Both have humdingers on show: Sekoto’s Evening on the Corner (1943) shows a gathering of five figures observed in low light, while Delaney’s untitled 1970 portrait of a man in striped two-piece pulses with light and colour. Artists from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya and Nigeria are the next most represented nationalities.īut ‘When We See Us’ is not an exhibition about nationalities, which were already complicated by 1947 when South African Gerard Sekoto settled in Paris, five years ahead of American Beauford Delaney. Among the 28 nationalities represented, Americans dominate, with 35 artists, followed by South Africa, with 16 artists. The combination is revealing, beyond the focus on labour and the sublimated histories they gesture to. South African George Pemba’s oil painting The Gardener (1991), depicting a man tending a suburban garden, is paired with an untitled gouache from 1940 by American Romare Bearden that shows a woman with calloused knuckles bearing a harvest of tobacco leaves.
‘There is beauty in our daily lives,’ reads a text adjacent to the exhibition’s opening two works. The content is partisan and told from the perspective of an enthused participant, not a dispassionate observer. Photography: Dillon Marsh)Ī brief wall text introduces each section.
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