Goodman Gallery
Black Portraiture[s] III: Reinventions, Strains of Histories and Culture, the Department of Photography & Imaging's current installment of the Black Portraitrue[s] conference series, is hosted this year by the Goodman Gallery in South Africa.
This year, the Gallery celebrates its 50th anniversary.
Across an era of violent political tumult and the democratic transformation of the state, the gallery has been a resolutely non-discriminatory space. As well as selling art by both black and white artists, from South Africa and elsewhere, it has been required at times actively to protect artists and to defend freedom of expression.
Hosted for the first time on the African continent, Black Portraiture[s] III signals a watershed moment for the Gallery and the Africa National Congress (ANC).
As the ANC’s hopeful state-building project seems once again in jeopardy, the Johannesburg conference marks a significant moment in the maturing of the African art scene: the wresting back of critical discussion from the diaspora to Africa itself.