Out of over 140 applicants, Nafasi Art Space is proud to present the selected artists for our 2020 programme.
Creatively, thematically and culturally our list this year is the most diverse we have had the privilege of inviting to the space. We thank each and every artist who applied and feel very blessed from the insight of reviewing all your work.
Congratulations to all those selected. The entire team at Nafasi is looking forward to working with you and getting know you better in the coming year.
FEBRUARY
Sbonelo Luthuli
Sbonelo Luthuli was born in 1981. After matriculating in 2001, he decided to further his studies at Durban University of Technology, doing Fine Art.
In his work, he uses ceramic vessels (izinkamba) as a premise to challenge, question, and comment on certain aspects of rules and laws that serve as guidelines when creating ceramic vessels. In essence, his work challenges the traditional rules of vessel-making. He achieves this by playing around with essential elements of the vessels, such as the shape, form and balance.
MARCH
Vilma Pimenoff
Vilma Pimenoff (1980, Finland) is a visual artist working with photography, video and performance. She is interested in questioning cultural myths and stereotypes that we see in advertising and other mundane imagery in our everyday. Her work often explores the ways in which we perceive the world around us through signs and symbols.
Her work has been shown at the Photographers’ Gallery in London, Moscow Multimedia Art Museum, and at the Circulation(s) Photography Festival at Centquatre in Paris, as well as in galleries and art fairs.
Mats Staub
Mats Staub (*1972, Muri near Berne, Switzerland) lives and works in Berlin and at the development places of his long term projects. He studied theater studies, journalism and religious studies in Berne, Fribourg and Berlin (lic. phil. hist). He worked as a journalist for various publications (1996–2001) and as a dramatic advisor at the Neumarkt Theater in Zurich (2002–2004). Since 2004 he develops his own art projects at the intersections between theater and exhibition, literature and science.
Kirubel Melke
Kirubel Melke is a visual artist (b. 1983, Addis Ababa) who lives and works in Ethiopia. He holds a diploma in Marketing from the National College in Addis Ababa, and a Bachelor of Art Degree from Addis Ababa University. Inspired by his mother’s work at a garment factory, Melke has focused on fabric as his primary medium, creating elaborate tableaux from fragments of cloth.
Since his third year in fine art school, washed clothing hanging from a wire has been a recurring theme for his work. Using cloth as a marker for daily life, Melke explores themes related to education, social injustice and the relationship between tradition and modernity.
APRIL
Sel Kofiga
Born 1989, Kofiga is a multi-disciplinary self taught
artist uses his work as a political critic to
confront and examine the complexities of
transitional identities and the challenges of
representations on inter subjective post colonial
and modern Africa. He is interested in the
definition and interconnection between form
and space and seek to create dialogue on self
sovereignty and cultural identification.
MAY
Carolina Arnibar-Fernandez
Carolina Aranibar-Fernandez, multi-media artist born and raised in La Paz- Bolivia,
currently lives and works in Arizona, U.S. Her artistic practice fuses video installation, sound,oral storytelling with fiber and craft techniques. Her work traces flows of capital–cartography, maritime trade, cash crops, and industrial metals– across bodies-of-water from the perspectives of the native, gendered, and racialized bodies that move it.
JULY
Mustafa Saeed
Mustafa is a Somali born artist based in Hargeisa, Somaliland/Somalia. His work explores different mediums, including Documentary photography, graphic design, and sound. Mustafa’s work marries poetic symbolism with sociopolitical critique to explore issues of war, conflict, and the environment. He is the Curator of Everyday Horn Of Africa and Contributor to Everyday Africa
AUGUST
Aristot Mago
Born in 1988 in Kinshasa (DRC), Aristote is a pure product of Kin ArtStudio. Very creative from an early age, he was already shining in his drawing lessons in primary school. In 2007, he graduated from the Kinshasa Institute of Fine Arts with a sculpture option. In 2010, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts while integrating a collective of young visual artists called ‘Neo-Ngongism’.In 2012, following a lack of suitable materials and processes, Aristotle decides to use everyday materials in his work, in this case; knitting yarn and canvas bags commonly known as ‘market bags’.
Mwamba Chikwemba
Mwamba Chikwemba is Zambian and was born in 1992. She holds a diploma in Public Administration from National Institute of Public Administration; in 2012 she graduated with a certificate in Information Communication Technology. in 2016 she was selected has an artist of the month June by the Germany embassy-Lusaka, Zambia.2016 she also participated in the women’s workshop Lusaka, Zambia further she was also featured in the Zambian post newspaper dated 21st may 2016.
SEPTEMBER
Anna Sobczack
“I am interested in working on group dynamics, collective decision making and creating in local communities. From the beginning my practice has had an invasive and public character. Over time I have always nurtured and worked towards participatory practices, receiving influences from theatre, carnival and traditional rituals. My main aim is to offer an interactive tool to the observer, to examine power location in everyday life“
Cajsa-Lisa Loden
Cajsa-Lisa Linder Lodén (b.1986) was born in Åkersberga, Sweden. Her interdisciplinary work revolves around fragmentary pieces (of paper, conversations, nature, motions, energies, you) that are put together into new existences, realities and future history. The artistic process and identity are more about an intuitive search for points of contacts between materials and expressions than it is about professional categorization and personalization. Cajsa-Lisa lives in Berlin and has exhibited and performed in various contexts across Sweden and Germany. At NAFASI she will live, learn and form together with her close friend and creative partner Toomas Saarne (photo & sound elements).
NOVEMBER
Faiza Ramadan
Faiza Ramadan was born in 1988 in Tripoli, Libya, the daughter of a Libyan father and
Ghanaian mother. She is a self-taught artist who is currently based in Tripoli.The influences of her surroundings were as diverse as the style of her paintings today.Postmodern, expressive and abstract representations of Libyan icons and pan African hopes are found in her paintings as well as reflections on global pop culture.. Her works depicts the psychological, memories and emotional effects caused by the ever-changing social, economic
and political movement in the country.
Ruth Sacks
Ruth Sacks (b. 1977, Port Elizabeth) is a South African visual artist and academic who lives in Johannesburg who has exhibited widely locally and abroad (see: http://www.ruthsacks.net). She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the South African Research Chair Initiative (SARChI) for Social Change at Fort Hare University. Sacks holds a PhD (Arts) from the University of the Witwatersrand where she was a fellow at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER). Artist books include Twenty Thousand Leagues Under Seas (2013) and False Friends (2010). Ruth is part of the artist collective Johannesburg Lasts and one of the coordinators of the large-scale project Response-Ability at the Greenhouse Project in Johannesburg inner city.