As media partner, Nataal selects five artists to see at this year’s Investec Cape Town Art Fair

Amanda Mushate - First Floor Gallery, Harare
Amanda Mushate is one of the youngest artists showing at this year’s ICTAF. Born in 1995, the Zimbabwe-based talent tackles complex social relationships through her colourful, almost effervescent works spanning sculpture, painting and mixed media. Increasingly, her art is a method of investigating her relationship with her multiple identities. Looking forward to a new phase in her life’s journey, Mushate is keen to express her inner-worlds through the artwork on view.

Mushate says: “I am going to be a mother soon and the work is about the worries about the future and bringing a new life into this world and being a woman, a mother and an artist. My work is always about life in motion – the constant dynamic in which everything is constantly changing and in which we are trying to find meaning and stability nonetheless. For me that meaning and stability comes from relationships – the people we love and who love us – the beauty and pain implicit in that.”

Riley Holloway - Lars Kristian Bode Gallery, Hamburg
Riley Holloway is an African American artist who has become best known for his portraiture and still lifes. His oil paintings have a soft, tactile quality to them, which allows the viewer to feel as if they can hear, smell and perhaps even touch his subjects. Influenced beyond the realm of fine art, his work at ICTAF centres on a poem he wrote called ‘All for Coin and Crown’, which tackles the dangers of over ambition. An established artist with an international footprint, he nevertheless sees ICTAF as a new challenge in his career.

Holloway says: “Just having the chance to put forth a body of work is exciting enough for me. Also, seeing works from around the world has helped with my perspective when creating… I’m not sure how it will resonate with people, which makes me very nervous. The message I’m hoping is clear, but not too obvious that the work is centered around a poem.”

Sungi Mlengeya - AfriArt Gallery, Uganda
Contrast is the heart of Sungi Mlengeya’s starkly-constructed works. Using strong, mono colour backgrounds, powerful linework and a flare for shadow and shape, the Tanzanian artists's acryllic paintings are immediately distinctive. For ICTAF, she will present a Solo exhibition entitled ‘Optimism’, which tracks the place of women breaking out of societal boundaries to live against the grain. Set against white backgrounds, with black and brown figures (reminiscent of the women she knows), Mlengeya celebrates everyday women making new extraordinary strides out of their ostensibly ordinary lives.

Mlengeya says: “Being East African, a base for my inspiration and the stories I share are from that setting. But South or East, our cultural practices and experiences are quite similar and because of that my audience cuts across national boundaries… I’m thrilled that I get to share my work with the zillion visitors to the fair, meet people and have interesting conversations around art. I’m excited to see everything, there is always the works that just draw you in, I’ll be on the lookout for those.”

Nnenna Okore - Sakhile&Me, Frankfurt
Nnnena Okore is a Nigerian mixed-media sculpturist, born in Australia, who works in the United States. Her diverse experience around the world makes her keenly aware of the ways in which nature and humanity co-exist, either in harmony or disharmony. In particular, her work for ICTAF takes an artist’s approach to issues of environmental decay, climate change and our relationship to our troubled environment. Particularly, she is interested here in the relationship Africans have and should continue to have with their mother earth.

Okore says: “Conceptually, the works presented at this year’s fair, including ‘Oyele’, ‘Aki N’ukwa’, ‘Inside Out’ and the ‘Untitled’ series, are all metaphors and visual representations of the environmental issues we face today. Viewers are encouraged to experience the material textures of the works through touch and feel; while contemplating our connections to nonhuman earthly participants like plants, air, water, organisms, and vital energies that exist within our environment.”

Fathi Hassan - Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai
Fathi Hassan is widely-regarded artist from Egypt. Over his illustrious career, he has engaged the world of art through writing, drawing, sculpture as well as paintings and sculptures and dazzling installations. No newcomer to events like ICTAF, Hasan has been producing shows across the international scene, with involvement in the Venice Biennale dating back to 1988. Now he graces the Cape Town audiences with his work, which reflects his strong sense of Nubian heritage through symbolism, colour and graphic art.