The Visual
Identities in Art and Design
Research Centre (VIAD), in association with Life-style and Trend
Analyst, Nicola Cooper, VIAD Post-Doctoral
Fellow Daniela Goeller,
and the FADA Gallery, presents:
HYPERSAMPLING
IDENTITIES, JOZI STYLE
 |
| Chris Saunders, Swenka |
An
exhibition of photographs, videos, garments, films, archival materials and
installations focusing on emergent and established performances of
fashion(able) and fashion(ed) identities by South African subcultural groups
the Swenkas, Pantsulas, Isikothane and Sbhujwas; design collectives
DearRibane113, Khumbula, the Sartists, the Smarteez; as well as cultural
practitioners
and photographers: Anthony Billa, Tyrone Bradley, Andile Buka,
Christian Courrèges, Don Dada, Harness Hamese, TJ Lemon, Mack Magagane, Justin McGee, Macdee, Jamal Nxedlana, Dr Pachanga, Chris Saunders, Jürgen Schadeberg, Alexia Webster and Simon & and Mary.
 |
| Chris Saunders, Two Pants Two Shoes. |
These vibrant, dynamic,
youth-orientated forms of production currently taking place in the urban
Afropolitan environs of Jozi express a range of ever-emergent and ever-changing
transnational, transhistorical, transcultural, Afro-urban and Afrofuturist
black masculine identities.
Also including work by UK-based design duo, Art Comes First (Sam Lambert & Shaka Maidoh).
Images courtesy of Baileys African History Archive
(BAHA); content support from the Warren Siebrits Collection; and City
Outfitters.
With opening night performances by the Swenkas,
Soulistic Fusion Trio and Intellectuals Pantsula.
Opening
Reception: Monday 21 September from 18h00. FADA
Gallery, Bunting Rd. Campus, University of Johannesburg
Exhibition duration:
21
September – 6 October 2015
 |
| Chris Saunders, Dr Pachanga for NOT X, 2014 |
PUBLIC PROGRAMME:
PUBLIC LECTURE | Dr Christine
Checinska
Wednesday 30
September 2015, 18h00 for 18h30, FADA Gallery
FADAFILM
Premiere | BLACK
DANDY
Thursday
1 October 2015 at 19:00, FADA Amphitheater/Auditorium
Hypersampling
Identities, Jozi Style features work by contemporary sartorial
groups such as the Sbhujwas and Isikothane; young, street-savvy design collectives
including the Sartists, the Smarteez, Dear Ribane II3 and Khumbula; and
individuals such as Dr Pachanga and Jamal Nxedlana, working in the urban
Afropolitan environs of Jozi.
 |
| Chris Saunders, Smarteez, II. |
Many of these cultural practitioners draw on or
reference fashion styles of more established South African subcultural groups,
specifically the Pantsulas and Swenkas. As sub-cultures originating in the
1970s, Pantsula and Swenking have contemporary relevance, not only as they are
currently active, but also because both have created particular images of male
black identities in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, two prominent
ones being the ‘streetwise gangster-with-a-heart’ (the Pantsulas) and the
‘perfect gentleman’ (the Swenkas).
 |
Socks.Arrival. Oswenka arrive at the
Jeppe hostel |
Ways in which these
two images of black masculine identities inform the work of the Jozi-based cultural
practitioners are highlighted in the exhibition. Following the
multidimensional, interdisciplinary nature of their diverse practices, the work
on Hypersampling Identities, Jozi Style is represented through a range of
genres and media, and includes vernacular-, fashion- and documentary-
photography; archival materials; imagery from popular visual culture;
installations; artefacts; visual art; advertisements; films; and music videos.
 |
| Christian Courrèges, Mdelwe Khanyile |
Operating within, and moving between, Jozi’s seams (the
inner-city, Daveyton, Soweto, Alex, Tembisa), young cultural practitioners
manifest the diverse means of leveraging fashion style and movement culture that
characterises Generation Z. An underpinning thread of connectivity in this
digital creative network of production, dissemination, promotion and
consumption, is the strategy of ‘hypersampling’: the remixing, re-appropriating,
reintegrating, fusing, conjoining, and mashing-up of elements gleaned from a
multiplicity of sources to produce new fashion styles.
Working within the urban
context of an ever-changing Jozi cityscape, scaffolded by consumerist,
marketing and digital technologies, and fed on soundbytes of apartheid and
colonial Southern and South African histories, they hypersample freely, even
playfully, from a range of transhistorical, transcultural, visual, and material
sources to express a range of ever-emergent and ever-changing transnational,
transhistorical, transcultural, Afro-urban and Afrofuturist black masculine
identities.
About the Artists
 |
| TJ Lemon. Group. Ready for performance on Saturday night |
TJ
Lemon
 |
Dingani Zulu, In a brief case. Broaches
and rings, cosmetics and in some
cases muti are brought to the show
to apply the finishing touches |
TJ Lemon has been a professional
photojournalist and trainer for 25 years. Completing studies at Rhodes
department of Fine Art in 1988 and teaching at the Rhodes journalism
department, he worked as a freelance news photographer in Johannesburg from
1990 up to the ’94 elections. The work was published in European magazines
through a London agency. In this period Lemon coupled his photographic work
with training young photographers at the fledgling Market photo workshop.
 |
| TJ Lemon. Dingani Zulu, Cuffs. Dingani Zulu displays his cuff. |
From 1994, Lemon was employed as chief
photographer at the Sunday Independent until 2010. He ventured into solo photo
features, where he was writer and photographer. After leaving “the Independent”
he trained photojournalism students at the Market photo workshop and Wits
University journalism department where he currently works.
 |
| TJ Lemon. Piet. Piet Zulu is a security guard at the run down ERPM |
Lemon has won a number of photographic
awards including the 2001 World Press Photo, Arts and culture, essay category.
He has exhibited and been part of exhibitions in a number of countries
including Spain, France, Germany, Holland, USA and South Africa.
| Alexia Webster, Bhanzele Masango, Tembisa |
Alexia
Webster
 |
Alexia Webster, Sibusiso Mthembu,
Real Actions |
Alexia Webster is a South African
documentary photographer born in Johannesburg and has worked widely through out
the African continent as a documentary photographer.After graduating from Wits University and
completing the Intermediate Photography course at the Market Photo Workshop,
Alexia worked briefly in the film industry on music videos.
 |
| Alexia Webster, Sibusiso Mthembu, Real Actions. |
Having always seen
photography as a powerful tool through which one can explore and agitate, she
left the world of moving images and began working as a freelance photographer
for both local and international newspapers and magazines.
 |
| Sibusiso Mthembu, Real Actions, Orange Farm. |
In 2007 she received the Frank Arisman
Scholarship at the International Center of Photography in New York City where
she completed the program in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism. She
has since won the Artraker Award for Art in Conflict- 2013, the POPCAP‘13
Piclet.org Prize for Contemporary African Photography 2013 and received a
Honorable Mention at the Bonani Africa Photo Festival 2010. She has also
received grants from the Prince Claus Fund and the Ithubu Arts Fund. She is currently based in Cape Town where
she continues to explore both the visible and invisible with her camera.
 |
| Chris Saunders, Free Styling (Soweto). |
Chris
Saunders
Hailing from a background in fashion
photography, Johannesburg-based photographer and video director Chris Saunders
approaches his projects from the standpoint of a visual storyteller. His
documentary work investigates the people and environments of South Africa and
Africa, particularly subcultures and local 'culture crews' (his project on
Pantsula dancers was recently accepted into the 2015 Lagos Photo Festival).
 |
| Chris Saunders, VIP (Sebokeng) |
 |
Chris Saunders,
Real Actions Pantsula Women |
He
has worked across Africa and internationally, with recent projects including
Alicia Keyes' 2014 'Keep a Child Alive' campaign; British Council funded music
video Ghost Diamond, in collaboration with British musician OK Zharp!; and Not X
CS, with New York fashion designer Jenny Lai, exhibited in New York in
2014.
 |
| Chris Saunders, Smarteez |
Saunders has worked with leading agencies, brands and magazines both
locally and internationally, and is represented by Lampost for stills
photography, and Ola! Films for his work in video direction. He was the
recipient of a year long grant at Fabrica, Benetton's Creative Research
Facility in 2010.
 |
| Mack Magagane, Wanda Lephoto, 2014 |
Mack
Magagane.
Mack Magagane, 23, was born in South
Africa, Soweto, southwest close to the city of Johannesburg. After his
matriculation in 2008, he joined the Market Photo Workshop where he
would be able to explore an artistic interest of architectural design and
drawing through photography. He has had a solo-photography exhibition at
the Photo Workshop Gallery, Johannesburg, with a series of work titled …in
this city. This work was produced during his 2011/12 Tierney
Fellowship at the Market Photo Workshop.
 |
Mack Magagane, Bobo Ndima, Wanda Lephoto,
Kabelo Kungwane, 2014, 9.5 x 9.5cm |
In 2011, he was invited to
the 2011 Photoquai Biennale in Paris with a body of work
titled, I’ll be gone soon... In which he recreates intimate
stereotypical and familiar suicidal imagery of moments before one commits
suicide, in view of increased suicidal deaths in South Africa over the past
years. Magagane has exhibited at the FNB Joburg Art Fair 2011-12 and
has received the 2011 ACT ImpACT Award within the field of Visual Art
in South Africa.
 |
| Mack Magagane, Kabelo Kungwane, 2014 |
He has shown works', Light Hours and ...in
this city in mid 2013 at the Present Tense group exhibition; part
of the Next Future programme at Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian,
Lisbon, Portugal, which also travelled to Paris, opening at the Fundação
Calouste Gulbenkian, Délégation en France. Mack was recenctly on a residency
at Centre Photographique d’Île-de-France in Paris,
France. Which was part of the French - South Africa season
in France 2013. He exhibited the works’ Southern Suburbia during his
stay in Paris as an invited artist at YGREC gallery and …in this city in
Strasbourg, France; also part of the French - South Africa season in
France 2013 in COMMITMENT #1. Magagane lives and continues to work in
Johannesburg, South Africa.
 |
| Christian Courrèges, Adolphus Mbuyisa |
Christian
Courrèges.
Christian Courrèges (Aix-en-Provence,
1950) lives and works in Paris. He is a Professor at ENSAD (National School of
Decorative Arts).
 |
| Christian Courrèges, Zero Khanyile |
 |
Untitled II, From the Brooklyn Circus x Sarti
|
Andile
Buka (B.1990)
Andile Buka is a self-taught photographer. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions
in Johannesburg and Cape Town. In 2014 he was part of Don’t be afraid of the
shadow, a collaboration with Philippe Bousquet at the South African Human
Rights Commission. In June 2015 he showed at 18th Internationale Schillertage
Festival in Mannheim, Germany and later this year he will exhibit at the Lagos
Photo Festival.
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A Buka, Untitled III, From the Sartist Sports Project –
Part1
|
 |
A Buka, Untitled IV, from
the Sartist Sports Project.
Part 1
|
His
present work focuses on people’s stories and their persistence. By engaging
with locals in various communities, listening to stories and documenting their
narratives through photography, he is developing a body of work entitled Crossing
Strangers. Crossing Strangers aims to document people and their spaces in the
heart of the Johannesburg and Orange Farm.
 |
| A Buka, Untitled IV, From the Sartist Sports Project - Part 1 |
For more information, please contact:
Maria Fidel Regueros,
VIAD Curatorial Team Member
mariafr@uj.ac.za
011 559 1442
Eugene Hon,
FADA Gallery Director
eugeneh@uj.ac.za
011 559 1386
