Described by international curator Okwui Enwezor as "one of the most dynamic and vigorous spaces of artistic practice," contemporary South African art is an exciting, emerging scene that is attracting the attention of international museums, curators, and collectors today. South African Art Now documents, through in-depth essays and stunning full-color photographs, the remarkable work of nearly one hundred South African artists working in every medium from painting, sculpture, and video to cutting-edge performance art. This lush volume includes the impressive work of art world stars such as William Kentridge and Marlene Dumas; newly prominent artists such as Berni Searle, Robin Rhode, and Mustafa Maluka; and exciting newcomers still unknown outside their own country, but clearly marked for success. This book covers forty years of art history, from the dark years of apartheid, which saw the rise of resistance art, to the long-awaited achievement of freedom in 1994, to the present-day struggles for reconciliation and transformation. Through it all, the engaged, powerful work of these artists provided a mirror for society. Including a compelling foreword by Nobel Prize-winning writer Nadine Gordimer, South African Art Now is a must-have resource for collectors, curators, and anyone interested in the pulse of international contemporary art.

An inclusive exercise in cultural analysis, this book deals with the gravitas and folly of identity politics, the boom of so-called African art, and the fetish and fascination with a global Esperanto. Designed to provoke thought and feeling, it is hoped that this collection of essays on South African art will reach a wide audience. The book's strength lies in its diversity of focus and cultural frameworks. It offers no defining system or divining rod. Rather, it is hoped that this book will provide a healthy contribution to an already thriving debate regarding the value and purpose of contemporary art, the on-going significance of the decolonising project, and the importance of art from Africa in the global pantheon.

Home Lands - Land Marks is an exhibition of new and recent work from seven leading South African artists at Haunch of Venison, London, and the first in London to focus on contemporary South African art since 1995. The publication focuses on images and invocations of landscape which explore contemporary South Africa. Differing from the usual approach to post-apartheid South Africa, the exhibition addresses the complexity of the South African landscape, reflecting upon notions of memory, place and identity, referring to the political context and historical background of South Africa only through the imprint and trace of human experience on the physical landscape. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Home Lands - Land Marks: Contemporary Art from South Africa at Haunch of Venison, London, May - July 2008.

The visual arts exhibition, Personal Affects: Power and Poetics in Contemporary South African Art, presents newly commissioned and recently produced works by seventeen South African artists. The artworks represent the artists' responses to a weeklong stay in New York and their visits with the international team of curators. The exhibition features various media including sculpture, drawing, photography, painting, installation, video, performance, and dance. The common thread throughout the exhibition is the higly personal point of departure of the artists' working methods that are informed by their varied experiences as South Africans. Volume I features an introduction by the exhibition curators, texts by David Brodie, Okwui Enwezor, Laurie Ann Farrell, Churchill Madikida, Tracy Murinik, Sophie Perryer, and theoretical essays by Liese van der Watt and Okwui Enwezor. Participating artists: Jane Alexander, Wim Botha, Steven Cohen, Churchill Madikida, Mustafa Maluka, Thando Mama, Sams

Encompassing black-and-white linoleum cuts made at community art centres in the 1960s and 1970s, resistance posters and other political art of the 1980s, and the wide variety of subjects and techniques explored by artists in printships over the last two decades, printmaking has been a driving force in contemporary South African artistic and political expression. Impressions from South Africa: 1965 to Now, published to accompany an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, introduces the vital role of printmaking through works by more than twenty artists in the Museum's collection. The volume features prints by John Muafangejo and Dan Rakgoathe, a selection of posters produced for anti-apartheid coalitions in the 1980s, and nuanced political work by SueWilliamson, Norman Catherine andWilliam Kentridge. The book features many more recent projects, demonstrating the contemporary relevance of the medium in South Africa today. The work, presented in a generous plate section, is contextualized in an introduction by Judith B. Hecker, and accompanied by brief biographies of the artists, a timeline of relevant events in South African history, and a selected bibliography.

Fifteen writers explore the experimental, interdisciplinary and radically transgressive field of contemporary live art in South Africa, focusing on a wide range of perspectives, personalities and theoretical concerns Contemporary South African society is chronologically ‘post’ apartheid, but it continues to grapple with material redress, land redistribution and systemic racism. Acts of Transgression represents the complexity of this moment in the rich potential of a performative art form that transcends disciplinary boundaries and aesthetic conventions. The contributors, who are all significantly involved in the discipline of performance art, probe its intersection with crisis and socio-political turbulence, shifting notions of identity and belonging, embodied trauma and loss. Narratives of the past and visions for the future are interrogated through memory and the archive, thus destabilising entrenched colonial systems. Collectively analysing the work of more than 25 contemporary South African artists, including Athi-Patra Ruga, Mohau Modisakeng, Steven Cohen, Dean Hutton, Mikhael Subotzsky, Tracey Rose and Donna Kukama, among others, the analysis is accompanied by a visual record of more than 50 photographs. For those working in the fields of theatre, performance studies and art, this is a must-have collection of critical essays on a burgeoning and exciting field of contemporary South African research.

[S]urvey of the work of contemporary African artists from diverse situations, locations, and generations who work either in or outside of Africa, but whose practices engage and occupy the social and cultural complexities of the continent since the past 30 years.... Organized in chronological order, the book covers all major artistic mediums: painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, installation, drawing, collage.... Presents examples of ... work by more than 160 African artists.... [I]ncludes Georges Adeagbo Tayo Adenaike, Ghada Amer, El Anatsui, Kader Attia, Luis Basto, Candice Breitz, Moustapha Dimé, Marlene Dumas, Victor Ekpuk, Samuel Fosso, Jak Katarikawe, William Kentridge, Rachid Koraichi, Mona Mazouk, Julie Mehretu, Nandipha Mntambo, Hassan Musa, Donald Odita, Iba Ndiaye, Richard Onyango, Ibrahim El Salahi, Issa Samb, Cheri Samba, Ousmane Sembene, Yinka Shonibare, Barthelemy Toguo, Obiora Udechukwu, and Sue Williamson.--From publisher description..