Kendell Geers: Age of Iron, 2012, Iron oxide and ink on paper, 102 × 66 × 0.2 cm, Photo from Stephen Friedman Gallery  & Portrait at Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2013

Paradoxes and Contemporary African Culture(s)

Kendell Geers and Mara Ambrožič in conversation

What was left of contemporary art after the 1990s, and what kind of contemporaneity we are now living in is one of the main topics of the conversation with the artist Kendell Geers, on show at the Metelkova Museum of Contemporary Art (+MSUM) in Ljubljana.

The event is part of Africa Day, Ljubljana, 25-26 May 2016.

The debate will revolve around a specific selection of five artistic interventions and projects produced by the artist over the past decades, including the famous Title Withheld (Vitrine) and Self Portrait from the early 1990s, which marked the artist’s worldwide affirmation, as well as his return to South Africa after years of exile imposed during the Apartheid. The selected works, together with Brick (1988), FuckFace (2007), Motus Liber (Fetish, 2006) and Age on Iron (2012), have not only radically marked the history of contemporary art, but have opened upthe debate and initiated an awareness of political contradictions and historical phantoms, as well as an understanding of the function of liberation movements in the African continent and in recent global geo-political shifts. Through the works of Kendell Geers the question of contemporary culture shows itself to be a paradox, and points out the fragility of the modernist temptation to frame and affirm a conventional identity on a general, global level. Via insight into his political actions, works and recent commitments, the conversation will also focus on the potential and futurity inscribed in ‘Africanness’ within the field of artistic and cultural production, including the emergence of initiatives that have been developed in several African countries over the past few years.

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Kendell Geers (South Africa, 1968) lives and works in Brussels. One of the most prominent South African artist of our time, Kendell Geers was one of the few young men that were strongly involved in anti-apartheid movement and who publicly refused to serve in the South African Defence Force at the end of the ‘80s. Such activities lead him faced years in exile, retuning to South Africa only after apartheid was suspended. Among his notorious actions, in 1993 during Venice Biennial he officially changed his date of birth to May 1968, a momentous year in world history for human liberation and equality. His work, often described as political, seeks confrontation with the viewer, and is concerned with power, its relations and the manner in which it shapes our experiences. Often described as interventions, the works act to shock and disrupt our perception of the status quo, to map the degree to which individual agency is constrained by social, political and historical conventions. Geers’ work has been shown in numerous international group exhibitions, including dOCUMENTA 11, Kassel (2002); ‘Check List – Luanda Pop’, First African Pavilion, 52nd International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale (2007) and ‘Há sempre um copo de mar para o homem navegar’, 29th São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo (2010); ‘Irrespektiv’, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent / BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art Gateshead / Moca – Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, Lyon / MART, Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Trento, among others. His recent solo shows include ‘Kendell Geers. 1988–2013’, Haus der Kunst, Munich; ‘Fin de Partie’, Galleria Continua, Beijing (2011); ‘Third World Disorder’, Goodman Gallery, South Africa.

Mara Ambrožič is a researcher, writer, editor, and expert on cooperation strategies. She lives and works in Paris. From 2007 to 2012 she lectured on counter-cultural movements at the Faculty of Arts and Design in the IUAV in Venice. Between 2008 and 2012 she developed an international program for contemporary African artists offering public interventions addressing pressing social and political issues (AE-International Residencies in Venice, Marsilio Editore, 2012). She curated Art as a Thinking Process. Visual Forms of Knowledge Production (2011), later published as collected writings (ed. with Angela Vettese) by Sternberg Press Berlin, 2012. Between 2013 and 2014, she served as a Visiting Lecturer at the Sciences Po in Paris with a seminar on the implementation of cultural policies, and contributed to the outlining of the RAW Material Company Academy in Dakar. She served as research curator in 2014 at the Cultural department at Monnaie de Paris, and was in charge of the reconstruction of the exhibition “Section des Figures” within the retrospective exhibition on Marcel Marcel Broodthaers (Feb-May, 2015). Associate editor of Archive Books in Berlin, she recently initiated Libraries of the Future at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, an ongoing project around engaged publishing realities, writing practices and the reformative power of associationism.