Southern Guild: Expo Chicago

Highlighting Africa’s rich artistic oeuvre, Southern Guild will be returning to Expo Chicago for the third consecutive year this April with a presentation of new work by leading contemporary artists from across the continent. This includes works by Zanele Muholi (South Africa), Zizipho Poswa (South Africa), Kamyar Bineshtarigh (South Africa/Iran), Mmangaliso Nzuza (South Africa), Ayotunde Ojo (Nigeria), Roméo Mivekannin (Ivory Coast/Benin/France), Bonolo Kavula (South Africa), Ange Dakouo (Ivory Coast/Mali) and Lulama Wolf (South Africa).

Spanning both traditional and non-traditional media, the featured works emerge from artistic practices that speak back to Western modes of art-making by articulating narratives of resistance and inclusive representation. Working in abstract modes, Bineshtarigh, Kavula and Dakouo invoke the rhythmic power of labour-intensive processes – mark-making, threading, weaving and wrapping – to reclaim memory, delve into the politics of language, and devise their own material approaches. While artists Muholi, Poswa, Nzuza, Ojo, Wolf and Mivekannin reclaim agency through representation of themselves and their communities, giving vivid figurative form to less visible spaces, symbols and subjects.

“Since our debut presentation at Expo Chicago in 2023, our presence in the US has expanded substantially,” says Trevyn McGowan, co-founder of Southern Guild. “Our new gallery in Los Angeles, which opened in February 2024, has served as a springboard for establishing connections with artists in the States and the diaspora at large, spotlighting our artists’ work in seven solo exhibitions and four group shows, and facilitating important residencies and museum engagements on the West Coast. We have also broadened our participation in US fairs to add San Francisco, Los Angeles and Aspen to our outings in Chicago, New York and Miami.”

Highlights of the fair include two lightboxes and a photographic work from Zanele Muholi’s acclaimed Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness) series, two new ceramic sculptures from Zizipho Poswa’s uBuhle boKhokho series, and a series of large-scale figurative oil paintings by Mmangaliso Nzuza.

Expo Chicago will run from 24 to 27 April at Festival Hall, Navy Pier, Chicago, USA.