2021 Cassirer Welz Award finalists announced

FLTR: Mpumelelo Buthelezi, Nthabiseng Boledi Kekana, Samuel Nnorom and Xanthè Jackson have been announced as the finalists for 2021 Cassirer Welz Award. | Source: Supplied.

Now in it’s tenth year, the Cassirer Welz Award celebrates the lives of the late Reinhold Cassirer, who was a renowned art dealer, and Stephan Welz, the late art auctioneer and founder of Strauss & Co.

The award gives emerging artists an opportunity to showcase their talents to a broader audience and acknowledges exceptional emerging artists with an opportunity of a ten-week residency and a solo exhibition of new work at the Bag Factory Artists’ Studios.

The award will provide the recipient with studio space, a contribution towards material costs, and transport stipend, as well as the opportunity to interact with the resident artists at the Bag Factory. Through the exchange of ideas, mentorship and skills development, the artist has an opportunity for substantial creative and professional growth.

The winner will be announced at an award ceremony at the Strauss & Co Fine Art Auctioneers on Monday, 29 November.

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About the finalists

Mpumelelo Buthelezi is a Johannesburg-based self-taught photographer who seeks to tell the untold stories of the local communities and to present them as narratives and full lives lived in the margins. He has exhibited his work at the Student Gallery, Social Art Award in Germany as well as at the Transitions Rotterdam FotoFestival in Netherlands and is currently on another virtual artist-residency with wendy network for arts unchained.

Nthabiseng Boledi Kekana is a Johannesburg-based artist who grounds her work in inclusivity and uses a harmonic range of mediums such as acrylic and charcoal to further explore the world’s narrative through her lens. Her work has been exhibited in France and currently is in possession of major collectors around the world, primarily in London and the US.

Samuel Nnorom is a multi-talented artist who seeks to explore several materials. He belongs to the New Nsukka School of Art and is currently exploring Ankara fabric to explore ideas surrounding bubbles while interrogating personal experiences that relate to socio-political issues in Africa.

Xanthè Jackson is a Durban-based multidisciplinary artist who holds a diploma in fine arts from Rhodes University in 2011. Jackson is an abstract artist, whose work is process-driven and detail-oriented. Through her work, Xanthè speaks of loss, connection, time, memory, familiarity, as well as the unfamiliar, and perhaps even the aberrant.