The TRANS exhibition proposes the questioning of boundaries and borders and the embracement of the possibility to express and to exist in different ways. TRANS presents a selection of 17 artists whose works postulates a process, a transit, a movement, that aim to transcend, transpose, transgress and transform. By collaborating with artists who have participated in The Bag Factory program throughout its 27 years of existence, TRANS is also an homage to this artists’ platform as a trans-cultural and transcontinental mediator and consequent catalyst of the advancement of the arts in South Africa.
Featured Artists
Mehraneh Atashi – Marie Ange Bordas – Taiye Idahor – David Koloane – Vibha Galhotra – Diana Hyslop – Sam Nhlengethwa – Mário Macilau – Ives Maes – Kagiso Pat Mautloa – Celina Portella – Usha Seejarim – Lady Skollie – Véronique Tadjo – Myer Taub – Pat Ward Williams – Alberta Whittle
Curator :: Danielle Geo
Daniella Géo is a Belgo-Brazilian independent curator and researcher based in Antwerp and Rio de Janeiro. She holds a PhD in Film and Audiovisual Studies from the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris III. Géo has been curator of numerous exhibitions, amongst which the 4e Biennale de Lubumbashi (DRC) and the 5e Biennale internationale de la Photographie et des Arts visuels de Liège, Belgium. Her projects include the retrospective exhibitions Transfigurações: Roger Ballen, fotografias 1968-2012, Caixa Cultural, Brasília; Museu de Arte Conteporânea da USP, São Paulo; Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba, Museum de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, and Charif Benhelima: Polaroids 1998-2102, Museum Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba and Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói; group shows such as (Re)Construções: Arte contemporânea da África do Sul, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói; Adding Subtractions, The Bag Factory, Johannesburg; the experimental project Jean Katambayi Mukendi em Residência-Aberta, Casa França-Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, amongst others. She has contributed essays, organised seminars and lectured in various platforms. Géo teaches at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro, and is a guest lecturer at the Hoger Instituut voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent, Belgium.
TRANS gestures towards inter-related opposites, not as a negation or exclusion of one another but rather as constituents of a shared existence. It stands for a transformative quality, one that favours motion that is opened for exchanges, interactions and intersections, that questions boundaries and borders, that does not conform, thinks forward, goes beyond, transgress and transcends.