i/24 = (un)masked
An Exhibition Of Prints By APS 3rd Year Students
Our Printmaking Education Programme offers a wide range of printmaking techniques. Students create drawings to be translated into prints. For this year 2020 students will exhibit their prints and drawings, sharing their 2020 Education journey. All prints and drawings are available for sale at affordable prices, from R500 to R2000.
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i⁄24 Stands for an edition number; and I for each of us as individuals, exploring our identity , and 24 represents us as a 3rd year group collectively probing our identity. The common theme that runs through all our works is an exploration of our identity as young Africans, now, an excavation, carefully digging up our immediate landscape and excavating the remains of our personal and collective histories, resulting in a pile a/ mound of remains that shape our identities , that have come to the surface. Exposing a flux of unspoken identities within this context at a particular time.
Our exhibition attempts to (Un) mask living in African and the Afropolitan city of Johannesburg. We collectively unmask culturally sensitive historical, social and political issues that we face in South Africa. We examine roles, mannerisms and values of traditional cultural practices within our communities in order to address these culturally sensitive, socio-political issues. We believe that in our society these issues are often disguised and through our work we attempt to unmask and address them. Many of us have been taught by our elder’s that some things are too sacred to be shared publicly. We have grown to understand that in order to overcome or fully comprehend what we are faced with as young aspiring artists, we need to address our challenges. We actively seek to (un)mask the depths of our being and render it less of a taboo. We therefore feel that our exhibition i/ 24 = (un)masked provides us with an appropriate platform to address these taboo matters.
The word (un)masked in the title has a dual function. It firstly refers to the wearing of masks as one of the preventative methods of spreading the Covid-19 Virus. We have used (un)masked in the literal sense of taking off the masks that we now use as an essential in our everyday lives as an outcome of the pandemic. It secondly refers to the (un)masking of the concealed complexities of our concepts and identities that many of us are grappling with.
