At this year’s edition of Investec Cape Town Art Fair, ARTCO Gallery is presenting a group exhibition of five artists: Maurice Mbikayi, Patrick Tagoe-Turkson, Stephan Gladieu, Justin Dingwall, and Kufa Makwavarara.
Maurice Mbikayi was born in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1974. He currently lives and works in Cape Town (South Africa). Mbikayi’s practice focuses on contemporary technology and the dumping of its waste in Africa and the Congo. Mbikayi collects these remnants and appropriates them in his work, resulting in sculptures, photographs, and performances that link the materials back to their political contexts, namely, low-wage labor abuse, and ecological and health hazards of e-waste on the African continent.
Patrick Tagoe-Turkson is a multidisciplinary artist with a studio based in Takoradi in the Western Region of Ghana. He received a Master of Fine Art Degree from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana. Patrick has participated in over 100 exhibitions, both locally and internationally.
Stephan Gladieu was born in 1969, and he lives and works in Paris. He began his career as a photographer in 1989, covering the news and the major conflicts that shook the world (the fall of Ceausescu, the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans, etc.). During these years working on feature stories, he developed a personal style based on portraits, combining aesthetic research and rigorous documentary work.
Justin Dingwall is a successful Johannesburg-based artistic photographer. He achieved a Baccalaureus Technologies in Photography Cum Laude from the Tshwane University of Technology in 2004. Dingwall has exhibited extensively both locally in South Africa and Internationally. He has been selected for various awards, including SA Taxi Foundation Art Award 2015, Sasol New Signatures 2014, and IPA – int’l photography awards 2013.
Kufa Makwavarara started doing art at the age of five. At primary school, he could draw features on chalkboards, and the teachers encouraged him to pursue art because the drawings were good. Subsequently, he won first place (Zimbabwe-Africa Region) in the special ART contest on “Olympism, Sport, Peace”, within the framework of the Unesco Associated Schools Project Network in 1999.
Source: ARTCO Berlin.
