As part of The Armory Show 2016 Focus: African Perspectives curated by Julia Grosse and Yvette Mutumba, the Armory will feature eight special projects bringing together a group of artists from Africa and the Diaspora. The selected artists include: Armory Commissioned Artist Kapwani Kiwanga, Karo Akpokiere, Jared Ginsburg, Lebohang Kganye, Mame-Diarra Niang, Emeka Ogboh, Athi-Patra Ruga and Ed Young. These projects aim to showcase a new generation defined by the curators as “Young Global Contemporaries.”
On Pier 92, Kapwani Kiwanga, along with Galerie Tanja Wagner (Berlin), will present The Secretary’s Suite, an interactive installation that investigates the complexities of gift economies. The project’s point of departure examines the history and tradition of gifted items within the United Nations’ art collection and will be composed of a single-channel video and a viewing environment inspired by the 1961 office of the United Nations Secretary General. As part of this installation, visitors will be able to take a series of limited edition prints depicting gifts given throughout history. In addition to her on-site commission, Kiwanga will create a limited edition screen print benefiting The Museum of Modern Art.
On Pier 94, Karo Akpokiere will stage Alternate Art Fair, a live-drawing performance that will unfold over the course of the fair. Akpokiere, who was chosen to participate in the 56th Venice Biennale, will create a site-specific illustration from the perspective of a cast of fictitious artists and galleries. Elsewhere on Pier 94, visitors will be confronted by the irreverent work of Ed Young who, along with SMAC Gallery (Cape Town), will present an installation combining humor with unexpected materials in series of text- based works.
Afronova (Johannesburg) will present Lebohang Kganye’s animated film, Pied Piper’s Voyage. Emeka Ogboh will present Oshodi Stock Exchange v 2.0, a soundscape that transports visitors to a Lagos bus stop scene, channeling the frenetic energy of the fair. Ogboh’s Market Symphony will be on view concurrently at Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C.
In the Focus Lounge, Jared Ginsburg and blank (Cape Town) will present Loop with Bamboo III which investigates cycles and loops with two motorized, kinetic sculptures that continually transform in shape as they move through a sequence of construction and deconstruction.
In the VIP Lounge on Pier 94, Athi-Patra Ruga and WHATIFTHEWORLD (Cape Town) will present A Land Without a People for a People Without A Land, a series of embroidered tapestries that use African tropes of myth as a contemporary response to the post-apartheid era. Photographer Mame-Diarra Niang presented by STEVENSON (Cape Town, Johannesburg), will show work reflecting on the plasticity of territory. In her vision the elements composing the landscape become an inevitable reflection of the self, a personal mythology.
About the Armory Artist Commission
The Armory Show launched its distinguished Artist Commission in 2002, extending its commitment to supporting artists’ development by providing a global stage for their work. The Commissioned Artist informs the visual identity of the fair by contributing to the design of official fair collateral and realization of an on-site commissioned project. Since 2006, The Armory Show has produced a series of limited edition works by its Commissioned Artists to benefit The Museum of Modern Art’s Acquisition Fund. The relationship between The Armory Show and MoMA dates back to 2001, the year in which the fair dedicated its opening day to the Museum and in which the Pat Hearn and Colin de Land Acquisition Fund at The Museum of Modern Art was founded.
Find out more on Focus: African Perspectives
The Armory Show 2016
March 3-6, 2016
Piers 92 & 94
12th Avenue at 55th Street New York City
www.thearmoryshow.com
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