African art on show at the Cape Town Art Fair
Curator Tumelo Mosaka discusses the challenges and opportunities in curating African art on the tip of the continent
“Maybe this is Africa’s moment,” says Tumelo Mosaka, chief art curator for the Cape Town Art Fair (CTAF), “there is definitely a growing interest [in African art internationally].” SA-born Mosaka has lived and worked in the US for close on two decades, gaining international recognition as an independent curator with positions as associate curator of exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum and contemporary art curator at the Krannert Art Museum in Champaign, Illinois. He is overseeing the CTAF in its entirety, and is also responsible for the Tomorrows/Today project, which is described as a “curated cross-section of the most exciting emerging artists from Africa” and “a bold prediction of the future of African artistic talent”. Returning to SA for the CTAF, Mosaka has found himself grappling — a word that comes up frequently in his conversation — with questions surrounding the presentation of African art in Africa, and what he believes is at stake in the way he approaches it. “We can rewri...
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