At the cutting edge of their craft; bold disrupters and innovators who challenge genre, creativity and style
While primarily trained as a printmaker, Stephané Conradie (32) is known for her bricolage assemblages. Her work sits in permanent collections such as the Leridon Collection, France; Wits Art Museum Collection; UNISA Art Gallery; Spier Collection, South Africa and GAUTREAUX Collection, Cansas P.O.C Galila Barzilaï-Hollander, Belgium.
Conradie is a lecturer in print media at Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, South Africa. She has a PhD in Visual Arts at the University of Stellenbosch, where she completed her MA in Visual Arts (Art Education) and her BA in Visual Arts (Fine Arts). Her research work focuses on trying to make sense of her social and economic ‘situatedness’, in a South African context.
Wegwysers deur die Blinkuur poses the question, what happens when the next creole generation does not accept their parents’ material culture as inalienable? This exhibition is situated in a scenario of how our parents make their rituals and practices more attractive and alluring in the moment just before they pass on, the golden hour before death.
Kgomotso ‘MoMo’ Matsunyane is a 35-year-old actor, playwright and director with a visionary outlook and ability to create opportunities for herself. She was head writer and performer in 2023 Naledi Award winner Hlakanyana: The Musical where she was also named best supporting actress.
Matsunyane’s solo work for the 2024 National Arts Festival is Ka Lebitso La Moya. Set in the fictional township of Ha Satane, the community is heavily riddled with poverty, joblessness and crime. Unhappy with the government’s lack of service in their community, the people of Ha Satane grow restless. However, the arrival of a charming new priest pacifies their anger and offers them hope for a better life. But hidden behind his charm lies a wolf in sheepskin.
Themes explored in this piece range from love and manipulation to deceit, indoctrination and sexual violence.
Lorin Sookool is a 30-year-old contemporary dance artist with an interdisciplinary practice encompassing performance, sound, photography, film and costuming. In 2023, she performed a solo offering for the Liverpool Biennial: Woza Wenties and is fast receiving international recognition.
For the National Arts Festival this year,
Lorin Sookool offers a double bill entitled Two Sides of Skollie’s Coin.
The first show is a solo work entitled Woza Wenties! (previously presented at the Liverpool Biennial 2023) and the second work is a new dance production entitled 3 Mense Phakathi.
For the creation of her new dance production, Sookool aims to expand the personal-as-political approach informing her solo-based works, to consider the experiences and collaborative possibilities of a group of dancing citizens. Her strategies are therefore workshopped based, with the specifics of the work becoming emergent with time.
For this work, she hovers over Veda Austin’s thoughts about water as the rebel element, “rebellious and nonconformist, eternal and alien… just look at the power we are filled with.”
The title of the double-bill refers to a government-commissioned R5 coin designed by visual artist Lady Skollie in 2019 and offers two perspectives of the South African dancing body.
Thirty-year-old Zoë Modiga is a singer, songwriter and performer with a background in classical and jazz training and is equally comfortable in house, indie and pop. She has already generated numerous achievements, from multiple selections for the Standard Bank National Youth Jazz Band to winning the SAMRO Overseas Scholarship Competition, and reaching the Top 8 of The Voice SA.
Zoë Modiga will bring her discography, including the beloved debut album “Yellow: The Novel”, the celebrated, award-winning sophomore album “Inganekwane” and the spirited, wildly anticipated new body of work “Nomthandazo” to the National Arts Festival stage.
This offering is a surrealist, hymn book that sets the landscape to everyone and anyone’s unconscious world if they so choose. Inspired by self-realisation, identity and the spirit world, it is coded with sounds and messaging of that quiet private place, and a commentary on the human condition, and draws on places of worship, new age sounds, memory, choral spaces, mantras, and healing energy. A sacral, spirited, ceremonious, whimsical, cinematic work that brings us towards our inner, Godlike selves. It leans into the divine feminine energy, the matriarchal influence, and the nurturing of spirit and of self.
Based on real stories and perspectives about the Creator, higher self, loss, and love, it is conjuring the memory we carry in us as we seek the divinity within ourselves and evidently see all around us.
Multi-instrumentalist Darren English (32) recently won his second Global Peace Song Award (GPSA) in Los Angeles for ‘Requiem in Peace’. His star has risen in South Africa, Europe and the US, where he has spent an extended period studying, performing and recording with artists that reflect a wide range of music styles.
Darren English’s National Arts Festival presentation comprises all original material.
The Birth, originally a title for a composition on his debut album Imagine Nation, has since been broadened into a larger work/s, including collaborations with musicians in the US, Europe and South Africa.
Angel Ho (29) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice extends across musical production and performance, DJ work, performance art, costuming, artistic direction and film. Being a feminine gender non-conforming queer African body, Ho combines performance, drag and the digital space to blur and deconstruct contemporary culture.
K is for Charisma, which will be showcased through the costume and specific sonic set that will be designed by Angel, which journeys through the hope of a better future through self-love.
A is for Unique, which showcases Angel’s unique journey as an artist and human and encourages other people to connect to their uniqueness.
N is for Nerve. To be your authentic self, you need to demonstrate a lot of nerve, period.
T is for Talent. Angel will demonstrate talent cultivated over many years and give a taste of what’s to come.
All of this will be demonstrated through specific songs from my Angel’s repertoire that represent each word in KANT and through visuals that will be displayed on screen and in the dance performances for each song. There will be audience engagement at certain points, cued by Angel.
There will also be a chance for the audience to engage with the stage props and Angel-Ho after the show.
