ReCurate |A re bonaneng: I see you, you see meme

ReCurate's offering at this year's RMB Latitudes Fair celebrates Botswana's vanguard contemporary artists; boundary-pushing trailblazers in the up-and-coming Botswana art scene vehemently disrupting the status quo and the meaning of "art-making" in Botswana with their artistic rhetoric, mediums, as well as their ever-evolving visual narratives.

"A re bonaneng: I see you, you see me" - a Setswana idiom that is the curatorial stance of this showing - denotes the sense of interconnectedness and community, the very essence of what underpins ReCurate's choice of artists for this Fair and the deeper meaning behind the artists' work.

As Botswana's first group showing at the RMB Fair, the curatorial concept communicates the need for symbiotic relationships between artists, and how interconnected our personal, human stories and experiences are.

The artwork showcased at this year's Fair explore and speak to a gamut of shared human emotions - the dynamics of division and unity in the collective "we"; the individual's need to be "seen" and understood, while feeling compelled by society to mask "one's true self" to be accepted; the individual's yearning to connect with the divine and yet how spirituality is deply connected to one's cultural or group identity - to unpack but a few of the themes intertwine in the pieces.

These themes are immediately apparent as one stares into Ann Gollifer's esoteric "Botswana-earth pigment" watercolor faces and ponders on how her choices of meduim speaks directly to the physical and emotional frailties of being human. Or as we try to discren why Modisa Motsomi "masks" the faces of his starkly portrayed figures with disorienting materials; faceless bodies full of emotion. And again, even without seeing any form, face or figure in Ngozi Chukura's threaded "Portal" studies, as we comtemplate the human-divinity connection alluded to in these orphic threaddaped canvases that channel Yoruba and Igbo "masquerades" and the practice of the prayer.

While each artist's work deeply explores personal stories and investigation, the hope of sharing this collection is that as we take time to reflect and enagae with the artworks, the overarching narrative of our connectedness in our vulnerabilities, weaknesses, strengths, and in the sacred, and how these define what it means to be individual in - or despite of - the collective we, will allow us to see deeper glimpese of ourselves in the works, and understand that we are images of each other.

This show runs from 22 - May 2024.