At only 26 years old, Portia Malatjie has already made a name for herself as a promising curator. She was recently put on the spotlight again, through an article in the Mail and Guardian that appeared on 23 March.
Having joined the Rhodes Fine Art department in April 2012, Portia was also selected as the guest curator for the 2012 MTN New Contemporaries Award.
As she told the Mail and Guardian, she never envisaged herself as a curator before she “fell into the practice with her first project,” an exhibition of printmaker Nelson Makamo’s CityTales and CountryScapes which was on show at Museum Africa last year.
Since her selection last December, she has travelled to nine different provinces to choose the finalists and view their work. “Having been based in Jo’burg, I was only exposed to Jo’burg artists, so it was amazing to see the breadth and scope of the work from the rest of the country,” she says. The announcement of the finalists is imminent.
Portia obtained both her Fine Art and MFA degrees in Art History from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). For Cityscapes she hoisted herself into the breach ? organising everything from human resources and marketing, to printing the labels and editing the catalogue.
“I think artists just want to make art so, naturally, they don’t want to be bothered with doing admin and leave it all up to someone else to do the marketing, but I think it’s important to be as comprehensive about your work as possible,” she says, adding that artists who work in more traditional mediums like painting and printmaking are often sidelined.
Portia curated the group exhibition Random Access last year between October and November at the Bag Factory Artists’ Studios in Johannesburg. She feels strongly that, as a curator, “just having an exhibition isn’t enough” and one needs to find innovative ways to fit traditional mediums into contemporary art spaces.
“It’s essential for the arts scene to be more open to up-and-coming artists and create platforms for them to show their work,” she says.
She says she is happy to be at Rhodes as she is very passionate about education. “Curatorial practice and academic research feed off one another as curatorial texts are very research-based and grounded in Art History, so it’s fantastic for me,” she says.
These skills are being perfectly combined in her latest project: co-coordinating art lessons with children and teenagers as well as curating the exhibition which is evolving from this training.
Entitled dis/play, the youth living at Anstey’s apartment block in Jo’burg’s CBD have been working together with local photographers, sculptors and performance artists to create an exhibition that will be on show at the Goethe on Main gallery and the Anstey’s building in July.
Anstey’s has become a hive of artistic activity with many artists) living there ?even William Kentridge has reportedly purchased an apartment in the block. When it was found that the kids were bored and getting into trouble, Ntombi Lushabe founded the Anstey’s Kids Project organised by the Urban Arts Platform where events and workshops are keeping them off the streets.
Donna Kukama, who was a finalist in the last MTN Contemporaries Awards, is one of the artists who will be collaborating with the Anstey’s kids to produce work for the exhibition.
“The idea is that the artists get a chance to teach their skills and the children can be fulfilled by realising their talents,” says Portia.
By Anna-Karien Otto