Tawanda Takura, a self-taught artist from Zimbabwe, has been named the winner of the 13th Cassirer Welz Award. This prestigious award is presented by Bag Factory Artists' Studios in collaboration with Strauss & Co. Education and Fine Art Auctioneers. The 2024 call for entries included artists from several countries within the Triangle Network, such as Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
As part of the award, Takura will receive a three-month residency at the Bag Factory Artists' Studios in Johannesburg from July 8 to September 27, 2024. During this time, he will work alongside other artists at various stages of their careers. The residency includes support for travel, accommodation, daily expenses, materials, and production costs.
The selection jury, which included representatives from both Bag Factory and Strauss & Co., chose Takura for his exceptional work in found object sculpture. They believe this opportunity will significantly benefit his creative and professional growth.
Takura's artistic journey includes exhibitions at major art fairs such as the Cape Town Art Fair and Joburg Art Fair. He has also participated in residencies and group exhibitions at various galleries and art spaces in South Africa.
The Cassirer Welz Award, established in 2011 by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer, has a history of launching the careers of emerging local artists in the South African art market. The award was renamed to honour both Reinhold Cassirer and Stephan Welz for their contributions to the South African art scene.
Takura's residency will culminate in a solo exhibition of new works at the Bag Factory, scheduled to open to the public at the end of September 2024.
ABOUT TAWANDA TAKURA
Trained as a shoemaker, Takura takes apart and expertly re-assembles old shoes which carry the traces and biographies of their owners. Sometimes combined with other found objects and texts, these new figurations carry the subtle but persistent smell of rubber and leather. Hollow, hybrid, tortured and distorted, sometimes carnivalesque. Takura describes how, at times, in earlier years, he was considered a madman, going around collecting old shoes... people would often see heaps of shoes in my house”.
Takura’s work comments on socio-political injustice, and often takes clear aim at what he sees as the extractive and hypocritical practices of charismatic churches.
Tawanda Takura has exhibited with Village Unhu at Cape Town Art Fair (2017, 2018) and Joburg Art Fair (2018), and undertook a residency in Joburg with the South African Foundation for Contemporary Art (SAFFCA) in 2019. His work was included in a group show at the Guns & Rain Gallery in March 2019, the Cape Town Art Fair (2020), and in a two-man show with Thina Dube (2020). He has since participated in the group exhibitions Unnatural Objects and Meeting Places, a collaborative exhibition with Bag Factory (2021). In 2021 he participated in a residency with Guns & Rain and in a residency at the Nirox Sculpture Park, one after the other. He also had work showing during the Nirox Winter Exhibition, 2022.
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