Uploaded December 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Reckoning with the Past and Reclaiming the Future: A Conversation with Contemporary Artist Lhola Amira
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, contemporary artist Lhola Amira responds to the wounds left by colonization across many disparate contexts to create spaces for healing through connection to the earth, the ancestral, and the spiritual.
Join us for a conversation with the artist led by Natasha Becker, curator of African art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, as the two discuss Amira’s commitment to reckoning with historical and ongoing forms of cultural and ecological violence, their cross-disciplinary art practice, as well as THEIR hopes for the future.
This conversation is part of the arts of Africa permanent collection exhibition, Lhola Amira: Facing the Future which opens to the public on Saturday, December 17, 2023. This conversation will be followed by a 10- to 15-minute audience Q+A.
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About the speakers
Lhola Amira, with Khanyisile Mbongwa, was born in 1984 in Gugulethu, South Africa, and currently lives in Cape Town, South Africa. Amira’s practice includes Appearance (whenever the artist is physically present), photography, video, and sculpture presented under the term Constellations (a sacred space and gesture toward sacred healing). The artist Lhola Amira is an ancestral body coexisting in the body of Mbongwa. The pronouns THEY/THEM/THEIR are used in Appearances and in conversation about THEIR plural existence. Amira was recently included in NIRIN, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, and Raupenimmersattism: The Affluent Society as Consumed Society or the Myth of Endless Production and Consumption at SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin.
Natasha Becker is the inaugural curator of African art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and oversees the permanent collection of 19th- and 20th-century art from west and central Africa. She is exploring new curatorial concepts, acquisition strategies, and special exhibitions that will interpret the African art collection as a living and evolving culture and practice.
Learn more about the exhibition: deyoung.famsf.org/exhibitions/lhola-amira
Subscribe to our channel: https://dey.ng/our-channel
Don’t miss our upcoming programs! Sign up for our newsletter: https://dey.ng/newsletter
Reckoning with the Past and Reclaiming the Future: A Conversation with Contemporary Artist Lhola Amira
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, contemporary artist Lhola Amira responds to the wounds left by colonization across many disparate contexts to create spaces for healing through connection to the earth, the ancestral, and the spiritual.
Join us for a conversation with the artist led by Natasha Becker, curator of African art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, as the two discuss Amira’s commitment to reckoning with historical and ongoing forms of cultural and ecological violence, their cross-disciplinary art practice, as well as THEIR hopes for the future.
This conversation is part of the arts of Africa permanent collection exhibition, Lhola Amira: Facing the Future which opens to the public on Saturday, December 17, 2023. This conversation will be followed by a 10- to 15-minute audience Q+A.
___________________________________
About the speakers
Lhola Amira, with Khanyisile Mbongwa, was born in 1984 in Gugulethu, South Africa, and currently lives in Cape Town, South Africa. Amira’s practice includes Appearance (whenever the artist is physically present), photography, video, and sculpture presented under the term Constellations (a sacred space and gesture toward sacred healing). The artist Lhola Amira is an ancestral body coexisting in the body of Mbongwa. The pronouns THEY/THEM/THEIR are used in Appearances and in conversation about THEIR plural existence. Amira was recently included in NIRIN, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, and Raupenimmersattism: The Affluent Society as Consumed Society or the Myth of Endless Production and Consumption at SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin.
Natasha Becker is the inaugural curator of African art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and oversees the permanent collection of 19th- and 20th-century art from west and central Africa. She is exploring new curatorial concepts, acquisition strategies, and special exhibitions that will interpret the African art collection as a living and evolving culture and practice.
Learn more about the exhibition: deyoung.famsf.org/exhibitions/lhola-amira
Subscribe to our channel: https://dey.ng/our-channel
Don’t miss our upcoming programs! Sign up for our newsletter: https://dey.ng/newsletter
![[Day 1] Bridges: Social Engagement in Artists’ Books/ 2021 Reva and David Logan Symposium](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/rEsYg-nNJCo/mqdefault.jpg "[Day 1] Bridges: Social Engagement in Artists’ Books/ 2021 Reva and David Logan Symposium
As potent tools for understanding, books can bridge disparate cultures. This year’s Logan Symposium brings together six powerful and courageous voices, artists who have traveled the world, and traveled within themselves, to bring back visual and poetic testimony.
About the Speakers
Dana Gioia (Keynote): Creativity, Collaboration, & Community
Dana Gioia is a poet and critic with numerous awards to his credit and a long history of collaboration with letterpress printers and artists. His 1992 book Can Poetry Matter? was a finalist for the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism. He is a former Poet Laureate of California and from 2003 to 2009 was chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. For nine years Gioia was the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at USC. He now divides his time between Los Angeles and Sonoma County, California. (danagioia.com)
Nigel Poor: Stories from San Quentin
Description
Nigel Poor, an artist, and photographer is a Professor of Photography at CSU Sacramento and is widely known as co-host and co-creator with Earlonne Woods of the celebrated podcast Ear Hustle. Her book The San Quentin Project (Aperture, 2021), based on classes she has taught at San Quentin on the theory and history of photography, documents the work of incarcerated students. Her fine art has been widely exhibited and collected. (nigelpoor.com)
Philip Zimmermann: Delirium
Philp Zimmermann founded his imprint, Spaceheater Editions, in 1979, and has since published several dozen editions of his mostly photo-based book works, with thirty-eight editions currently in print. A recent work, Delirium, a striking evocation of the contagions of 2020, both medical and political, was selected by the professional design association AIGA as one of the fifty best-designed books of the year. Recently retired as a professor of design at the University of Arizona, he lives in Tucson. (spaceheat.com)
Andre Bradley, Dark Archives, 1–41
Andre Bradley’s Dark Archives, 1–41, was shortlisted for the Photo-Text Book Award at Les Rencontres de la Photographie and the Paris Photo/Aperture Foundation First PhotoBook Award, both in 2016. His work is in public and private art collections and libraries including the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and Scripps Colleges Ella Strong Denison Library. Bradley holds MFA degrees from Ithaca College and the Rhode Island School of Design, where he received the T.C. Colley Award for Photographic Excellence. He lives and works in Philadelphia. (elanaschlenker.com/dark-archives/)")
