BIRTH OF THE ALTER NATURAL : Sylvester Zanoxolo Mqeku

As the winner of the StateoftheART Gallery Award 2021, Sylvester Zanoxolo Mqeku will present his debut solo exhibition “Birth of the Alter Natural” at StateoftheART Gallery in Cape Town from 03 December – 22 December 2022.

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In response to the 2021 Award theme, “On the brink: Visualizing Climate Change, Mqeku submitted work that responded and explored visceral visual responses of the possibilities of an altered or extinct natural world. This work was derived from a Masters Dissertation that the artist has been developing at the Central University of Technology (CUT) in Bloemfontein for the past two years. Currently, Mqeku stands as the only artist in Africa who uses the technique of sand cast ceramics, his research was an attempt to marry the ancient traditional craft technique of ceramics with 4th industrial scientific methods including fabrication techniques such as laser cutting, 3D Printing and 3D Photogrammetry modelling.

At the height of our anthropogenic influence, particularly at the advent of artificial intelligence, the excessive automation of the human industrial ecosystem, and the digitization of human cognitive abilities through smart devices, we find here that human instinct and creativity are crucial ingredients in re-establishing our relationship with the earth. At the end of 2022 the oldest known clay sculpture on the planet dates back 28 000 years ago, this is what we know so far of the lifespan of anything made of fired ceramics, this exhibition serves as a stitch in time insisting on the status of hand-made ceramic objects in the currently shifting paradigms of human consciousness.

Read Sylvester Zanoxolo Mqeku's opening speech here>