The South West Africa campaign was the conquest and occupation of German South West Africa by forces from the Union of South Africa acting on behalf of the British imperial government at the beginning of the First World War.
Brett Murray is a South African artist mostly known for his steel and mixed media wall sculptures. He was born in Pretoria, South Africa. Murray has a master's degree in fine art from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, 1989. Referred to by critic Brenda Atkinson as "the dark prince of South African pop (art)", Murray is one of the country's most popular artists, often using easily recognisable media images with the addition of a subversive and bitterly funny twist. Murray's work addresses the wars of the cultures, the clash between Afrocentrism and Eurocentrism, the old and the new South Africas. "With my work I hope to critically entertain. Through satirical and tragic reflections on South Africa, I hope to shift people's perspectives and change people's minds, indulgent, arrogant and pretentious as this might sound," he says. More recently, his work has explored his own personal experiences and identity. Murray was also the founder of the sculpture department at Stellenbosch University.
Butcher Boys (1985/1986) is a sculpture made by South African artist Jane Alexander of three, life-size, oil-painted plaster figures with animal horn and bone details, seated on a bench. The work formed part of her MAFA submission and was first exhibited at the Market Theatre Gallery in Johannesburg in 1986. It was acquired by the South African National Gallery in 1991. The work was a response to the state of emergency in South Africa at the time.
SalāLemi Ponifasio is a prolific international theatre director, choreographer, and artist. He is known for his radical approach to theatre, dance, art and activism, and for his collaboration with communities.
Held in Cape Town, South Africa Infecting the City is a public arts festival that is committed to making art freely available to everyone. The festival hosts a range of different types of site-specific art, art intervention and performance art in the central part of the city. Each year the festival takes on a social issue or theme which the participating artists respond to. In 2011, the Festival worked with Cape Town's artistic and cultural community to present public art under the theme of Treasure. This theme was intended to celebrate the artistic traditions and contemporary practices of the diverse communities within South Africa and to explore Cape Town's "Afropolitan" reality.
The Handspring Puppet Company is a puppetry performance and design company established in 1981 by Adrian Kohler, Basil Jones, Jon Weinberg and Jill Joubert. It is based in Cape Town, South Africa.
Dada Masilo is a South African dancer and choreographer, known for her unique and innovative interpretations of classical ballets. Trained in classical ballet and contemporary dance, Masilo fuses these techniques with African dance steps to create her high-speed style. She was born and raised in the Johannesburg township of Soweto. Although she is interested more in the personal challenge of choreography than political statements, her pieces often address taboos such as homosexuality and race relations.
Diana Page is a painter, performance and installation artist originally from South Africa but currently residing in Istanbul, Turkey. Exploring experiences of traveling back and forth between these two homes, Page's artwork concerns ideas of globalization and nomadic lifestyle. Through painting, drawing, performance, installation, and video, Page investigates the urban environments she inhabits as an emotional as well as physical setting.
Jay Pather is a South African curator, choreographer, and director working in Cape Town. He is the director of Siwela Sonke Dance Theatre and an associate professor at the University of Cape Town. Pather has been involved in the choreography and direction of over one hundred productions in South Africa and even more internationally.
Leila Anderson is a South African performance artist whose work balances the theatrical, the visual, and the performative. Her ongoing collaboration with Dutch artist Stan Wannet has produced several live installation works over the last two years. She is a part-time lecturer in contemporary performance at the University of Cape Town.
Marco Cianfanelli is a South African artist who has been involved in a wide range of projects involving art, architecture and public spaces. Cianfanelli combines computer-generated, data-driven applications with human, expressive, gestural acts to create tension in his work. Cianfanelli is one of a handful of South African artists whose work successfully spans the public and domestic sphere. He began his career painting landscapes and continues to be concerned with romanticized space and that which is marginalized through the very act of romanticizing. Cianfanelli's slick, pared-down, iconographic recent works are intricately linked with the complexity of loving South Africa.
Doreen Southwood is a South African artist, designer, and boutique owner based in Cape Town. She works in a wide variety of media in her artwork, producing sculptures, objects, prints, film, and more, which she often bases on personal experiences and self exploration. Her candidness regarding personal flaws and the cycles of repression and coping that accompany conservative, middle class, Afrikaans upbringing inform much of her work, calling attention to ways in which women are silenced or otherwise repressed in that space.
Mamela Nyamza is a dancer, teacher, choreographer, curator, director and activist in South Africa. She is trained in a variety of styles of dance including ballet, modern dance, African dance, the Horton technique, Spanish dance, jazz, movement and mime, flying low technique, release technique, gumboot dance and Butoh. Her style of dance and choreography blends aspects of traditional and contemporary dances. Nyamza has performed nationally and internationally. She has choreographed autobiographical, political, and social pieces both on her own and in collaboration with other artists. She draws inspiration from her daily life and her childhood growing up in Gugulethu, as well as her identity as a homosexual, Black, South African woman. She uses her platform to share some of the traumas faced by South African lesbians, such as corrective rape. Additionally, she has created various community outreach projects that have spread dance to different communities within South Africa, including the University of Stellenbosch's Project Move 1524, a group that uses dance therapy to educate on issues relating to HIV/AIDS, domestic violence and drug abuse.
Mary Sibande is a South African artist based in Johannesburg. Her art consists of sculptures, paintings, photography, and design. Sibande uses these mediums and techniques to help depict the human form and explore the construction of identity in a postcolonial South African context. In addition, Sibande focuses on using her work to show her personal experiences through Apartheid. Her art also attempts to critique stereotypical depictions of women, particularly black women.
Deborah Bell is a South African painter and sculptor whose works are known internationally.
Ultra South Africa is Africa's largest electronic music festival and is part of Ultra Music Festival's worldwide expansion which has now spread to twenty countries. Ultra South Africa is a single day event taking place in two cities. Having debuted in 2014, Ultra South Africa is one of the longest standing world editions of the festival. Ultra South Africa is a strictly 18 and over event.
Yewande Omotoso is a South African-based novelist, architect and designer, who was born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria. She currently lives in Johannesburg. Her two published novels have earned her considerable attention, including winning the South African Literary Award for First-Time Published Author, being shortlisted for the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the M-Net Literary Awards 2012, and the 2013 Etisalat Prize for Literature, and being longlisted for the 2017 Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction. She is the daughter of Nigerian writer Kole Omotoso, and the sister of filmmaker Akin Omotoso.
Tal Itzhaki is an Israeli theatre designer and director of the Academy of Performing Arts, Tel Aviv, a translator of plays and prose into Hebrew, and a peace activist.
Ann Mary Gollifer is a British-Guyanese visual artist currently based in Gaborone, Botswana. Her work Mother Tongue can be seen on display in the Sainsbury African Galleries, a part of the British Museum's permanent collection.
Martyn Roberts is a New Zealand lighting and set designer and photographer, and founder of the arts collective afterburner theatre productions. Roberts has won 14 theatre awards. The afterburner production Dark Matter, conceived and created by Roberts won Best of Fringe at the 2017 NZ Fringe Festival Awards.
