Southern Guild will participate in Untitled Art in Miami for the first time this year from Tuesday, 29
November through Saturday, 3 December 2022. The gallery will present a vibrant group exhibition of
sculpture, painting and multi-media works by eight established and emerging artists from across the
African continent.
Southern Guild’s diverse presentation for Untitled speaks to the potency of creativity and its capacity
to transmute experiences, offering catharsis to the individual and collective through lightness of being.
The gallery’s booth will feature a series of woven rubber works by multimedia artist Patrick Bongoy
(DRC), paintings by artists Jozua Gerrard (South Africa) and Yolanda Mazwana (South Africa),
sculpture by Dominique Zinkpè (Benin), ceramics by Shirley Fintz (Zimbabwe/South Africa) and
Xanthe Somers (Zimbabwe/UK), bronze sculpture by Justine Mahoney (South Africa) and collaged
paper works by Galia Gluckman (South Africa).
The presentation, in its explosive physicality and diverse form, draws on the experience of colour as a
means for aesthetic exploration. Cape Town-based ceramicist Shirley Fintz offers five vividly
coloured glazed stoneware forms from her series, The Healers, that correspond with the colours of the
energetic chakras within the body. Fintz’s sculptures reference her own collection of wooden spirit-
spouse figures found in the Ivory Coast, Ghana and Nigeria.
The two wall-hung works by Patrick Bongoy, made from recycled rubber inner tubes, speak to the
brutal colonial history of his native Congo. However, through Bongoy’s arduous and intimate creative
process, the artist has allowed the light-absorbing and industrial material to become whimsical,
intricate, even delicate, in its reconstructed skin.
Dominique Zinkpè’s assemblages consist of countless carved wooden Ibeji dolls that evoke the
Yoruba concept of twinship. Drawing on animist beliefs, each unit of Zinkpè’s sculpture is uniquely
carved as a subtle yet profound reminder of the uniqueness of every individual, coming together en
masse like a super organism.
Untitled Art 2022 marks the first time Jozua Gerrard and Yolanda Mazwana will be participating in an
international art fair. Both emerging artists, their works are permeated by a sense of freedom and
sensuality – a sense of abundance that tips over into excess in Xanthe Somers’ elaborate large-scale
ceramic piece and Galia Gluckman’s whimsical paper and angel hair constructions.
Collectively, Southern Guild’s presentation is a dynamic imagining of what is and what could possibly
be. Each of the featured works reach outwards to other worlds, confronting us with their lively
presence even as they invite us to envision something beyond it.
