NEW YORK, NY.- The Armory Show 2016 will feature eight special projects that bring together a group of emerging artists from Africa and the Diaspora, providing a glimpse of a generation of young artists that are challenging preconceptions surrounding the notion of “contemporary African art.”
The projects are curated by Julia Grosse and Yvette Mutumba. Participating artists include: Armory Commissioned Artist, Kapwani Kiwanga, Karo Akpokiere, Jared Ginsburg, Lebohang Kganye, Mame-Diarra Niang, Emeka Ogboh, Athi-Patra Ruga and Ed Young.
The aim of these projects is to contribute to an evolving narrative that art from Africa and the Diaspora can look, sound and feel many different ways. This is defined by the Focus curators’ Grosse and Mutumba as a new generation of “Young Global Contemporaries.” As a whole, the works on display at The Armory Show challenge, sometimes poke-fun at and ultimately call our attention to the art fair context in which they are experienced.
On Pier 92, Kapwani Kiwanga, along with Galerie Tanja Wagner (Berlin), will present The Secretary’s Suite, an interactive installation that investigates the complexities of gift economies. The project’s point of departure examines the history and tradition of gifted items within the United Nations’ art collection and will be composed of a single-channel video and a viewing environment inspired by the 1961 office of the United Nations Secretary General. As part of this installation, visitors will be able to take a series of limited edition prints depicting gifts given throughout history. In addition to her on-site commission, Kiwanga will create a limited edition screen print benefiting The Museum of Modern Art.
On Pier 94, Karo Akpokiere’s Alternate Art Fair will take place for the duration of the fair. Akpokiere, who was chosen to participate in the 56th Venice Biennale, will create a site-specific work from the perspective of a cast of fictitious artists and galleries. Elsewhere on Pier 94, visitors will be confronted by the irreverent work of Ed Young who, along with SMAC Gallery (Cape Town), will present an installation combining humour with unexpected materials in series of text-based works.
Afronova (Johannesburg) will present Lebohang Kganye’s animated film, Pied Piper's Voyage. In this work Kganye explores her familial history through the personification of her grandfather. Kganye slips into his persona, dressing up as the patriarch and reimagining her family’s historic narratives. Emeka Ogboh will present Oshodi Stock Exchange v 2.0, a soundscape that transports visitors to a Lagos bus stop scene, channelling the frenetic energy of the fair. Ogboh’s Market Symphony will be on view concurrently at Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C.
In the Focus Lounge, Jared Ginsburg and blank (Cape Town) will present Loop with Bamboo III which investigates cycles and loops with two motorized, kinetic sculptures that continually transform in shape as they move through a sequence of construction and deconstruction.
In the VIP Lounge on Pier 94, Athi-Patra Ruga and WHATIFTHEWORLD (Cape Town) will present A Land Without a People for a People Without A Land, a series of embroidered tapestries that use African tropes of myth as a contemporary response to the post-apartheid era. Photographer Mame-Diarra Niang presented by STEVENSON (Cape Town, Johannesburg), will show work reflecting on the plasticity of territory. In her vision the elements composing the landscape become an inevitable reflection of the self, a personal mythology.
