“There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet,” is the line from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot that inspired the exhibition An Endless Night at the Mount Nelson Hotel, in collaboration with Investec Art Fair.
An Endless Night, curated by Anelisa Mangcu, investigates this innate human desire to project our failures and unconstructive use of time outwards, instead of acknowledging our agency and authorship of our own stories.
“Time is our scarcest resource. It is completely non-renewable,” explains Mangcu. Engaging with the existential dread and anxiety around time, An Endless Night explores the mundane experiences of the everyday. “The artists in this exhibition are encouraged to explore the passage of time that allows questions to unfold, characters to be drawn and findings to be resolved,” she adds.
While our perception of time is usually linear – past, present, future—our experience of time is not linear, as memory and dreams interject this linearity. Instead, Mangcu curated a selection of artworks that capture the moments in between, the waiting, the silence, the sleep, as a way of depicting our desire to stretch time. “We fill up our time with tasks, purpose, duty and creating memories, in hopes of taking our subjective existence seriously with intrinsic value. This way, we create value by affirming time and living it, and not simply obsessing over its passing,” she explains. These artworks reject this suffocating structure of linear time by capturing moments in time and distilling them into sculptures or paintings.
Artwork by Mary Sibande
Featuring a selection of 11 artists, the exhibition includes a multidisciplinary display of artwork, ranging from the sculptures of Mary Sibande to the hyperrealist paintings of Ayogu Kingsley. The artworks are scattered throughout different areas of the hotel, across the various rooms of the planet bar, tea lounge, planet verandah and along the passageways of the hotel entrance.
This exhibition forms part of the Mount Nelson Hotel and Investec Cape Town Art Fair’s collaboration to host exhibitions around African futures and dreams. The inaugural exhibition from this collaboration was curated by Amogelang Maledu, titled: Today I wish to talk to your dreams.
This partnership between the Mount Nelson Hotel and Investec Cape Town Art Fair deepens both institutions’ commitment to supporting local artists. Mount Nelson Hotel General Manager Tiago Sarmento explains “Arts and culture are inherent to Belmond’s DNA as we have a long-standing history of nurturing passionate relationships with arts communities around the world. Thus, this feels like a natural partnership, not only because of the fair’s impeccable reputation in the art world but also due to its well-respected relationships with established and emergent artists on the continent.”
Artwork by Trevor Stuurman
For Investec Cape Town Art Fair, this exhibition forms part of their greater ambition of sustaining the visual art sector beyond the parameters of the annual fair. Both Anelisa Mangcu and Amogelang Maledu were chosen for their bold and adventurous concepts, adding to the exhibitions’ locale as a historical hotel with a distinctly contemporary worldview.
“An Endless Night, will once again celebrate the synergy between these landmark spaces. Both are intrinsic to Cape Town’s cultural calendar,” Laura Vincenti, Director of Investec Cape Town Art Fair, speaks of the Mount Nelson Hotel’s location in the heart of the city and the art fair, which provides an ongoing showcase for the country’s creative achievements, “bringing history, heritage, and thought-provoking artwork into one shared moment,” Vincenti adds.
The incredible artists featured in this exhibition are Mary Sibande, Trevor Stuurman, Mongezi Gum, Kimathi Mafafo, Feni Chulumanco, Buqaqawuli Thamani Nobakada, Shakil Solanki, Richard Templeton Smith, Anico Mostert, Ayogu Kingsley and Nedia Were.
The exhibition is open to the public and will continue until the 28th of August.
Artwork by Shakil Solanki
Artwork by Richard Templeton Smith
Artwork by Kimathi Mafafo
Artwork by Nedia Were
Feature Image: Artwork by Ayogu Kingsley
