Latitudes Podcast

Refiloe speaks to Professor Sumayya Vally, acclaimed architect (and principal of the award winning architecture and research practice Counterspace) about architecture as an artistic medium. The conversation salvages the concept from the idealistic or theoretical and brings it into the deeply personal and intimate realms. Sumayya gives a peak into the engine at the heart of her practice including how architecture shows up in political moments, her fascination with under-appreciated stories as well as the legacies of our heroes and how she thinks of her own. Explore further here.

Refiloe is in conversation with visual artist Cinga Samson about his meteoric rise to global, artistic success. Known for his figurative oil paintings of large-scale group scenes and self-portraits; along with his depictions of figures with pupil-less eyes arranged in ceremonious poses. Cinga unpacks just what his works seek to portray and perhaps why they might never fully do. Sceptical about the trappings of success: Cinga is more focused on appreciating the emotional and spiritual nourishment that family and nature can provide.

Valerie Kabov is the Director of First Floor Gallery Harare as well as the co-founder of the African Art Galleries Association.

She is an educator, writer and researcher whose international experience in teaching, training and implementing projects in the field of art; audience engagement and intercultural dialogue, has further burnished her impressive mission into an awe-inspiring one.

Valerie sits down with host Refiloe Mpakanyane to explain her approach toward supporting the artist; thriving in spite of the capitalist head-winds that Creativity faces; the need for unbowed and professional art criticism and the foundational need for art in every single person’s life.

Valerie brings forth some surprising and delightful elements of her upbringing in Belarus and Australia, which continue to inform her work and which along with experience, her studies and temperament, have coalesced into a delightful, invigorating and expansive world view.

In this episode, Refiloe Mpakanyane speaks to award-winning writer Milisuthando Bongela. While her career began in fashion, her creative spirit has carried her into music, art, media and now film. Bongela has written and directed her first film: the self-titled: Milisuthando. The artfully edited and scored documentary is a personal essay spanning 30 years and was eight years in the making. Written as a portrait of the filmmaker and her country, South Africa, both growing up (as it were) in parallel and in the aftermath of apartheid. Told in a non-linear fashion: Milisuthando calls the film an invitation to viewers to excavate forgotten parts of themselves, their history their family. The film takes a feminist lens to questions about power, fear, intimacy and love as it relates to race. The conversation traverses on Bongela's decades-long path to writing and directing her debut film, as well as what finding her voice and perspective means to her and how she imagines it will ground her work going forward.

In episode 10 of the Latitudes Podcast, host Refiloe Mpakanyane speaks with British-Ghanaian, curatorial powerhouse, Osei Bonsu. A sought-after curator of contemporary art, Osei’s work has taken him all over the world, advising museums, art fairs as well as private collections. Also a lecturer and writer, Osei has contributed to various arts publications and exhibition catalogues.

Before joining the Tate Modern as Curator of International Art, he had established the digital platform, Creative Africa Network, where he drew upon his experience to mentor artists and re-imagine more meaningful ways to create value for and among African artists on the continent. Osei shares why this mission to effect change abides in his current work and why a more textured and nuanced art space that grows the western canon, benefits us all. Osei’s expansive view on the purpose and potential of art moves our conversation to the importance of family as well as his take on professional recognition.