Horst Antes / Taiye Erewele / Wasiu Eshinloku / Alfred Haberpointner / Kiki Kogelnik / Ly La Gazelle / Ferdinand Melichar / Rita Nowak / Johnson Ocheja / Damilola Opedun / Philipp Renda / Linda Steiner / Zandile Tshabalala
Curated by Sabine Fellner
Faces tell stories. They touch us with particular intensity. They inevitably trigger resonance. Those who take them in, trace them, reflect on them, learn a lot about the person portrayed, about themselves and their own relationship to others.
The portrait is a perennial favorite in figurative art. African portraiture is currently booming on the art market and in exhibition halls. This interest makes a dialog between current positions of African artists and contemporary European portraits – as in this exhibition – seem worthwhile in order to examine fundamental questions of cultural, but also very individual, personal identity. How do we see others? How do we see ourselves? How do others show themselves? How do we show ourselves?
Portraiture is one of the oldest disciplines of art, which depicts a person painted, drawn, modeled or photographed. The depiction of people in portraits always oscillates between realistically capturing the features of the sitter and idealizing them. Positions of African origin are not only of an exceptionally high artistic standard, but also open up a new approach to “Africanness”, to the constant exchange between one’s own and foreign cultures, often with reference to European art history.
The juxtaposition makes it clear that portraits, images of people, always play with socio-cultural codes and yet are always able to embody the genuinely human.
