Summer Show

Meant to engage visitors to newly represented artists by Goodman Gallery in Cape Town, “Summer Show” is a group exhibition that takes place at the end of the year.

Featuring works by Ghada Amer, William Kentridge, Shirin Neshat, among others, this show is a chance to see how different artists with different media develop their own and often similar vision of cultural, social and political issues that affect the society.

One of the artwork on show is Egyptian artist Ghada Ahmer’s “Heart” (2012) a stainless steel sculpture that shows the heart as an intricate web of artery-like lines. As in many other works, here Ghada reflects upon the female conditions, exploring the historical development of the status and rejecting the oppressive behavior in with women and their bodies are subjected to. Talking about this concept and aiming to a better and freer condition for them, the artist states “I believe that all women should like their bodies and use them as tools of seduction”.

The pieces from the photographic series “Genesis [Je n’isi isi] IX and Genesis [Je n’isi isi] XI”, by Zimbabwean artist and activist Kudzanai Chiura deals with the journey of men exploring unexplored areas of central Africa. Through this photographic stroytelling, the artist documents the condition of people living between Christianity and commerce.

Highlights from the exhibition includes Iranian artist Shirin Neshat’s series “Our House Is on Fire“. Main theme of the artist production, this series of portraits of Egyptians are overlaid with hand-written poems in miniature calligraphy which disclose a reality to which the Persian poems speak.