Nicola Roos
Nicola Roos works in life-size figurative sculptural installations constructed out of recycled rubber tyre tubing. She investigates the origins of civilization and society, as well as the ever-changing politics of national identity, collective memory and cultural belonging in the postcolonial world. The point of reference for her 2015 debut installation, No Man’s Land, was the only black Samurai in recorded history: a Mozambican slave named Yasuke, who was taken from his homeland to serve under an influential shogun in 16th century Japan. His legacy of cross-cultural exchange shifted the focus to this new world state of ethnographic modernity and the transient fixity of culture and tradition. Roos’s interest in colonial history and the commemoration of abstruse individuals was sparked by Yasuke and the myriad of socio-cultural implications that ripple outwards from this remarkable man in Africa and abroad. Her work suggests that this shifting state of culture (and the resulting sense of rootlessness) is much more apparent at the dawn of post-Westernism – a possibly threatening, unstable no man’s land that we find ourselves in today. However, her characters are no longer individuals, but rather elements of an imagined realm beyond official history. They are the embodiment of a local cultural breakdown and a communal future where beliefs, assumptions and knowledge about place and culture can be deconstructed and re-negotiated. Roos has not exhibited in 2019 as she set aside the year for the preparation and creation of artworks for her upcoming Solo exhibition and for Art Fairs.
Group Exhibitions
2018 Defying the Narrative: Contemporary Art from Southern and West Africa , Evergold Projects, San
Francisco, USA.
Right at the Equator , Depart Foundation, Malibu Village, California, USA.
2017 Recent Acquisitions , UNISA Art Gallery, Kgorong Building, Tshwane, South Africa
Black and White , Absolut Art Gallery, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Turbine Art Fair , Turbine Hall, Johannesburg, South Africa
Cape Town Art Fair , Cape Town International Convention Centre, South Africa
2016 Cape Town Art Fair , Cape Town International Convention Centre, South Africa
On Photography, Painting, and Sculpture, Erdmann Contemporary, Cape Town, South Africa
2015 Form and Substance, Erdmann Contemporary, Cape Town, South Africa
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