26 Investec Cape Town Art Fair ICTAF 2020 Statement from curators

INVESTEC CAPE TOWN ART FAIR 2020 14 – 16 February 2020 Statement from ICTAF 2020 curators, Luigi Fassi and Nkule Mabaso investeccapetownartfair.co.za

What tools and survey methods can the section of a fair activate to intercept some of the most significant experiences within the current contemporary art scenario? Tomorrows/Today 2020 tries to respond to such question by offering an updated and unpredictable insight into the practice time of 10 emerging international artists, most of them having tight connections to contemporary African culture but active also in other continents such as North America, Europe and Middle East.

The strength of the section lies in being a field research that has engaged us curators for several months in search of innovative, complex and multifaceted artistic proposals. Tomorrows/Todays intersects three parallel stories: the participating artists, the galleries supporting them and the curators, who carry out research and invite the galleries to exhibit at the Fair. Not to count the role of the museum directors and institutional curators, who will act as jurors to award the section’s prize to

ICTAF 2020 Curator Luigi Fassi

one of the artists during the fair’s days. The section is not built predetermining thematic or narrative sectors and there are no ideological focus or privileged conceptual models to define its nature. Its architecture is given rather by the emerging force of the projects on view, which all bear witness to a critical and uncompromising urgency with regard to artistic work, capable of raising questions and reflections on the current changes underway in the world geopolitical scenario.

Tomorrows/Today is thus characterized as a hub, a place in which some decisive artistic achievements are intensively concentrated, as the title of the project suggests - between the now and the yet to come, or more precisely, to emphasize an anticipation of the future in the present. All this is confirmed by the fact that most artists will present works realised specifically for the occasion of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair 2020.

In these months to come, the work of we as curators is to accompany the participating artists in the most inspiring formulation of their works in the fair, by adding critical reflections to them and curating a kaleidoscope of proposals in which different expressive languages manifest and interact.

For more information regarding the ICTAF 2020 visit www.investeccapetownartfair.co.za