KOOP Projects, Brighton, UK
Photo London 2024 - Discovery Section
Senzeni Marasela, Maheder Haileselassie, Yassmin Forte, Tshepiso Moropa
Somerset House, London
16 - 19 May 2024
At Photo London 2024, Koop Projects presents four female African artists from South African, Ethiopia and Mozambique. Each artist is engaged with telling stories of Africa and Africans told by Africans. Themes in the work are of myth, migration, family, folklore, memory geography and history (real and imagined) and the work includes photography, collage, textile and a short form moving image / animation
Theodorah Comes To Johannesburg
Courtesy the artist and Koop Projects
Last Known Location, 2023
Courtesy the artist and Koop Projects
SENZENI MARASELA is one of Africa’s most significant female artists working today, known for her ongoing, narrative, project Waiting For Gebane, which she began in 2003. At Photo London 2024, KOOP Projects will be showing early photographic work (not exhibited for many years) alongside more recent textiles. Senzeni Marasela describes her large scale works as “monuments” to the woman at the centre of Waiting for Gebane, and, by extension, other black women. She is interested in stories that remain unheard and untold of women who came before her and who will come after. The work is grand in scope and vision and can be read as a history of women, and the family unit in South Africa and the history of the city of Johannesburg in the African context. In 2023 Senzeni Marasela became the inaugural recipient of the K21 prize from the Friends of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen. The K21 Global Art Award nomination jury was made up of five renowned curators from around the world: Doryun Chong (M+, Hong Kong), Koyo Kouoh (Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town), Omar Kholeif (Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE), Oluremi C. Onabanjo (The Museum of Modern Art, New York), and Jochen Volz (Pinacoteca doEstado de São Paulo, Brazil).
Senzeni Marasela’s work is the entrance/doorway to the other African women whose work Koop Projects exhibits.
@senzenimarasela
Exploration I
Courtesy the artist and Koop Projects
Town of Adwa
Courtesy the artist and Koop Projects
MAHEDER HAILESELASSIE was one of five artists to win the CAP (Contemporary African Photography) prize in 2023. She has also been shortlisted for Grand Prix Images Vevey 2023/24 and a Phmuseum grant. Maheder Haileselassie works at the intersection of photography, history, anthropology and architecture. Koo Projects showing images from Between Yesterday And Tomorrow, a series of landscape images and portraits inspired by the history books owned by her father. Maheder Haileselassie has superimposed 19th archives with her current photography and family albums.
@maheder_haileselassie
Military, 2022
Courtesy the artist and Koop Projects
YASSMIN FORTE was also a winner of CAP in 2023. Koop Projects shows photographs from her series: This Is A Story About My Family. In this body of work she addresses her family, migration, colonization and the repetition of patterns of history. She uses collage (archival images and her own new work) to create layers of the past and present, maps connecting her family’s history with the landscapes and history of Mozambique.
@yassminforte_photos
TSHEPISO MOROPA is a self-taught collage artist whose work weaves threads of history, symbolism and imagination. She creates hand-crafted collages and short animated films from archival imagery and her own photography, exploring the past and present tense of black people, the African diaspora and historical archives. The moving image works are translations of African folklore tales, presented as parables and allegories. Koop Projects shows several new and older collage works and animations.
@Tshepisomoropa
KOOP PROJECTS
93 St George's Road, Brighton, BN2 1EE
PHOTO LONDON 2024
