South African artist collective MADEYOULOOK continue to foster the spirit of documenta fifteen and the lumbung as they set out to host a collaborative, week-long programme from the 4th-13th November 2022, featuring a selection of work from around the world with a Johannesburg audience. Artists and contributors include Marwa Arsanios (Lebanon), Nadir Bouhmouch of AWAL/Le18 (Morocco), INLAND (Spain), SWOP (South Africa), Jatiwangi Art Factory (Indonesia), QANAT/Le18 (Morocco) and MADEYOULOOK (South Africa), among others.

Aptly titled, lumbung.jozi, the program will share a series of discursive events across multiple sites and venues in the city with LAPA, the artist residency space by the Goethe-Institut South Africa, as the main gathering and working space of lumbing.jozi, with a select number of discussions and gatherings set to be hosted by the Forge, SWOP and the 12 on Parklane Community Garden.

Dr Asma Diakité, Goethe-Institut Regional Director of Cultural Programs for Sub-Saharan Africa said, “This documenta is by far the most representative of global south and activist positions. It has brought together socially engaged practitioners and activists from around the world and addresses contemporary urgencies across the board – and one of the key themes that has emerged among a number of artists is land. In some senses, this not only presents the concepts and ideas of documenta fifteen beyond the boundaries of Kassel, but also extends the conceptual foundation for the IZWE exhibition series by MADEYOULOOK held at the Goethe Johannesburg Gallery in 2019 and 2020.”

documenta is an exhibition of contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. Curated by an art collective for the very first time, this year’s documenta exhibition was significant in its embracing of collectivity, new economic systems, decentralisation and especially, artists from the Majority World. The framing principle of documenta fifteen has been the concept of lumbung – an Indonesian rice barn used as a social space built around the values of solidarity, cooperation, transparency, and regeneration. lumbung.jozi seeks to build upon the premise of lumbung as it relates to questions of land, and to share some small part of documenta fifteen in South Africa.

MADEYOULOOK explains, “In recent years questions of land have emerged as a matter of urgent public discourse in many parts of the majority world, not least of all in South Africa. Issues of property ownership, politics of food production, various ecological concerns and the need to reimagine what it means to be in relationship with the land have all come to the fore. Land has also come to represent a significant political, social and artistic consideration among the practitioners and collectives involved in documenta fifteen. Lumbung.jozi brings some of these socially engaged practices from around the world into exchange with a range of artists, land workers, activists and academics to engage myriad themes on the subject of land in the South African context.”

made-you-look.net