The city of Cape Town is set to host TRANS CAPE, the first large-scale exhibition of African contemporary art to be staged in South Africa. TRANS CAPE opens on September 23 and runs for four weeks, filling the city with the work of approximately 70 contemporary artists from across Africa and the Diaspora. It is the first in a series of bi annual contemporary African art exhibitions presented by the CAPE Africa Platform.

This year’s exhibition breaks boundaries in several new ways. As counterpoint to the tribal image of Africa that exists in the imagination of the west, TRANS CAPE will show the work of a new generation of African artists.

“A new generation of artists across the continent are creating remarkable contemporary responses to the unique realities of present-day Africa, contemporary African art is on the move,” says CAPE Africa Platform CEO Susan Glanville-Zini.

TRANS CAPE artistic director, South African born and internationally acclaimed curator and artist Gavin Jantjes and curators (former Durban artists), Gabi Ngcobo from SA National Gallery and Khwezi Gule from the Johannesburg Art Gallery aim to capture this energy and movement.

Jantjes explains the title of the exhibition as a metaphor for this sense of movement. “Movement is signalled by the prefix TRANS - transform, translate, transgress, transmit, transfigure, trans-national, transport, transsexual, trans-national, transient are all words that connect processes of exchange and interaction to the exhibition.”

Movement will also be registered through the presentation of artworks and the manner that visitors experience the exhibition. TRANS CAPE will be choreographed across Cape Town, inviting visitors to actively engage and re-read the cities geography; as represented through artistic intervention in the urban fabric, histories and everyday life of the city.

TRANS CAPE will include specially commissioned artworks that deal directly with the urban realities of Cape Town, as well as existing works that address the shifts, alterations, disruptions and re-locations of people across Africa.

The exhibition is conceived as a journey that uses public spaces and locates new site-specific spaces along a route that links the Cape Town city centre, to Khayelithsa, Muizenberg and Stellenbosch.

Moving TRANS CAPE’s audience along this route is an essential part of the curatorial concept. Alongside the traditional public transport system (buses, trains, and taxis), the exhibition will use vehicles transformed into art projects to transport viewers between locations.

Through these journeys TRANS CAPE will create meeting points for cross cultural exchange and multidisciplinary art experiences that include music events, performances, interventions and film screenings.

The curatorial team will select artists and artworks for the exhibition based on an intensive research process and not by open submissions. They are however open to receiving information about artists they do not know and artists are invited to visit the CAPE website at www.capeafrica.org or to phone 021 488 3064 for further information.