Opening \u00a09th May, 7pm<\/p>\n
Introduction by G\u00fcnther Holler-Schuster<\/p>\n
In the course of ‘Gallery Weekend Graz’ (Galerientage Graz) the exhibition will already be open frolm 5th to 7th May<\/p>\n
Exhibition until 3rd \u00a0June<\/p>\n
With\u00a0Ann Gollifer, Zyma Amien and Johann Louw the Austrian gallery Reinisch Contemporary\u00a0expands\u00a0its observational space, casting its glance to\u00a0the African South. The special historical and political situation of the countries ofsouthern Africa\u00a0\u2013 primarily the Republic of South Africa \u2013 occupies art in a variety of ways.\u00a0Content linked\u00a0to the respective biographies manifests\u00a0itself\u00a0in the cultural connotations of materials used, which also reflect postcolonial dynamics and underline the subjective integration\u00a0into\u00a0these developments.\u00a0Repression and violence,\u00a0as constant and\u00a0givencomponents of one\u2019s existence,\u00a0are expressed in the process. According to Stuart Hall, all of us observe the world from a certain particularity related to place and time, and our respective cultural-historical background. What we say and do is, as such, caught\u00a0within\u00a0a\u00a0certain\u00a0context.\u00a0In relation to art, this affects both the artistic statement\u00a0as well as its reception. Problems\u00a0of communication\u00a0are, thus, a matter of course and their\u00a0eradication often a noble goal \u2013\u00a0not only within art.<\/p>\n
South African artist\u00a0Zyma Amien\u00a0references the painful life stories of her mother and grandmother, who both spent decades working in the South African textile industry for minimum wage. Exploitation and\u00a0the harsh fight for survival marked the personal histories of these women, who \u2013 representative of many in this industry \u2013 laboured under\u00a0the\u00a0most difficult conditions. Amien uses\u00a0the\u00a0needles, fabrics and work uniforms\u00a0of\u00a0both women for her paintings, assemblages and installations. She employs sewing machines as monstrous technical apparatuses, which are less\u00a0representative of productivity than of the basic integration of humans into\u00a0a seemingly absurd\u00a0production process.<\/p>\n
Ann Gollifer, an artist from Botswana, also deals with textile materials and their cultural-historical, as well as socio-political, significance.\u00a0\u2018Letesi\u2019 is an expression\u00a0for the printed fabrics\u00a0known and distributed as \u2018wax\u2019 or \u2018wax hollandaise\u2019\u00a0in western Africa.\u00a0Javanese batiks brought back by African seafarers were the\u00a0original\u00a0predecessors of these colourful fabrics, which play a central role in African sartorial culture.\u00a0These fabrics were soon produced in Europe and, more recently, also in China, from where they are re-imported into Africa. The colonialist background of these\u00a0products is far-reaching\u00a0and attains an additional facet through their cheap mass production in Asia.<\/p>\n
Amien (painter, graphic designer, photographer and author of numerous texts), who sees her artistic practice as a process of translation from one medium to the other,\u00a0comments on\u00a0the already opulent, narrative fabric designs by applying\u00a0additional\u00a0embroidery and prints. This way, the traditionally expressive \u2018Letesi\u2019 fabrics obtain individual contextualisation and represent an aesthetic counterbalance to existing fabric designs.<\/p>\n
Johann Louw, South African and painter, occupies himself with the subjective suffering of the individual within a devastated environment and societal structure.\u00a0The aftermath of Apartheid is a defining feature of South African society \u2013 far removed from liberated coexistence. Racial differences and exploitation are a given for very many people in southern Africa. Human\u00a0alienation, loneliness and existentialism \u2013 these are the essential starting points for the eminent painter Johann Louw. In his charcoal drawings, all of which seem much bleaker than his paintings, the atmosphere of existential thrownness is further intensified. Individual hyenas and monkeys have settled in the apocalyptic nothingness of their surroundings.\u00a0Like their human counterparts in Louw\u2019s paintings, they appear mutated, behaviourally deranged and isolated.<\/p>\n
These are\u00a0dark images, which Gollifer, Amien and Louw\u00a0originate here. Art becomes, as it were, a protocol of development \u2013 one that is historical and socio-political, as well as highly individual, almost intimate.<\/p>\n
G\u00fcnther Holler-Schuster<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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