Natasha Becker and Amogelang Maledu, curators of Generations, trace the cross-generational conversation between the booths:

“The cohort of Rorke’s Drift artists presented in this section surfaces how, through employing visual languages in weaving and ceramics, artists documented the country’s history of violence during apartheid. Employing mythological sensibilities found in African stories and folktales, the artists’ work is laden with magical realism. Meanwhile Maluleke’s approach to this section and his pairing with Rorke’s Drift is an honorary response to the art centre’s contribution to South African art. In these works, Maluleke engages with the history and memory of Rorke’s Drift, drawing on its landscape and the thematic concerns expressed in the works of its earlier artists. He presents these ideas through a personal lens, and his visual vernacular. He references the land, the art school’s evangelical founding, and the techniques, particularly weaving during the 1960s. Maluleke is very drawn to the narrativised landscapes in both the Rorke’s Drift tapestries and ceramics.”

Maluleke and Rorke’s Drift are one of five pairings in this new section of the fair, which instigates dialogues between five pairs of artists at different stages of their careers. Becker and Maledu’s objective is for Generations to “encourage visitors to engage a relational way of seeing artists’ individual practices vis-à-vis their intersecting dialogues in mediums and material cultures, as well as common conceptual preoccupations”.