Diane de Beer
The FNB Art Prize was launched in 2011. All galleries participating in the fair may nominate one of their artists for consideration. The winner receives R100 000 and the chance to showcase their work at the FNB JoburgArtFair. The two judges this year were Senegalese curator, Koyo Kouoh, and Nigerian curator, Bisi Silva. This year’s FNB Art Prize winner is South African artist, Turiya Magadlela.
“It’s all about telling a story in an authentic way,” says Magadlela (born in 1978), who uses common-place fabrics such as nylon pantyhose, Correctional Services sheeting and uniforms in her work. Starting with her Kaffirsheeting series which began in 2013, an ongoing contemplation on the history of incarcerated black South African leaders, she used traditional Xhosa cloth and Correctional Service fabrics with their torn edges, creases and exposed stitching, to tell a story of our complex history.
Individual works are named for past incarcerated kings, chiefs and prophets such as Kgosi Galeshewe, Langalibalele and Hintsa because she was juxtaposing their royal lives with their imprisonment, while also exploring the high walls behind which people live as if imprisoned and questioning our freedom.
“It’s got to do with the lives we live in this country,” she says.
Together with this first series, she will also show two series titled Imihuzuko, (which, she says, roughly translated means “I’m okay, I was grazed, but not wiped out”) and I Never Made Swan Lake which is about a dream of being part of that big ballet, but not quite fitting the norm.
In this works she plays with abstract legs, the way they look and are perceived.
Magadlela says her art has sold more strongly internationally than nationally and for now, she can’t make a living from it. She survives with a number of art related projects.
After matriculating from the National School of the Arts, she studied at Funda Community College under Charles Nkosi, the University of Johannesburg and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. She has solo exhibitions at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (2015) and at blank projects, Cape Town (2013) and select group exhibitions.