Curated by Jayne Crawshay-Hall

You are invited to the opening of

ME 1

on Saturday the 4th of August at 18h30

Curated by Jayne Crawshay-Hall

A major interest within contemporary art is the increasing search for identity along with an increasing sense of self–reflexivity.  Gleason (1983:910) states that “identity came into use as a popular social science term only in the 1950s at which time it was assigned not to particular racial, cultural, or sexual differences but to the self as an existential category.” Me 1 is an exploratory exhibition featuring works in a variety of media that investigate the way we create the understanding of identity through art.  The exhibition includes works by Johan Thom, Senzeni Marasela, Lionel Smit, Rozan Cochrane, Bongi Bengu, Oliver Mayhew  and Jayne Crawshay-Hall, who all seem to be involved in the examination processes of forming, inheriting and expressing personal and social identities.  The exhibition encourages the audience to re-examine basic assumptions about identity within our “anonymous society” (Gleason 1983:69), and prompts the viewer to question preconceived ideas of identity, in order to reach a stable sense of selfhood. 

Sources consulted:

Gleason, P. 1983. Identifying Identity: A Semantic History. Journal of American History (69).