Fiera Milano Exhibitions Africa announced it will partner with Advent Sport Entertainment and Media (ASEM), owned by former Springbok rugby captain, Francois Pienaar, to produce future editions of Cape Town Art Fair (CTAF). ASEM lists the FNB Joburg Art Fair as one of their clients, and so they come to the partnership with some art fair experience.
“Why Cape Town? Because of the city of Cape Town, and because of art.”
“The only reason why we will not build [the SA art industry and the CTAF] is if we don’t work together and we don’t tell people … because that story is so important to put out.”
– Francois Pienaar
“There are three tiers to this conversation, which starts with South Africa, and Cape Town specifically, then reaches outwards to our neighbors on the continent, because international doesn’t need to mean overseas.”
-Matthew Partridge
“Diversity in terms of medium, concept, and approach is critical to the showcase of eight artists, as the artists of tomorrow cannot – and should not – be pinned down by today’s fashions, and ideas.”
“The format of eight solo booths, as opposed to a group exhibition, is important. Too many international group exhibitions of recent decades have gathered together artists from Africa and the African diaspora to produce what is problematically reduced to ‘contemporary African art by African artists’, as if a handful of artists living across the world can represent an extremely vast, complex, and diverse continent. Furthermore, and rightly so, many artists related to the continent resist being simplistically labelled ‘African artists’, as who they are, how they chose to self-identify, and what they produce cannot be subsumed in a single term, and they are very acutely aware that they are unable to stand in for other artists who choose to identify with the continent in one way or another”
– Ruth Simbao on Tomorrows/Today, co-curated with Azu Nwagbogu
