We are pleased to announce our participation in the main section at Investec Cape Town Art Fair. The fair will run from 20 February - 23 February 2025. We will present an extensive group presentation with works by Æmen Ededéen, Adebunmi Gbadebo, Jerrell Gibbs , Basil Kincaid, Luis López-Chávez , Cinthia Sifa Mulanga, a’driane nieves, Nozuko Madokwe, and Tajh Rust. You can visit us at booth C12.
Æmen Ededéen, b. 1979 in Mountain Home, AFB, Idaho, lives and works in New Mexico.
Æmen Ededéen’s (also known as Joshua Hagler) practice is based on self-directed research and extensive traveling. References range from Italian religious art to Max Beckmann, and in general German Expressionism and New Objectivity. What he is particularly interested in is a strong psychological and sociological vein, running though these artistic movements. Ranging from small scale to over-life size, Æmen Ededéen’s paintings reside between the figurative and the abstract. By times clearly discernible, at others only a vague silhouette, the figure always reoccurs in the artist’s work alluding to specific situations or subjects, or general topics such as memory or experience. Especially in his vast landscape paintings, the artist draws upon photographic sources which he abstracts and thereby reappropriates into a new visual language.
Ededéen holds a BFA from The University of Arizona.
Adebunmi Gbadebo. b. 1992 in Livingston, New Jersey, lives and works between Newark, NJ, and Philadelphia, PA
Adebunmi Gbadebo (Ah-dae-bu-mee Bha-dae-bo) is a multidisciplinary artist working with paper, ceramics, sound, and film, exploring the archival record of her family’s ancestry in Nigeria and enslavement in America. Through her research, material selection, and technical process, the artist emphasizes the prejudice of the historical record, activating her practice to restore Black subjectivity.
Gbadebo holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and a Certification in Creative Place Keeping at The New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Jerrell Gibbs, b. 1988 in Baltimore, MD, US
Jerrell Gibbs’ figurative portraits depict the multilayered experience of the African American diaspora, making the ordinary extraordinary. Gibbs opposes deceptive perceptions of Black men by questioning known narratives and their connection to a muted visual history. Gibbs’ paintings are acts of resistance, asserting power over visual stereotypes. He paints the Black male figure with adornments, such as flowers, and contextualizes them in moments of peace, rest, and solitude. These gestures function to dismantle the visual misrepresentation of violence, trauma, and pain.
Gibbs holds a MFA from the LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting, Baltimore, MD.
Basil Kincaid, b. 1986 in St. Louis, Missouri
Basil Kincaid honors and evolves traditional practices through quilting, collaging, photography, installation and performance. Implementing materials vested with emotional and memorial content, Kincaid allows these mediums to function as spiritual technology that forward various wisdoms born from Kincaid's greatest values: family, imagination, rest, and experience.
Kincaid studied drawing and painting at Colorado College, graduating in 2010.
Luis López-Chávez, b. 1988 in Manzanillo, Cuba
Luis López-Chávez is a contemporary Cuban painter exploring the visual dimensions of sculptural form and logical space. Based on the frictions between geometrical forms of representation with the socio-historical context, he proposes a visuality contained between a conceptual methodology and an unconscious pulse, between arithmetical and philosophical image. His paintings address themes such as space, emptiness, and different notions of death. By repeating elementary forms, the artist emphasizes their fundamental value and, thus, their link to metaphysical concerns.
López-Chávez graduated from the Academia Profesional de Artes Plásticas in Manzanillo, Cuba and from the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, Cuba.
Cinthia SifaMulanga, b. 1997 in Lubumbashi, CD, lives and works in Johannesburg, SA
Cinthia Sifa Mulanga is an independent contemporary artist from the Democratic Republic of the Congo whose practice is deeply rooted in her experiences growing up in South Africa. After her studies, Mulanga became preoccupied with painting and collage, mediums that have come to define her practice. They serve a dual interest in engaging with the history of western art and popular culture thus delving into African art. The focus of Mulanga’s practice is on the representation of Black women. Through their depiction, she looks to engage with different personas, emotions, or states of mind.
Mulanga trained as an artist at the Artist Proof Studio in Johannesburg.
a’driane nieves, b. 1982 in Texas, US
a’driane nieves gives visible shape to the internal biological and emotional processes of adaptation, recovery, healing, and transformation. nieves' work allows her to carve out—and take up—space where the fullness of her humanity as a Black, queer, neurodivergent woman can be expressed without retribution. It is her hope that holding space in her work for expressing her fullest self encourages others to do the same. Influenced by Joan Mitchell, Cy Twombly, Bernice Bing, and early Black abstractionist painters ranging from Alma Thomas to Mary Lovelace O’Neal, nieves’ paintings offer space for her own and others' quiet reflection and contemplation. She credits both the writing and visual components of her practice with helping her to find her voice and creating space for her to safely release long-buried emotions.
She graduated from Camden County College as an Associate of Arts (AA).
Nozuko Madokwe, b. 1983 in Eastern Cape, SA
In her paintings, constructed by the use of natural pigments, Nozuko Madokwe revels in the earth (umhlaba in isiXhosa) as an expressive visual form itself. Her abstract compositions are the result of multiple layerings over the surface of the canvas. They may suggest figures, landscapes or gestural marks, but edge consistently towards an abstraction rooted in organic forms. Her practice, together with her regard for indigenous knowledge around natural earth-mediums, reflects the ubiquity of umhlaba and the corresponding symbolic prevalence contained in geographic environments.
Tajh Rust, b. 1989, lives and works in New York, NY
Tajh Rust’s environmental portrait paintings explore the relationships between Black identity and space. Through close collaborations with his subjects and influenced by film, literature, photography, imagination, and life itself, his intimate sceneries in soft color palettes aim to expand understanding and appreciation of the mundane. Rust is interested in drawing connections primarily between people across the Black diaspora, and uses his own travels to inform this exploration, incorporating people from the Caribbean, West Africa, and the Americas.
Rust holds a BFA from The Cooper Union and a MFA from Yale School of Art.
