photography in all its forms

New York, New York

Zwelethu Mthethwa and Okwui Enwezor
in Conversation

Tuesday, March 2, 2010
6:30 pm

FREE

Aperture Foundation
547 West 27 Street, 4th floor
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555

Aperture is honored to present a conversation between photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa, a key figure in the South African post-apartheid photography movement, and Okwui Enwezor, a pioneering critic and curator.

This dialogue will take place on the occasion of the March 2010 publication of Mthethwa's long-awaited first comprehensive monograph, to which Enwezor contributes an essay. The book presents Mthethwa's powerful series of portraits portraying black South Africans as relentlessly dignified and defiant, even under the duress of social and economic hardship. Working in both urban and rural industrial landscapes, Mthethwa documents a range of issues pertaining to South Africa—from domestic life and the environment to landscape and labor issues. His images challenge the conventions of both Western documentary work and African commercial studio photography, marking a transition away from the visually exotic and diseased—or "Afro-pessimism," as Enwezor has referred to it—by employing a fresh approach marked by color and collaboration.

Zwelethu Mthethwa (born in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, 1960) received his BFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, a then-white's-only university he entered under special ministerial consent. He received his master's degree while on a Fulbright Scholarship to the Rochester Institute of Technology. Mthethwa has had over thirty-five international solo exhibitions and has been featured in numerous group shows, including the 2005 Venice Biennale and Snap Judgments at the International Center of Photography, New York. Mthethwa is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. He lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

Okwui Enwezor (essay) is dean of academic affairs at the San Francisco Art Institute and the former artistic director of both Documenta XI and the second Johannesburg Biennale. He is a pioneering critic and curator.

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