,Direção-Geral das Artes, Camões -Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua, Camões - Centro Cultural Português (Maputo), Embassy of Portugal in South Africa, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, City of Joburg, Friends of JAG and the Emile Stipp Collection 

Walkabout of the exhibition: Tuesday, 9 May 2017 from 10:30
Exhibition runs from 7 May - 30 July 2017 at Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG)
Hours: Tuesday to Sunday 10:00 – 17:00

Curated by Amy Watson

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