Absa L'atelier opens a window to African art at a grassroots level

Despite the pan-African ethos we thought we embraced after 1994 our art scene has remained very parochial and dominated by South African art. 

Fortunately, this pattern has been shifting. The xenophobic attacks that took hold in 2008 made us sharply aware of a need to connect to Africans elsewhere.

In 2015 Thembinkosi Goniwe curated a massive trio of exhibitions, Towards Intersections, presenting art from around our continent.

A focus on East African art shook the FNB Joburg Art Fair last year. 

Aggressive commercial galleries have signed up African artists to cater for interest beyond our borders led by buyers at international art fairs such as the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair held in London and New York, and next year in Marrakech.

The Absa L'atelier art award, once dominated by young white South African artists, has become a thoroughly pan-African event since it set up collection points for entries in Ghana, Zambia, Botswana, Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique, among other countries.

If the new Zeitz Museum for Contemporary African Art in Cape Town offers a limited view of art-making at the top level, the Absa L'atelier opens a window to art at a grassroots level.

With an age limit of 35, the award tends to attract students and graduates.

Priscilla Kennedy, a merit award winner, is busy with her studies in her native Ghana. She follows famous Ghanian artist Anatsui in hanging textile work. With semi-naked women in states of undress embroidered on Islamic scarves she challenges how religion and clothing mediates our relationship to women's bodies.

The feminist slant was driven home by the winner of the award, Maral Bolouri. She presented an installation of cowbells in Mothers and Others, revealing how the oppression of women is perpetuated via proverbs. She is part of a new generation fed up with the status quo.

Pretoria-born Monyamane Manyatsa uses photography to connect with her subjects - all senior citizens. Her subject Koko Meikie, a glamourous granny, is seen leaning against a luxury vehicle in a street. She is an active citizen in the township of Alex, where she lives.

Largely it's nonstereotypical images of women and men that emerge, such as Paul Shiakallis's portrait of a black female biker who is part of a heavy metal scene in Botswana.

Jessica Ounga from Kenya repurposes existing photographs, collaging and eroding them in a series dubbed Circus, to reflect "the disintegration of the social fabric".

Erosion and disintegration define Elias Njora's mixed-media canvases of the layered urban landscape in East Nairobi. He uses photographs in a location with other ephemera, arriving at textured abstract works.

Undoubtedly, the South African art scene is more evolved than elsewhere in Africa.

The Absa L'atelier Award's top 10 finalists bear this out as it includes six locals - Banele Khoza (winner of the Gerard Sekoto award), Manyatsa, Ciara Struwig, Dale Lawrence, Oliver Mayhew and Wilhelmina Nell.

Yet it is good for these young upstarts to be aware that they now need to battle against artists from around the continent to get noticed.

• The Absa L'atelier exhibition will show at the Absa Gallery, corner Main and Polly Street, Joburg until October 27.

• This article was originally published in The Times.