The global art market is at last being acknowledged as big and profitable enough to be worthy of investment, based on some serious returns.
Unfortunately for us at the southern tip of Africa, most of those returns end up with the heavy hitters in the markets of Europe and the US, especially for contemporary art. African art in particular, including art from SA, the continent’s most well-resourced art industry, often ends up changing hands at auction or among dealers in those markets, leaving the works of art and the revenue out of the hands of the artists who produce it.
Grass-roots cultural activism sees the issue as requiring cultural restitution, with figures such as Emery Mwazulu Diyabanza twice arrested for museum theft in France last year in actions to recover what he considers to be looted cultural artefacts. Diyabanza is the spokesperson for pan-African group Unité Dignité Courage, which strives for the “liberation and transformation of Africa” and the restitution of African heritage. But help of a more law-abiding type may be on the way.
SA’s Goodman Gallery, specifically its director, Liza Essers, has been instrumental in a new visual art collective emerging from the Global South which, it is hoped, will act as a corrective to the dominant narrative of art being shipped from Africa, South America, the Middle East and parts of Asia to be exhibited and sold in galleries and at auction in New York, Paris and London.
Dubbed South South, it is an online community and resource for artists, galleries, curators and collectors invested in this alternative approach. The platform’s launch brings together more than 50 galleries from five continents to offer a central portal for programmes and artists from the various galleries scattered across the world.
As an art industry resource, the platform is ambitious. It aims to redress an imbalance in the mainstream western axis of the art world and create a set of resources for artistic production for artists from countries with a different perspective and different art practices. For its founders it is designed as a platform to provide an alternative art history.
Essers offers insight into its creation: “Before the pandemic, about 70% of income for many galleries from the Global South came from fairs, and it’s very difficult and isolating not being able to travel — something that looks set to stay for some time. We aim to provide a resource to support galleries in this context, while also creating an opportunity for audiences to discover artistic production from regions they would otherwise not have access to.”
The initiative is also about changing the economic dynamics of the global art market. South South is essentially an aggregate of commercial galleries, supported by a roster of heavyweight collectors from around the world, who want to move revenue streams for art sales away from the major western markets and into the global destinations in which they operate.
The initiative launched last week and runs until Sunday with a series of events called South South Veza (isiZulu for reveal). These include curator talks, collector talks, film screenings and a series of online viewing rooms at participating galleries around the world. With the pandemic already having pushed much commercial art activity online, the platform provides a unique opportunity to view and buy contemporary work, as well as interact with gallerists and artists.
Some of the artists represented by galleries involved in South South are among the most coveted and collectable of those in the contemporary art market today, including William Kentridge and Yinka Shonibare.
The launch events include a live and online auction of work from the participating galleries, generating revenues directly for them, but also for three non-profit organisations they support in Senegal, Brazil and the Philippines.
The use of an auction platform should not overly concern the auction market, according to Essers. “Our ambition is to provide scale for the smaller and mid-size primary galleries in the Global South and visibility to their programmes. As such there is no ‘resale’ aspect of the platform inaugural live selling event and the use of auction technology is harnessed to connect buyers directly to primary market galleries and directly support artists and key non-profits as the beneficiaries of the sale, as ways to support art infrastructure in these markets.”
The initiative is very much of the moment. There is a global upsurge in interest in and commercial appetite for contemporary art from Africa, for example, partly driven by the absence of such work in the collections of international buyers.
Also, the low barriers to entry for the global market and the fact that the pandemic has driven much art trading activity online mean a wider participation in the market is possible, something South South can use to its advantage.
For more information visit south-south.art.
