Group show
Ambra Nera

The Breeder is pleased to present “Ambra Nera”, a group show centred around the works of artists with African origins. Participating artists include Chioma Ebinama, Anton Kannemeyer, Basil Kincaid, Kalup Linzy and Cameron Platter.

Chioma Ebinama shows watercolor and ink works that begin with a meandering, layered process in search for a fragmented narrative; like a short story collaged from scraps and notes. Her repertoire of recurring images—archetypal female figures, fantastic beasts, and odd flora—are drawn from an anthropological study of precolonial narrative traditions and ontologies including West African cosmology. She is interested in understanding the role of the African artist in negotiating the representations of the black female body in Western culture. Moreover, her work explores how visual narrative and crafts create space for the fractured sense of identity inherent to those whose histories have been obscured by American and European hegemony over African history.

South African comic artist Anton Kannemeyer – who goes by the pseudonym “Joe Dog”- is revered for his subversive stance, dark humour and satire. Complicated, emotional topics are approached with a deceptive simplicity. “I think that a comic style allows one to easily access stereotypes, which is important if you’re a satirist. The simpler the image becomes, the clearer it is for the viewer to read the image” states the artist. It is the continued existence of racism and double standards in Africa that Kannemeyer is commenting on. What has always been prominent in his work is his interest in exposing the hypocrisy of the white liberal in South Africa. With his confrontational images and humour, he brings to attention prejudices and world-views that can then be dealt with and hopefully be done away with. Works by Kannemeyer are included in the collections of the Museums of Modern Art in New York and San Fransisco.

Post-Disciplinary visual artist Basil Kincaid, observes in his work how perception and prejudice impact one’s relationship to place, objects, people and their sense of belonging or displacement. Kincaids’ quest is to understand the wild tapestry of his own personal and cultural identity within the African Diaspora, contextualized by the scaffolding of his American experience. He practices self-exploration, historical investigation, and critical social questioning to cultivate healing on a personal and cultural level, towards the remedy of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. For Kincaid, quilting is a way to collaborate with ancestral energy and a method of empowerment, as it is a practice that is saturated on both sides of his family dating back over 100 years.

Kalup Linzy is primarily known for his live performances, video works, paintings and collages that invoke a satirical narrative inspired by soap operas and Hollywood melodramas to investigate stereotypes around sexual identity, race, and gender. His films have a decidedly home-made aesthetic and are, in turn, hilarious and moving. Linzy himself often stars, inhabiting a range of characters—bewigged and in drag— who relate the quotidian but at times outrageous trials of everyday life. He employs a sly humor to skewer both icons of the New York art world and reality TV shows. Works by Kalup Linzy are included in the collections of the MoMA, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Birmingham Museum of Art and in the Rubell Family Collection in Miami.

Cameron Platter’s interdisciplinary work consumes, appropriates and filters the overload of information available as a waste product of the digital age. Featuring trademark Afro-bling styling and politically incorrect struggle-art appropriation his work engages with unorthodox and transient sources and unearths contemporary reality. His interest in the aesthetic of trash – that is “the overlooked, subliminal, fringe elements of society” – is an exploration of those references that sit outside of “polite society’s main avenue of discourse”. Platter’s work is included in the collections MoMA, New York; The FRAC des Pays de la Loire, France; Zietz MOCAA Collection; The Margulies Collection; and the Iziko South African National Gallery.