NEW: Gerald Machona: Survive (2018), video

It is our pleasure to welcome Gerald Machona's Survive (2018) to the UCT Works of Art Collection. This recent acquisition will enrich our African Modern Art collection.

Performance art, film, video and digital arts – while they are becoming more and more common and more and more widely circulated in the 21st century – still tend to be some of the most challenging forms of art to commoditise. So the recent acquisition of Gerald Machona's video work, Survive (2108), by the UCT Works of Art Collection seems all the more forward-thinking and remarkable for providing an alternative space in which to engage with art outside of the purely commercial.

Born in Zvishane, a mining town in south-central Zimbabwe, Gerald Machona (*1986) is a graduate of the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. While still a student there, Machona took the art world by storm with his installations and performances that made creative use of the decommissioned Zimbabwean banknotes.  

 

Read the think piece: 
Gerald Machona: Survive (2018)
by Dr Fari Nzinga

In the following months, the Works of Art Committee will be introducing new acquisitions. We have invited art writers to produce short reflections on a particular artwork, which will be published on our website, so stay tuned for more.