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'PEOPLE OF COLOUR' A3+ Digital Collage, Original Prints:1-20
PRIZE
WINNER
© Copyright with All Rights Reserved, Nomonde Charmaine Mbono, JO anon., 2024.
2nd PLACE AWARD* - DESMOND TUTU HEALTH FOUNDATION 2024 - 20th Anniversary Art Prize Winner! Click for Results
By Charmaine Mbono (& JO, anon.). 'The Oneness of Humankind', aka 'People of Colour'. * Second Prize total from Tutu's Health Foundation: ZAR 40,000.
'This work primarily speaks to the oneness of humankind, through stark visuals that challenge preconceptions based on race, in particular. The artwork is a high-definition collage of skin-tones ranging from 'black' to 'white'. But none of the (unfiltered) skin-tones are fully black or fully white, because nobody's skin is.
'It is surprising if you find out that, for instance, the 'whitest' person in this collage is in fact Japanese, the darkest is a child soldier from Sudan, and of course most 'black' people are a whole range of colours (shades of light brown, in SA).
'This reconsiders the construction of race, important in such times of tension and hostility globally which affects the HIV response and political climate. We are all people of colour, is the principal message. A message of hope [comp. theme].
'This is meant as public art, not elitist art. Many of the pictures of human skin, which human figures overlaid, come from friends who have passed away in recent years, mainly activists who died during COVID...' - Desmond Tutu HF '24.
TO ORDER: US$ 2,000 (ZAR 40,000) per high-def, signed, framed, print-on-metal (limited to 15x signed originals, A3). NTF Available. Installation available based on this idea- ready and already used... Inquire here.
'TASTY' High-def Digital Collage, 1m width printed
This collage includes many of the richest people in the world and South Africa (according to Forbes Magazine). The wealth gap causes health, learning and safety implications, including early deaths and lower life expectancy for the 50% not working or able to find work in SA. Greedy elites see no connection between increasing concentration of wealth and mass impoverishment, or think it's good for the economy. Philanthropy eases guilt for Bill Gates. Spot Trump!
"Who society idolizes says a great deal about a nation," (paraphrased from 'Hud' starring Paul Newman), and who is rewarded most and considered truly valuable!? Teachers who inspire children barely scrape by in South Africa. Most CEOs or financiers, conversely, pass the 'psychopath test' with flying colours. If you are not ruthless you are a loser, they think, and nothing is worse than losing. What about losing every day? The US has 3 mass shootings a week, on average in recent years, yet assault rifles are legal. SA had 30,000 murders last year. This has been traced to inequality via stress hormones. Greed kills here.
It is a common South African practice to put printed words (generally 'hope', 'love', 'home', and such) on the walls of middle classed houses, well-intentioned but easy to poke fun of here, with the choice of the word 'Tasty' to sow confusion in the naive of this world. In London slang, 'tasty' also means satisfying to eat.
TO ORDER: US$ 600 per print range (once-off 20 framed originals, 1m length, printed and mounted on metal).
Worldwide Delivery. Negotiable for Digital Rights (NFT). Inquire here.
'SMOKING BIRDS' 3x A4 Indian Ink SA Birds, cig collectibles
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These Indian Ink (on tea-aged printing paper) drawings reproduce antique collectibles from a series of cigarette-packet cards named 'Birds of South Africa'. The birds are faithfully reproduced from the cards glued to the top-left corner of the framed images (though presenting the opposite side of each card with a description of each bird, with the original picture hidden from view).
The irony that the birds are smoking will not be lost on the viewer, nor the artist's surprise at finding these collectible cigarette cards in his thirties in an antique shop, given his notoriety during high school for doodling birds with cigarettes in their mouths all over his notebooks. The artist enjoyed the juxtaposition then, but his high school drawings were essentially nihilist, sarcastic and rebellious, if early signs of an interest in Dada & Absurdism.
The progression of the artist's smoking bird drawings during over twenty years mirrors his progression to a more mature, informed and political outsider artist. The above, later work is far more precisely conceptualized, localized and given new context. The tainting of nature by the profit motive and commercial capitalism replaces nihilism as the expressionist motive.
The images are meant to raise more questions than answers for most viewers, however. The art is easily confused or misinterpreted - a subtle critique of conceptual art in general for not being easily accessible, and of popular art for losing its meaning in the process of popularization...
Postcard size, unframed. Center: Verreaux's Eagle, $50 per high-definition A5 print, total 100 prints, signed. Worldwide Delivery. Inquire here.
'SEMEN SAMPLE' Sample tube with computer chips, cardboard base
This solidly made, super-glued construction, conceived in 2014, is one of a kind and ahead of its time. 'Semen sample' shows a sample tube with computer chips inside. A dystopian object, superficially. In reality, absurd.
There are numerous allusions, to the conceptual artists of the past who sealed and sold fecal matter for millions of dollars (with the artist's semen used here in the gluing production process), to the false idea that human minds function like computers or that AI represents something genuinely akin to self-awareness or a living organism, or an emerging consciousness. Computers use maths, very quickly via servers, but they are still computers!
Then there is the NFT craze, a craze to own something *100%* the same as a million free other digital copies out there, arguably taking the modern art world's idea you can buy and own an idea to its most ridiculous.
The Human Genome Project's achievements could be seen as noteworthy, but semen has as much to do with genomic sequencing as microchips. Some might feel uncomfortable at the idea, but it's an absurd, funny idea!
$2,000 for the signed original, recommended for exhibition in a sealed case. Worldwide Delivery. Inquire here.
ADDITIONAL ART EXAMPLES*
* Please Inquire for ABSURDIST VIDEO ART
''The Black and White Lived Experience in South Africa.' 2024
Animated GIF: 'BUMCHICK' by Johnny Outsider 2022
Copyright Johnny Outsider 2024. All Rights Reserved.
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