Curator, Gabi Ngcobo is guest speaker at CCA,Lagos on Sat 22nd July 09

Curator, Gabi Ngcobo

The Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos has initiated a dynamic platform for visual art and culture since opening its doors in December 2007 engaging with artists, critics, writers, curators and art mangers. CCA,Lagos continues with its aims to build a strong discursive platform by actively encouraging debate and critical discourse that highlights topical issues that affect our society and the world in general. We achieve this by inviting local, African and international guest speakers to talk on a wide range of themes and issues concerning contemporary art and culture. In July 2009 CCA, Lagos continues its public programme with a talk by South African artist and curator Gabi Ngcobo originally schedule for the Like A Virgin... programme.

Date: Saturday 25^th July 2009, 2pm – 4pm

Transitions

Transition has its own constraints, life forms, threatening dynamics and consequences. During transition, the questions “who are we?” alongside “which options among the available ones are the right ones?” tend to figure a lot. In this talk Gabi Ngcobo will underline such questions by focusing on the work of a younger generation of South African artists whose work addresses the shortcomings of sexual identities more especially black South African masculinities. The aim of the talk is to create a dialogue about history (or its absence) that is often troubled, to differing degrees, by the search to find the holy grail of African masculinity.

Gabi Ngcobo is an independent curator, writer and artist from Durban, South Africa. She has worked as Assistant Curator at the South African Gallery and curated Cape Africa Platform’s CAPE 07 bi-annual exhibition where she also worked as Head of Research and was instrumental in initiating Cape’s Young Curator’s Programme. Other exhibitions include Olvida quen soy/ Erase me from who I am co-curated with Elvira Dyangani Ose for CAAM, Canary Islands, Las Palmas 2006, Titled/Untitled, a curatorial collaboration with Cape Town collective Gugulective. She is the co-founder of collaborative platform manje-manje projects (m-mp) whose first project, a group exhibition titled Scratching the Surface Vol.1 took place in Cape Town in 2008. Her writings have been featured in various publications and catalogues including Art South Africa, Art Throb and n.paradoxa.

Ngcobo is the recipient of the Ampersand Foundation (New York) 2007 and Kingston University Curatorial Fellowship (London) 2008. She is a Ford Foundation Fellow at the Centre for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York.

This talk is funded by the Commonwealth Foundation.

Venue

Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos
9 McEwen Street, Off Queen Street, Sabo,
Opp Methodist Church, Herbert Macaulay St, Lagos.

Telephone 0702 8367106