Art impact on Africa

Contrasting: Okey Nwafor has staged an art exhibition looking at how Nigeria and South Africa have an impact on Africa.

South Africa, Ethiopia and Nigeria were housed in one room when two students put up art exhibitions that looked at the countries' commonalities and contrasts that have an impact on the African continent.

One of the two shows at the Cape Africa Platform in Cape Town was run by Nigerian-born Okey Nwafor.

The other, curated by Roman Yiseni from Ethiopia, brought together the work of artists from different backgrounds, showing how they deal with the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

The work included paintings, mixed drawings, installations, ceramics, fabrics and sculptures.

Nwafor and Yiseni are part of the African Programme in Museum and Heritage Studies run by UCT, with the University of the Western Cape and the Robben Island Museum.

As part of the programme, students had to do a course in curatorship, offered by Nasan Pather and Andrew Lamprecht, both lecturers at UCT's Michaelis School of Fine Art.

Nwafor said no curator had thought of bringing together the cultural and geographical contrasts between the two big countries.

"I wanted to look at how people and artists have grappled with the message of conceptual art, whether it is socially relevant or not, acceptable or not, and how artists have worked to address social problems."