South African Chosen to Curate German Art Event
A South African fine arts lecturer, Gabi Ngcobo, has been selected to curate the 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art in Germany. It takes place during that country’s summer in 2018. Ngcobo has worked extensively locally and internationally. Gabi Ngcobo had been involved in collaborative artistic, curatorial and educational projects in South Africa and globally […]
A South African fine arts lecturer, Gabi Ngcobo, has been selected to curate the 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art in Germany. It takes place during that country’s summer in 2018. Ngcobo has worked extensively locally and internationally.
Gabi Ngcobo had been involved in collaborative artistic, curatorial and educational projects in South Africa and globally since the early 2000s, said the Biennale Foundation.
The University of the Witwatersrand lecturer is also the founding member of two collaborative platforms in Johannesburg: Nothing Gets Organised (NGO) and the Centre for Historical Reenactments (CHR).
“NGO focuses on processes of self-organisation that take place outside predetermined structures, definitions, contexts or forms,” said the foundation.
“The CHR responded to the demands of the moment through an exploration of how historical legacies impact on and resonate within contemporary art.”
Ngcobo recently co-curated the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo in Brazil and has worked with leading art institutions such as the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt, the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno in Spain and the New Museum in New York. Some of her writings have also been published in various catalogues, books and journals.
Ngcobo has been involved in the Biennale previously. In 2008, during the fifth Biennale, she took part in the second edition of the Young Curators Workshop Eyes Wide Open. In 2014, she returned to the eighth event, during which the CHR presented a project, Digging Our Own Graves 101.
The Biennale is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.
“With the selection of Gabi Ngcobo,” said the foundation, “the Berlin Biennale continues its mission of serving as an experimental platform for exploring and expanding the format of the exhibition and a curatorial agenda as well as for examining current global discourses and developments in relation to Berlin as a local point of reference.”
Source: brandsouthafrica.com