Mary Sibande, Stanislaw Trzebinski: Five exhibitions to catch in September

1. SOLASTALGIA BY STANISLAW TRZEBINSKI 

Southern Guild Cape Town

Kenyan-born, Cape Town-based multidisciplinary artist Stanislaw Trzebinski’s sculptures explore human relationships with the natural world.

In this, his second solo exhibition with Southern Guild, he remains true to this interrogation as he paints a dark picture of what nature will continue to look like even after the extinction of man — an impending ecological collapse of sorts.

“I’ve been experiencing what environmental philosopher and sustainability professor Glenn A Albrecht calls solastalgia, a nostalgia for the loss of places that used to give me solace — that made me feel fully human,” Stanislaw says. “Our very home, the Earth, is being ruined, despoiled. So much is already lost, and I’m homesick in my own home.”

• Solastalgia will open on September 8 and will run until November 10. Southern Guild is open Mondays to Fridays from 9am-5.30pm and from 10am-2pm on Saturdays.

2. THE OWNERS OF THE EARTH (VISSAQUELO) BY TERESA KUTALA FIRMINO

Everard Read Johannesburg

Teresa Kutala Firmino’s The Owners of the Earth is a multi-series project through which the artist explores the relationship between trauma — specifically that experienced by the women in her family — and fantasy or fragments of memory pieced together.

In this series, Firmino uses art to explore concepts of trauma as inherited and the role these traumas play in intergenerational healing through fantasy.

• The Owners of the Earth (Vissaquelo) will be running until October 1. Everard Read gallery is open from 9am-5pm Mondays to Fridays and from 9am-1pm on Saturdays.

4. SUPERNATURE: SIMULACRA BY ANDREA DU PLESSIS 

Pretoria Art Museum

Supernature: Simulacra is an extension of the Supernature series multidisciplinary artist Andrea du Plessis began in 2020 through which she explores the complicated relationship between humans and nature in a technological age, something she calls the “modern-day sublime experience”.

The exhibition will consist of three sections drawing on augmented reality, virtual reality and artificial intelligence-generated art.

As the winner of the Sasol New Signatures Art Competition for 2021, her exhibition will be shown alongside this year’s Sasol New Signatures Art Competition exhibition.

• Supernature: Simulacra will be running until October 2. The Pretoria Art Museum is open from 10am-5pm Tuesdays to Sundays.

Curated by Gcotyelwa Mashiqa, it is an expansive exhibition covering three gallery spaces, each one representing the three periods of the artist’s alter ego, Sophie, represented by a different colour. 

The first phase, the Blue Period: The birth of Sophie(s) (2008), covers the birth of Sophie and celebrates Sibande’s mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and every woman who has worked as a domestic worker.

In the Purple Period: The Purple Shall Govern (2014), Sophie evolves as she transitions into motherhood. No longer wearing a domestic worker outfit, she’s accompanied by vultures and wild dogs as she looks to the future confident.

The third phase of Sophie’s evolution is the Red Period (2019) — a phase in which Sibande is possibly acknowledging feelings of anger, particularly that of black women. Here, Sophie is depicted as a puppet master, ventriloquist, a shepherd and priestess.

• Let Me Tell You About Red... will be running until September 30. The Durban Gallery is open from 9am-4pm Mondays to Fridays, 8.30am-4pm on Saturdays and from 11am-4pm on Sundays.