More local artists to showcase at SA fair
Staff Writer | Monday May 26, 2025 12:09
The artists who will participate in the show courtesy of the Artist Residency Centre ARC are Ann Gollifer, Visule Kabunda, Naomi Loabile, Kim Karabo Makin and Giancarlo Diablo Santana. They join another crew, which is going to the fair courtesy of ReCurate. Gollifer was born in 1960 in the Barima-Waini region of Guyana. She was an executive member of the Thapong International Artists Workshops, founded in Botswana by Veryan Edwards and supported by Robert Loder, co-founder of the Triangle Workshops network.
She was part of the team that founded the Thapong Visual Art Centre, Gaborone. In 2019, she co-founded the Art Residency Centre, Gaborone, with Maipelo Gabang, and currently helps run the centre with a community of young Batswana artists. She works from her Gaborone studio, in a process-based, material practice. She is represented by the Guns and Rain Gallery, Johannesburg. Meanwhile, Kabunda is a Zambian-born photographer and graphic designer whose work explores the intersection of belonging and identity. Through a weaving of photography and design, Visule engages in a multifaceted artistic practice aimed at disseminating personal narratives and promoting counter-hegemonic change. This approach is rooted in his commitment to finding form and expression for his lived experiences and in extending this commitment to others by inviting them to explore and articulate their unique narratives through self-publishing. In his photographic work, Visule examines the impact of geographical and cultural displacement on his evolving understanding of home. These themes are deeply explored through his upbringing within the transnational space connecting Zambia, Botswana, and South Africa. On the other hand, Loabile is an interdisciplinary designer fascinated by how spaces can function, and their spatial use. The state of being of a person can alter depending on the interior environment they surround themselves with. Carrying into speculative design, form and function of furniture and products, material research, culture, heritage and identity, storytelling/writing, textile, and print works. Crossing disciplines to create different works that overlap and gel together. She is rooted in her creative process through the use of her own hands to craft and create. Feeling the materials and the project coming to life through various stages. Born in Gaborone, Makin is a multidisciplinary artist and occasional DJ.
Much of her work is informed by a lived sense of displacement and multiculturalism — with particular attention to the role that context plays in identity formation. Her practice thus combines Sculpture, Sound and Installation, with an emphasis on cultural value, archival histories and a unique spatial awareness. Most recently, Makin curated an exhibition of work by Gollifer at the Wits Origin Centre entitled Hold Me Said The Earth (Johannesburg, 2024). For her part, Santana is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist and curator, born and raised in Gaborone. His work attempts to destigmatize conversations around politics, masculinity, culture and heritage in the context of Botswana and Southern Africa. Giancarlo’s approach to making work is experimental and many of his works blur the line between representative and abstract. This is the case across the many media he uses, which include painting, drawing, collage, photography, installation, video and music production. The themes in his work have ranged from various aspects of his personal experience - including his psychological state – to some of the shared aspects of human existence like grief, religion and politics.