A Zeitz MOCAA Centre for Art Education Project
What does it mean to see and be seen? How does our perception of ourselves shape the world around us? Does the way we see others help shape who they become? How do artists help shift ways of seeing?
Perception can be a difficult thing to define. There are so many lenses through which we view the world and even more so when it comes to how the world sees us. We challenged these young artists to explore what perception means to them and how they view their sense of self in this transitional phase of their lives, as students on the precipice of adulthood.
Taking inspiration from Sala, the reimagined Collections Exhibition on the first floor, the workshop began with four intensive days of discussion, experimentation and looking at what it means to be an artist and how the artists in Sala explore notions of identity. We then asked the participants to flip this lens and create an artwork in response to their own interpretation of seeing and being seen. In addition, each learner’s interpretation of a C-Stunner by Cyrus Kabiru is featured in this exhibition. These C-stunners reflect on ideas of how we perceive the world through specific lenses unique to our own context and how the perception shifts when others view us from a different perspective.
The young artists featured in this exhibition created these works over the course of eight weeks, with intense guidance, support and feedback from the facilitators in the form of crit sessions and working Saturdays, not to mention many afternoons spent working tirelessly after school and exams. Many of them worked in mediums completely outside of their comfort zone, experimenting and being exposed to techniques they have never had the opportunity to explore in the traditional classroom space.
The Annual Matric Workshop, hosted by the Centre for Art Education, invites Grade 12 Visual Art learners from around Cape Town to come together each year to engage with and respond to an exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA. We believe it is our duty to help pave the way for the next generation of artists and creatives, demystify the artworld and exposing these Grade 12s to what it means to be a creative professional, as an artist, writer and colleague.
Zeitz MOCAA’s curatorial and exhibition programming is generously supported by Gucci, Mellon Foundation, and BMW Group South Africa.
Image Credit: Installation view, See/n. Photography by Dillon Marsh, courtesy of Zeitz MOCAA.