This Women’s Day, join us for an artist walkabout and conversation with Kathy Robins, Katharien de Villiers, Caitlin Warther and Wendy Dixon who are part of the group exhibition, Still here tomorrow to high five you yesterday”¦
Working across different mediums, the artists will unpack the ways in which their practice taps into the ideas and themes explored in the exhibition.
This walkabout is free with museum admission and RSVP is essential. Click here to book your place. Zeitz MOCAA Members and children under 18 enjoy free admission. Become a Zeitz MOCAA Member for year-round access to this and other events, exhibitions and programming.
Still here tomorrow to high five you yesterday… explores the different ways in which artists, performers, writers and architects tackle the complexities inherent within the dual concepts of utopia and progress. Entering emergent spaces that exist in both the realm of the mind and in the physical unknown, the exhibition points critically to the mirages, metaphors, stereotypes and matrixes that accompany the notion of progress.
Through the works of contemporary artists from Africa and its diaspora, the exhibition engages with the phenomenon of travel and migration through imagined, alternative realities that reference both fixed and immaterial locations.
The artists in this exhibition propose many different concepts of time, a time that is no longer linear but cyclical, inter-dimensional and experiential. The artworks suggest an infinite realm of potential transformation – where past, present and future collapse into one. Evoking a place yet-to-be- known, the exhibition challenges the idea that utopia is synonymous with escapist pursuits. Instead, the works of the artists on exhibition offer a poetic critique of the norms of existing societies.
Born from notions of space travel and the tropes of Afro-futurist movements, the exhibition is conceived in chapters that unfold and progress presenting a plurality of post-colonial futures. In this way, the exhibition shapes and shifts in the gallery, disrupting and distorting the constructs of utopia and its opposite: dystopia, encouraging more nuanced perspectives on our shared futures.
About Kathy Robins:
Kathy Robins holds an MFA and PG Diploma in Fine Art from the University of Cape Town (2016, 2012), a B.Soc.Sci degree from UCT (1983) and a textile and product design degree from Parsons School of Design in New York (1989). Robins has worked in community development, art, design and social activism throughout her working life. She founded and developed a Corporate Social Responsibility Programme in 1999 and continues to work in creative and educational development initiatives.
Inspired by Svetlana Boym’s The Future of Nostalgia and The Off-Modern, Robins’ work titled, Fabric of the Universe (2018) – featured in the Zeitz MOCAA exhibition, Still Here Tomorrow to High Five Your Yesterday – explores the process of replacing a world of environmental upheaval, war and economic displacement.
Drawing on these ideas, the Fabric of the Universe is a collaboratively made work comprising of indigo dyed cotton printed with images reflecting the displacement of people and the ravages of climate change on the environment. An image of a nest evokes a transient home and serves as a visual anchor in the work. Hand stitching with copper wire implies a human effort towards connection and healing of disparate parts.
About Katharien de Villiers:
Katharien de Villiers graduated in 2015 with an MFA in Installation from KASK, Gent, Belgium, is a young Cape Town-based artist. She participated in group exhibitions in Belgium, such as Vibrations Off at Kristof de Clercq gallery along with Honore d’O and Manfredo Schu.
When you are confronted with an image you do not send out aggressive rays of sight but let the picture work on you. And that’s like experiencing. We must all create our own meaning through experience.
Through tactile manipulations involving the juxtaposition and de-contextualisation of material, de Villiers calls on the sensorial, mental and physical potential and participation of the viewer when confronted with her work. Thus, depending on the inherent power of the given form and inclination of the beholder to be informed or moved, allowing the voluntary encounter to evolve into a symbiosis of original and inspired reality.
Caitlin Warther:
Caitlin Warther is an interdisciplinary light artist whose practice encompasses sculpture and photography in an ongoing investigation into what it means to inhabit space. She recently graduated from The Parsons School of Constructed Environments NYC with an MFA in Lighting Design. After recently moving to Cape Town she is busy with a new body of work that responds to the light and space of Cape Town.
Wendy Dixon:
Wendy Dixon is a designer and art director, she runsӬa branding and design studio called Dixon Design that focuses on design and curation of creative businesses and spaces. Her latest side project turned business is called Stay Evil Kids, a conceptual art and product design studio, has led her interest from a two-dimensional plane into three-dimensional form, spacial design and installation art.
Read more about other artists feature in the exhibition, here: