CAPE appoints Gavin Jantjes as Artistic Director for the Proposed Biennial
In a unanimous decision, the Board of Directors of the CAPE/Africa Platform appointed Gavin Jantjes to the position of Artistic Director to create a biennial of contemporary African art for September 2006. The appointment was made by the selection committee, a task team drawn from Cape Town's diverse cultural communities.
CAPE CEO Susan Glanville-Zini said, 'Our aim isn't to become another biennale - the temporary locus for a travelling road show that displays its wares before heading off to the next art mart. Jantjes' proposal is in line with CAPE's vision to create a biennial cultural project that is not just another biennale'. He is an artist born in Cape Town, who brings extensive international experience to the challenge of staging a large-scale exhibition of contemporary art in Africa.
The appointment also marks a 'homecoming' and reconciliation. Jantjes will at last return to work in Cape Town, the city from which he was exiled during the
apartheid years. Because of his anti-apartheid stance as an artist and his successful campaigns with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), his
work was banned in the 70's.
Jantjes was raised in the vibrant and multi-cultural slum of District Six, a precinct whose inhabitants were forcefully removed under apartheid legislation, and has subsequently spent the better part of three decades in Europe. From his base in Germany, the UK and recently Norway, he has received extensive international acclaim for his work as an artist, writer, educator and curator. Says Jantjes, ' I am delighted to receive an invitation to imagine an exhibition for the city of my birth after so many previous invitations to participate in cultural events elsewhere in the world.' He also added that this is the first invitation he has received to participate in any such event in the country of his birth.
After serving as Artistic Director of the Henie Onstad Art Centre from 1998 he joined the team of Sune Nordgren in 2004 to work as the curator for contemporary international exhibitions at Norway's prestigious new National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design. He has been an adviser to the Tate Gallery and a member of the Documenta 12 appointments commission.
Prior to his appointment, Jantjes had undertaken to deliver the keynote address at CAPE's first international art meeting, SESSIONS eKAPA 2005, held in Cape
Town from December 3 - 6. In his lecture, entitled 'Been there. Done that. What now?', Jantjes looked critically at previous mega-exhibitions of contemporary
African art and outlined his vision for CAPE's event in September 2006.
'African contemporary art has been through the mill. It has been taken out of context and passed around in the realm of the colonial and ethnographical mythology. It has struggled to maintain its identity and no longer needs any existential justification. It has been there. It has done that. The pertinence of the 'What now?' question is directly related to progress. We are all compelled to address this in the work we do and to make sure that our work is forward-looking.'
Minister Z. Pallo Jordan, Minister of Arts and Culture, extended his congratulations to CAPE for embarking on a monumental project which will benefit the country, the continent and the African Diaspora. 'One of the challenges facing Government is redressing decades-long neglect of the arts. In this regard what the CAPE/Africa Platform is planning fits in very well with the Government's vision of Arts and Culture', said Jordan.
