Our current exhibition, The Main Complaint in the Centre for the Moving Image features a weekly Screen Take-over by invited curators. In a similar vein to Instagram takeovers, a screen in the Centre for the Moving Image will be occupied by invited curators from outside of South Africa (working for institutions, galleries, or independently). Each curator will be invited to take over the screen for a period of one week with content they think needs to be seen in the context of Zeitz MOCAA. This could comprise of video works, text-based interventions, conversations, a single image, sound, etc. It could change daily or remain the same for the entire week.
This week, Zeitz MOCAA’s Assistant Curator, Michaela Limberis has chosen to exhibit A.N.S.A – a collaborative video work by Sabrina Yegela and Valerie Amani that speaks to censorship and resistance.
A.N.S.A is a multimedia project that imagines a dystopian future full of repressed artists. The acronym, which stands for “A New Society for Artists” and the work is a collaborative work between fashion and graphic designer, Valerie Amani and installation artist, Sabrina Yegela. In their multimedia project, Amani and Yegela connect video, photography, sculpture, music and fashion to create scenes that imagine a dystopian future, where artists are considered criminals and creativity is a mental illness.
Using current events and a fictional scenario set in the 4th millennium 3009 A.D. in a totalitarian state; they aim to blur the line between reality and fiction to accidentally ‘on purpose’ address the pressing issues affecting present day artists in Tanzania.
A.N.S.A is a call for rebellion. There is a state of tension and anxiety induced by the piece, but there is also an underlying feeling of resistance and hope, with a message that creativity cannot and will not be restricted.
About Sabrina Yegela:
Sabrina Yegela is a multi-media installation artist based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She graduated from Dartmouth College in 2013 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Her alienating experience as a Black and African woman navigating the idiosyncrasies of American racism at a predominantly white college, and her keen desire to better understand the global politics of identity and structural dynamics of power and privilege, informs the core subject of her work. Through her work, she seeks to start uncomfortable conversations about race, power and privilege as a means to affect deep and lasting social change.
About Valerie Amani:
Valerie Amani lives and works between South Africa and Tanzania. Amani is an award-winning fashion and graphic designer with a fondness for words and art. She is based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Both a graduate of Economics (Rhodes University) and Fashion (FEDISA), Amani combines her skills to create multimedia visual art pieces with narratives around the challenges surrounding neo-colonialism, environmental awareness and feminism. Her work has been featured on various international platforms and publications including Vogue and AfroPunk. She has also been a speaker on the TedX platform, presenting on the importance of owning one’s individuality. She is currently the Visual Arts Manager at Nafasi Art Space, while simultaneously building her clothing brand Kahvarah and co-founded digital agency, R.R Creative Agency.