Heat Festival ART: Meet The Artist Tour II

ABOUT

Join festival curator Nkgopoleng Moloi for a guided tour of the visual arts programme of HEAT Festival where she will stop in on one of the 14 exhibitions and you will get to meet and engage with three artists - Desire Marea (at Ecletica Contemporary), Charity Vilakazi (at Kalashnikovv gallery) and Thando Phenyane (at Ebony/Curated).

Desire Marea is a queer South African multidisciplinary artist whose practice encapsulates both visual art and music. Marea's music blends spiritual and experimental jazz, ancient Nguni, and Ndau, as well as electronic gqom-inspired beats, drawing on their training as a sangoma to tap into their spiritual and ancestral connections through their music. Their exhibition, The Baddies of Isandlwana, is their painting debut. Marea imagines the lives of queer Zulu warriors who fought in the battle of Isandlwana, the exhibition serving as a companion piece to their EP of the same name and creating an audio-visual sonic tapestry that challenges and reclaims queer narratives. They are also one of two founding members of Johannesburg collective FAKA, a collaboration with Fela Gucci which used music, performance, photography, and club events to explore queer identity, African art heritage, and free expression. FAKA toured extensively internationally and in 2019 was commissioned to score both the Versace Spring/Summer Menswear show and Telfar's NYFW show. FAKA was also featured in the Vogue World 100 and Dazed 100 lists. 

Nokukhanya Charity Vilakazi is a multimedia artist and visual orator. She primarily works with painting and photography, focusing on exploring African mythology, folklore, and personal identity. Vilakazi draws inspiration from African folklore to illustrate the strength and resilience of women, exploring how stories empower and validate female agency. She cites being raised by her grandmothers, and their teachings of "girls [being] just as valuable as boys", as well as their folktales heavily influencing her work – their stories not only entertaining her but also forming a basis of her education in oral tradition. By celebrating African women as central figures in mythology and history, Vilakazi highlights the revolutionary potential of female power. She mixes ibomvu (a special kind of red clay used in African women's beautification rituals) with acrylic paint to honour the depth and beauty of her subject matter. Vilakazi studied photography at the Market Photo Workshop and has been involved in multiple group exhibitions with groups such as Through The Lens Collective and Joburg Fringe, as well as solo exhibitions with her representative, Kalashnikovv (who also showed her work at the 2022 FNB Joburg Art Fair.) She has also been named a 2023 Wanted Online Young and Visual Artist.

Thando 'Mboma' Phenyane is a fine artist with a background in architecture, holding an MA in Architecture from the University of Cape Town as well as being part of the inaugural V&A Artist Alliance Class in 2021. Phenyane's work strikes a balance between an interrogation of traditional and digital media and is greatly influenced by Dadaist painter Marcel Duchamp. Within his fine arts practice, he explores themes of issues with self-control, over-indulgence, and internal conflict, in an internal dialogue of self-examination.  He is also the owner of Mboma & Mboma; a collective that founded the online gallery Mboma Gallery. Phenyane's work has been featured by the 2021 Design Indaba in Cape Town, the 2022 Turbine Art Fair Graduate Show, as well as blank projects.

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