The 10th anniversary edition of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair will be from February 17 through February 19 in 2023. Being the largest contemporary art fair in Africa, with 100 exhibitors, 23,000 attendees, and 6,000 VIPs, the fair has established itself as a crucial meeting point for the African art market and the global art community. It’s provided with a reliable and exciting platform for the local art community such as collectors, galleries, curators, and artists.

Asisibenze Art Atelier joins in the fair curating works by the legendary late Samson Mnisi, whose works challenge the viewer to think far beyond the physical as his pieces sing our hidden lives and thoughts to life. Every year, the fair promises to deliver a world-class art fair, and this year is no exception.

Having initially started 10 years ago as a laid-back event for local art audiences in 2013 the Cape Town Art Fair eventually went international in 2016 with the assistance of Fiera Milano, an Italian events company. Making this year’s theme within its decade period; ‘The Notion Of Time’ well suited. The theme is appropriately wide-ranging and encompasses ideas related to the past, present, and future, including the ever-important concept of change that comes with the passing of time both for humans and the world around us. 

With the promise of delivering a world-class art fair, this year is certainly no different as Asisibenze Art Atelier joins in the fair curating works by the legendary late Samson Mnisi; whose works challenge the viewer to think far beyond the physical as his pieces sing our hidden lives and thoughts to life. 

Samson Mnisi’s paintings ask one core question: What is Africa? His reply? “It is not a begging bowl, a raised fist, bankrupted state, black face, but a subtracted and abstracted forcefield”. Mnisi projects a psychic inscape – inner worlds explosive, turbulent, crossected, circled, obsessive signallings of Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence. Motifs repeat themselves, and life is seen as variations of a single dance. Colours are bold, sometimes noisily acidic. But it’s the artist’s physical drive that emerges most powerfully – the muscularity of vision, fearless, dionysian.( – Ashraf Jamal ) 

Born in Lesotho, Samson Mnisi, otherwise known as Rain Maker studied Fine Art and photography at FUBA Academy and upon completing his studies participated in group and solo exhibitions both locally and internationally. He went on to be categorically known as a post-war abstract expressionist, finding himself practising both painting and poetry. However, it was his exposure to indigenous meditative and healing rituals that went on to influence not only his lifestyle but his themes and techniques. 

With his works being influenced by his exposure to indigenous meditative and healing rituals one begins to understand how artistically his techniques can be described as abstract. We also further understand this in one of his comments on his creative process, “My art is a symbolic language of an abstract thought. I use patterns, lines, symbols and colour to find a contemporary South African expression. I see myself as part of the timeless tradition of celebrating the human godliness, from the first rock painting to the present time and beyond. I am interested in using art as another element of alchemy, where through it, you can evoke and even heal certain emotions.” 

His most recent solo exhibition before his passing titled ‘Man Of The Hour’ was curated in collaboration with Asisebenze Art Atelier and Studio Nxumalo at Keyes Art Mile in Rosebank, Johannesburg. Having been the first solo exhibition curated after a while for Mnisi, the art community who understood the impact of his work and continuously followed him was excited at the opportunity of viewing some of his latest works. Curators of Man Of The Hour Ashraf Jamal, Ivy Rihlampfu and Refiloe Mnisi together with guests looked forward to once again being challenged by his creative signature seen in his fused symbols, geometry, and Abstract Expressionism which echo knowledge only known far beyond the physical realm. 

However, looking at the theme of the 10th edition of the art fair, “The Notion Of Time”, and the titling of his most recent solo exhibition, “Man Of The Hour”, one can’t help but imagine how his presence at the fair goes far beyond the physical. But perhaps is a moment in time when the Spiritual realm and the physical coincidentally meet.