A world in transition: Kunsthaus Göttingen shows South African art

On the basis of three artists, the Kunsthaus Göttingen offers an insight into the multifaceted art scene of South Africa: From February 19 to May 01, 2022, the exhibition From South Africa: Santu Mofokeng. William Kentridge. Banele Khoza will feature photographs, etchings and prints. The photographs of Santu Mofokeng (1956-2020), who was one of the few black photographers working in the years around 1994, the official end of apartheid, are suitable as an overview. For more than three decades, Mofokeng documented life in townships, labor strikes, religious rituals and political rallies. He acted with restraint and was thus able to convey a sense of everyday life in South Africa in his images.

Mofokeng's colleague of the same age, William Kentridge, is now one of South Africa's best-known contemporary artists. His works have been in international museums since the 1990s. On view at the Kunsthaus Göttingen is his 54-sheet series Domestic Scenes. In these etchings from 1980, he examines human behavior in a domestic environment. The third artist in the exhibition is Banele Khoza. Born in 1994, the artist's prints express a search for intimacy and human closeness juxtaposed with the emerging supremacy of social media. Khoza's works are being exhibited in Göttingen for the first time outside Africa.