Group exhibition at Azael Langa Studio in Selby celebrates women in art

Brand SA Play Your Part ambassador and internationally renowned artist Azael Langa celebrates women in art with a curated group art exhibition in Joburg. He has collaborated with the internationally renowned multi-award winning artist and freelance arts writer Khehla Chepape Makgato to work with and uplift three promising artists in this new installation.

The work pays homage to everyday women in their secluded communities who are nurturing and empowering the vulnerable. Langa and Makgato aren’t aiming to save women or speak for them but rather to highlight women as keepers and custodians of the human conscience. The exhibition coincides with the launch of a programme to create a platform for women artists to showcase their work and have access to the art market.

Our local creative industries are faced with myriad challenges regarding development, transformation and empowerment, especially funding. Though the national and provincial departments of sport, arts & culture devised initiatives such as the Mzansi Golden Economy, there is still a lot of work to be done. The industry is still male-dominated. There is a need for male artists to contribute to the transformation agenda, and annual programmes of this kind are important.

The platform will equip women artists with the resources to advance their artistic careers. This is a gateway into mentorship to help propel the emerging artists’ growth and contribution to the industry. The programme also looks to provide access to markets for women artists by connecting them to the pool of art collectors that have been built over time by Langa and Makgato.

The long-term plan for the programme is to provide residency for artists at the Azael Langa Studio in Cape Town and Makgato’s Samanthole Creative Projects & Workshops in Polokwane, providing financial and non-financial support for emerging women in the art space. The artists for both residencies will be selected through the Azael Langa Art Award, where independent and experienced arts and culture practitioners will form part of the selecting panel. 

The artist’s open call will be sent out on January 15 2022 and the award will be announced during International Women’s Month in March. The residency will start in March and the winning artist will exhibit their work in August 2022.

The art exhibition will run from August 16 to 31 at the Azael Langa Studio in Selby, Joburg. It will attract both emerging, established and seasoned art collectors, who will be spoiled for choice. The three emerging women artists exhibiting with Langa and Makgato are:

• Nomonde Fihla, an artist who was selected out of 2,000 international applicants to be part of the artist-in-residence programme at the Charter d’Orquevaux in Paris, France. Her work explores the intersection between the surroundings, people, texture, colour and simplicity. 
• Lebohang Motaung is the winner of the Cartier Johannesburg Art Fair in 2017. She is a hairstylist who has used her career as an artist to weave the most extraordinary stories about black women, creating showstopping portraits that embrace black women’s hair. 
• Nene Mahlangu’s work searches for depth and ways of navigating life continually connected to experiences of being a woman (a physical and spiritual being). She is driven by the feminisation of spirituality and would rather capture women as divine or mythical sirens, feeling, living, warming and residing in their soft power without the influence of men.

 This article was paid for by Back2Front Marketing.