Southern Guild will exhibit for the first time at The Armory Show in New York City at the
Javits Center on Manhattan’s West Side from 8-10 September. Situated in the main section of
the fair, the gallery’s booth will focus on the work of sculptural artist Zizipho Poswa (South
Africa), painters Kamyar Bineshtarigh (Iran/South Africa) and Manyaku Mashilo (South
Africa) and conceptual artist Oluseye (Nigeria/UK/ Canada).
Driven by a deep interest in materiality and process, Southern Guild offers a platform for
diverse African narratives explored through multi-disciplinary artforms. The gallery’s
presentation at Armory speaks of its interest in bringing the ancestral into conversation with
the contemporary.
Southern Guild’s booth will feature:
∙New and recent work by South African sculptural artist Zizipho Poswa, including a
monumental all-bronze totem, commissioned specifically for the fair, alongside a pair
of sculptures from the artist’s 2022 body of work, uBuhle boKhokho (Beauty of Our
Ancestors). Inspired by her Xhosa culture and evoking powerfully feminine forms, the
artist’s work stands in tribute to the matriarchs and rural African women who raised
her.
Poswa’s participation in the Armory Show follows her warmly received first US
solo, iiNtsika zeSizwe (Pillars of the Nation), at Galerie56 in New York’s Tribeca this
past spring; a three-month summer residency at the Center for Contemporary
Ceramics (CCC) at California State University in Long Beach (CSULB); and
inclusion in Terra Cognita: A Ceramic Story at Mariane Ibrahim in Chicago.
∙Several expansive paintings by young Iranian artist Kamyar Bineshtarigh, whose solo
exhibition at Southern Guild’s Cape Town gallery coincides with the fair. Born just
outside Tehran, Bineshtarigh moved to South Africa with his family when he was 15
years old. The artist’s interest in text, particularly Arabic script and calligraphy, has
become an explorative means to study the nature of mark-making and the cultural
complexities that often arise through translation.
Bineshtarigh’s singular process
involves applying layers of ink, paint and glue to the walls of his studio building, an
historic clothing factory in a gentrifying industrial neighbourhood of Cape Town,
which he peels away from the structure before applying a hessian backing. The
finished work stands as a record of the passing of time, a multi-dimensional spatial
archive.
∙A series of acrylic and ink paintings by South African artist Manyaku Mashilo depicting
spectral scenes of Black figures floating through spare, dreamlike landscapes.
Mashilo’s work opens a pathway out of the psychic suffering imposed by racism and
restrictive religious practices (in her case, the Zion Christian Church) towards a state
of spiritual transcendence. Cinematic in their vision, her paintings bring together
elements of figuration and abstraction, pitting flatly painted shapes against areas
suffused with ink wash. Mashilo will hold her first solo exhibition with Southern
Guild in November this year.
∙Multiple installations of talisman-like objects from Nigerian-Canadian artist Oluseye’s
ongoing Eminado Series. Made from “diasporic debris” – artifacts, discarded materials
and found objects he collects on his trans-Atlantic travels – these works embody the
transgenerational movement of the Black diaspora. Oluseye was an artist-in-residence
at the GUILD Residency in Cape Town in early 2023, during which some of these
works were completed. He will hold his first solo exhibition with Southern Guild in
November 2023.
Southern Guild’s presentation at Armory is rooted in a shift toward a new African vanguard
where purpose and representation can be renegotiated with vital agency. The featured artists
call to an alternate world as a means of shedding historic traumas and reimagining a healed,
whole and more abundant self.
