WHATIFTHEWORLD presents The Unspoken Landscape, a group exhibition featuring works by nine Southern African artists spanning three generations: Mia Chaplin, Wezile Harmans, Dale Lawrence, Strauss Louw, Maja Marx, Michele Mathison, Ben Orkin, Chris Soal, Inga Somdyala and Pierre Vermeulen. This exhibition brings together artists whose work reveals a profound sensitivity to material and process. As a gallery based in South Africa, WHATIFTHEWORLD has observed a leaning amongst artists from the region towards harvesting and reclaiming unexpected materials and the unconventional manipulation of the familiar in creating extraordinary works from the prosaic.
Materials such as thread, soil, seawater, coffee, sandpaper, cement, wire and packing tape assume an alchemical quality in the hands of the artists that transmute humble materials into observations on a diverse range of subjects, from migration to female subjectivity. The interplay of these materials and the social context in which these works have been produced share some of the sensibilities of Arte Povera, an art movement born initially from economic instability and political turmoil but one that has continued to shape contemporary art practice. With its complex socio-political landscape and distinctive vernacular materiality, South Africa resonates deeply with this sensibility. This intriguing link between the methods and aesthetics of two distinctly different geographic regions seems fitting to mention on the occasion of the gallery’s residency with Conceptual Fine Art in Milan.
About the artists
Ben Orkin (b. 1998; Cape Town, South Africa) is a ceramic sculptor based in Cape Town, South Africa. His vessels reflect an organic language formed between his relationships with clay and the body, including queer intimacy that oscillate between moments of nourishment and dependency, validation and resistance, love and separation. Their textured finish is evidence of the hand-builder’s careful touch, imbuing the sculptures with a sense of the tactile and, at times, the erotic. Orkin graduated in 2020 with a BFA from Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town, South Africa. Since 2019, he has held three solo exhibitions with WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town, namely You told me… (2019), Extra Safe (2021) and Backrooms, Bookstores, Balconies, Meatracks and Tearooms (2023).
Dale Lawrence (b.1988) is an artist living and working in Cape Town, South Africa. Through his work, Lawrence seeks moments of intimacy and invention through the disruption of repetitive processes: in craftsmanship and artistic practice, in familiar language and histories, in habitual behaviours and daily rituals. Lawrence’s work has featured in group exhibitions with WHATIFTHEWORLD such as The Phoenix Runway (2022) and 40 Under 40 at WITW/KRONE. He was in residence at Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, USA in 2022 in a program co-organised by the museum in collaboration with RAW Académie (Dakar), directed by Just Above Midtown gallery founder Linda Goode Bryant.
Maja Marx (b. 1977 South Africa) is an artist currently living and working in Cape Town, South Africa. Marx is a proponent of contemporary abstract art; approaching painting as an optical activation of surface. She has featured in South African exhibitions, with her most recent solo exhibition, Skin of the Eye (2023), being her sixth to be hosted with WHATIFTHEWORLD; succeeding There There (2020), Chorus (2018), Glare (2016) There (2020), Block (2013) and Fold (2011). The Unspoken Landscape opens on the 8th of May and will run until the 21st June 2025.
