[Reader-list] Invitation: A Place Called Home (Johannesburg Art Gallery)

[Rana Dasgupta]

You are cordially invited you to the opening of

“A Place Called Home”

A Contemporary Art Show with artists of the South Asian Diaspora

At the Johannesburg Art Gallery

Curated by Zayd Minty

To be opened by Ferial Hafajee (Editor of Mail & Guardian) on

Saturday, 22 January 2005 at 16h00 at the Johannesburg Art Gallery

Special performance Duets in  the Diaspora - choreographed by the award 
winning Jay Pather for the Siwela Sonke dance company at the opening.

Bani Abidi (Pakistan/USA)

Omar Badsha (South Africa)

Ansuman Biswas (India/UK)

Chila Kumari Burman (UK)

Faiza Galdhari (South Africa)

Sunil Gupta (India/Canada/UK)

Roshini Kempadoo (UK/Guyana)

Zen Marie (South Africa)

Moti Roti (Trinidad/Pakistan/UK)

Prema Murthy (India/Philippines/USA)

Usha Seejarim (South Africa)

Exhibition closes 13 March 2005

A PLACE CALLED HOME: a contemporary art show with artists from the South 
Asian Diaspora curated by Zayd Minty is at the Joburg Art Gallery, South 
Africa from  22 January 2005 (opening at 16h00 by Ferial Hafajee: editor 
of the Mail and Guardian)  to 13 March 2005, following successful runs 
at the NSA Gallery in Durban, and SA National Gallery in Cape Town. 
There will be a special performance entitled Duets in the Diaspora - 
choreographed by the award winning Jay Pather for the Siwela Sonke dance 
company – at the opening of the exhibition at the Joburg Art Gallery. 
An exhibition of photographic, print, video, web based and installation 
works by artists of “Indian”/South Asian descent from all around the 
world, it is bound to have resonance in South Africa where over a 
million people originally hail from the Indian subcontinent. The “South 
Asian Diaspora” of today received its greatest growth from the mid 1800s 
when large groupings of Indians began moving to countries such as Fiji, 
South Africa, Trinidad, Surinam, and a host of other places around the 
globe, first through the indentured labour system, to provide cheap 
labour in sugar fields, and later as traders. The most recent waves of 
immigration were in the 1960s and 70s to the UK and more recently to the 
US (largely to work in the IT industries).  Bollywood and a renewed 
interest in Indian inspired style, should not detract from the 
commentary that many artists of “Indian” descent - third or fourth 
generation South Africans, British or Caribbean – have produced in the 
process of making “home” in the place of their birth or by adopting as 
“home” the place they have chosen to move to.

A Place Called Home includes a number of important local and 
international artists, amongst them: Sunil Gupta 
(India/Thailand/Canada/UK), an artist who uses his own history, as a 
gay, HIV person who has lived in three continents, in his evocative 
photographs; Chila Burman (UK) who was active in the Black British arts 
movement of the ‘80s and the renown collective Moti Roti 
(Trinidad/Pakistand/UK) whose dynamic and visually lush projects, 
inspired by carnival traditions, engage subtly in tranformative social 
commentary.  The project includes key South African artists such as the 
renowned Omar Badsha who rose to prominence as a lyrical documentary 
photographer during Apartheid days.  Badsha, together with younger up 
and coming artists, such as the award wining Usha Seejarim, Durban based 
Faiza Galdhari and Zen Marie were commissioned to produce new work for 
this show.

Minty is a cultural producer and organiser, who was born and educated in 
Durban but has worked, since 1991, in Cape Town particularly around 
issues of culture and transformation.  He was previously artistic 
director of the Cape Town Festival (2002) and is presently based at the 
District Six Museum.  He has co-curated two important shows notably 
Isintu (1998) at the SA National Gallery and Returning the Gaze (2000) a 
public art project.  Both projects dealt with questions around race and 
identity.  He is a fourth generation South African of Gujerati/Indian 
descent.

A Place Called Home was developed while Minty was a Rockefeller Fellow 
at Emory University in USA and the website at www.cultproduct.co.za and 
provides information on the making of the project’, including a detailed 
contextual essay.  It also includes submissions around issues of 
identity by a number of creative individuals of Indian/South Asian 
decent from around the world.

A Place Called Home, was chosen by a jury of the NSA Gallery as a 
project of national significance through a National Lotteries grant.  It 
has received the support of The National Arts Council, The Arts and 
Culture Trust of the President (ACT), the National Lottery Distribution 
Trust Fund and The British Council. The exhibition is supported as part 
of the British Council D+10 programme, celebrating ten years of South 
African democracy. The Johannesburg leg of the show has received the 
support of Ochre Media (www.ochre.co.za)

More Information:

Tiny or Khwezi (Johannesburg Art Gallery)

TEL:  (011) 725 3130 EMAIL: KhweziG at joburg.org.za

Zayd Minty

TEL: 0835301912 EMAIL: one at intekom.co.za