Nigeria’s Nyancho NwaNri’s work debuts at Africa’s largest contemporary art Museum

Nyancho NwaNri’

Nigeria’s Nyancho NwaNri’s work debuts at  Africa’s largest contemporary art Museum, Zeitz MOCAA as institution ushers in Summer with Two New Exhibitions

About Zeitz MOCAA Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa:

 Zeitz MOCAA is a public not-for-profit institution that collects, preserves, researches and exhibits contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora; conceives and hosts international exhibitions; develops supporting educational, discursive and enrichment programmes; encourages intercultural understanding; and strives towards access for all. The museum’s galleries feature rotating temporary exhibitions with a dedicated space for the permanent collection. The institution also includes the Centre for Art Education, the Centre for the Moving Image and The Atelier, a museum residency programme for artists living and working in Cape Town.

Zeitz MOCAA is situated at the Silo District, South Arm Road, V&A Waterfront in Cape

Town, South Africa, and is open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 am to 6 pm.

zeitzmocaa.museum

Press Release!!!

TWO NEW EXHIBITIONS USHER IN SUMMER AT ZEITZ MOCAA

● Two new exhibitions focused on lens-based practices mark the start of summer at
the museum

● Seeker, Seers, Soothsayers runs from 27 October 2023 through 13 October 2024

● Self as a Forgotten Monument by Mame-Diarra Niang runs from 17 November
2023 through 7 July 2024

(Cape Town, 8 November 2023): Zeitz MOCAA unveils two new exhibitions for summer,

marking the start of an exceptionally busy season for the institution. Focused on lens-based

practices, Self as a Forgotten Monument is a solo, survey exhibition by Mame-Diarra Niang

while Seekers, Seers, Soothsayers is a group exhibition. The shows and accompanying

programming solidify Zeitz MOCAA’s vision and mission to maintain its position as a

pan-African space and an active agent that caters to and nurtures society through art.

“It is heartening to realise all these ambitious projects at this moment; it is a culmination of

consolidated institutional progress and development, for which we have worked

exceptionally hard,” says Koyo Kouoh, Executive Director & Chief Curator at Zeitz MOCAA. “It

is our ongoing mission to shine the light on the work of artists and their contribution to our

society, and these exhibitions celebrate a luminary of the industry while supporting a new

generation of artists.”

Seekers, Seers, Soothsayers

27 October 2023 – 13 October 2024

Curated by Zeitz MOCAA Curator Tandazani Dhlakama and Curatorial Assistant

Beata America, and featuring the work of seven artists — Gladys Kalichini, Latedjou,

Sekai Machache, Nyancho NwaNri, Pamina Sebastiāo, Buhlebezwe Siwani and

Helena Uambembe — Seekers, Seers, Soothsayers explores thematic accounts and

experiences connected to the non-physical world — spiritual, psychological, supernatural

and abstract — by using the camera lens to expand, project and reflect on how historical

narratives are carried through the body and passed on from generation to generation. The

artists employ experimental film, immersive installation, performance, sound and narration

to depict how ritual, devotion and acts of remembrance can bring restoration and alternative

perspectives of the self within the cycle of life.

The number seven acts as an anchor throughout the exhibition, with seven artists

symbolising the spiritual significance the numeral holds across various belief and cultural

systems, from the past to the present. Seven has signified completion and perfection, has

been a symbol of divine introspection and perception, and represents healing and fulfilment.

There are seven phases of the moon and seven days in a week, each day named for a deity

in the Greco-Roman tradition. The Abrahamic God is also said to have rested on the seventh

day.

The exhibition title is inspired by the 2007 poem ‘Speaking in Tongues’ by Jamaican author

Kei Miller and forms a mantra for the constellation of works on display. The poem points to a

human need to engage with worlds one cannot touch while emphasising the limits of

language to fully describe the lived experience.

“Seekers, Seers, Soothsayers is an exhibition that celebrates the next generation of artists

who use lens-based media. The camera lens is an effective medium that the seven artists

have used to expand, project and reflect on how historical narratives are carried through the

body and passed on from generation to generation. The artists depict how ritual, devotion

and acts of remembrance can offer connectedness, bring restoration or provide alternative

ways of seeing oneself within the cycle of life,” notes Dhlakama.

Mame-Diarra Niang — Self as a Forgotten Monument, 17 November 2023 – 7 July 2024

Self as a Forgotten Monument is the first museum solo exhibition by Mame-Diarra Niang

and is a survey of the artist’s practice from the past decade, bringing together significant

bodies of work in dialogue in a spatial choreography. Niang’s prolific practice is

characterised by an exploratory, abstract and subversive approach to lens-based media,

such as photography and immersive audio-visual installation. Her work is an act of

remembering, through which she resists categorisation and assumptions about geographies

and specificities.

The exhibition's title is an invitation for viewers to embrace the artist’s notion of ‘Plasticity of

the Territory’, a concept that forms the foundation of her practice and asserts an inner

territory that names life as an experience in and of itself. A monument in Niang’s world

registers as a commemorative structure of remembrance, an offering to remind us of a

never-ending metamorphosis of the self. It is an inner space odyssey to build a self-portrait

in constant mutation.

Thato Mogotsi, Zeitz MOCAA Assistant Curator and co-curator of the exhibition, states:

“Niang’s solo exhibition, Self as a Forgotten Monument, invites viewers into a complex and

immersive visual vocabulary. Working across photography and immersive audio-visual

installation, the artist challenges our passive consumption of images.”

This survey exhibition includes a new iteration of Niang’s immersive room installation, which

grounds the artist’s sensibility and personal meaning-making embedded in her practice. The

work is site-specific to Zeitz MOCAA whilst retaining a lineage to the different spaces that

her other works have previously occupied. Since Time Is Distance in Space, a multi-screen

film installation that envelops the viewer, also includes a nuanced musical score composed

and recorded by Niang.

Self as a Forgotten Monument was curated by Zeitz MOCAA Senior Curator Storm Janse van

Rensburg and Assistant Curator Thato Mogotsi, and forms part of an ongoing series of

in-depth, research-based solo exhibitions from the museum that bring into focus and

contextualise the practices of important artists from Africa and its diaspora.

“This new season of exhibitions is an opportunity to acknowledge new voices in

contemporary art while celebrating the garland of stars comprising Zeitz MOCAA’s rich art

canon — artists who contribute to our exhibitions’ programme year after year,” adds Lungi

Morrison, Director of Institutional Advancement at Zeitz MOCAA. “As a pan-African museum

that happens to be located in Cape Town, Zeitz MOCAA is cognisant of its civic duty on the

continent, which includes facilitating access to art practice and praxis. The eminent summer

programming and exhibitions highlight our commitment and prioritisation of art education,

critical thinking and art history through the confluence of diverse mediums reflective of

Africa’s art ecology.”

Both Seekers, Seers, Soothsayers and Self as a Forgotten Monument by Mame-Diarra

Niang will be celebrated at 6 pm on Thursday, 16 November 2023, with the participating

artists present.

For media enquiries, contact Monare Matema at

monare@dnabrand.co.za or Luyanda Mhlongo at luyanda@dnabrand.co.za.

Participating Artists, includes the following: 

Buhle Portrait 2020_Image credit Lauren Theunissen

Gladys Kalichini

                               Helena Uambembe headshot. Photographer - Rupert Der Beer

Latedjou - Photos by KyameLo

Nyancho NwaNri. Photographer credit- Efo Sela Kojo Adjei

Pamina Sebastião

Sekai Machache_Credit - Washington Gwande

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