The PPC Imaginarium Awards announced its overall winner, category winners and runners-up at a gala event hosted in May at the UJ Art Gallery in Johannesburg.
The winners were selected from the competition’s 55 finalists who submitted their concrete art and design works across the categories of Sculpture, Industrial Design, Fashion, Jewellery and Film. (No Architecture submissions made it to the finalist round this year).
Mziwoxolo Makalima impressed the judges with his thought-provoking sculpture submission titled 'Doubt-Queuing', securing him the titles of 2017 PPC Imaginarium Overall Winner and Sculpture Category Winner, as well as a total cash prize of R150,000.
Voice of the voiceless
Makalima’s sculpture, which is fashioned out of concrete and mild steel, aims to be the voice of a voiceless, subjugated society. 'Doubt-Queuing' represents a group of community members who have stood for so long waiting and hoping for change, and who have remained as strong as concrete. The concrete represents the strength of the community that has had to endure a queue of unfulfilled promises that seem to have been extended ever since the dawn of social equality called democracy.
Makalima further explains the concept behind his work: “For our society, it is time to let go of ‘rotten’ reinforcing. By doing so, this does not mean our concrete society has lost its strength. It only means it can make a stand. We are taken advantage of and treated as stepping-stones, while our votes only gave us seconds of fame. Today, we are tired of waiting and yet we go back to waiting. This waiting has become the trademark of our liberation, waiting, hoping for change. This is a long wait for promises made by those who call themselves leaders. Now, we wait because we are starting to think that maybe we should just be so grateful for our freedom that we should not want to be anything more than just voters.”
The competition’s category winners and runners-up also fared well in terms of cash prizes, each walking away with R50,000 and R15,000 respectively.
The 2017 PPC Imaginarium Awards’ category winners and runners-up, classified per category, are as follows:
Sculpture
Overall winner and category winner:
Mziwoxolo Makalima
Doubt-Queuing
Mziwoxolo Makalima's 'Doubt-Queuing'
Runner-up:
Sonwabiso Ngcai
Emweka
Industrial Design
Category winner:
Handre de la Rey
CS Project
Handre de la Rey's CS Project
Runner-up:
Deon de Lange
Kilroy
Fashion
Category winner:
Cara Jade Bezuidenhout
Concrete Journey
Cara Jade Bezuidenhout's 'Concrete Journey'
click to enlargeRunner-up:
Tshepo Sizwe Phokojoe
Dawn of a new epoch
Jewellery
Category winner:
Zanele Vilakazi
Alphga
Zanele Vilakazi's 'Alphga'
Runner-up:
Aleks Ashton
Cyberglyph
Film
Category winner:
Stefanus Nel
Ben’s Ladder
The 2017 winners were selected by a formidable panel of industry heavyweights, including architect and director of the awards, Daniel van der Merwe, fashion and design consultant Allana Finley and well-known curators Stephen Hobbs and Zanele Mashumi.
Entries are now officially open for the 2018 PPC Imaginarium Awards in one of the competition’s six categories, namely, Sculpture, Industrial Design, Fashion, Jewellery, Film and Architecture. For more information on the PPC Imaginarium Awards, go to www.ppcimaginarium.co.za.
