RAW Material Company invites you to a presentation by South African artist Joe Turpin, in conversation with Massamba Mbaye, Friday February 21st 2020 at 6pm.

“I am drawn to emergent conversations around decolonization and the position from which one creates, as well as how visual and symbolic form is ascribed to complexities within identity. It is here that my identity as a Jewish South African becomes principal and consequential to me in selecting sources that inform the visual and physical elements that comprise my work. I am interested in how these narratives then resonate within a wider social context, hence my current project that engages with recent historic research on the persecution of Jewish people by the Vichy Colonial Regime in West Africa and Senegal. My primary focus is on the concentration camp that was set up in Sebikhotane during the Second World War."

About Joe Turpin

Joe Turpin is a South African visual artist. Born in Johannesburg in 1995, his practice focuses on narratives and semiotics charged and informed by history, and the physical expansion of painting as practice. Turpin graduated from the University of the Witwatersand in 2018 with a degree (BA Hons) in Fine Art, and has participated in a variety of exhibitions and residencies internationally, as well as being featured in various online and printed publications.

About Massamba Mbaye

Massamba Mbaye is an art critic, curator and consultant. Historian of theories of communication, he is specialized in cybernetics. As a graduate of strategic marketing and communication he teaches these specialties. He is a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and the current Managing Director of DMedia group. He has been a member of the editorial board of Afrik'Arts, an international visual arts magazine edited by the Dakar Biennale and has been coordinating Dak'art's communication since 2016. He is also a member of the Orientation Committee of Dak'art and is the author of several books on visual arts in Senegal.