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Faith47 street art on the road again barrabas
Faith47 (born Cape Town, 1979) is a South African artist who has held solo exhibitions in New York (2015), London (2014) and Johannesburg (2012). Faith47 began painting in 1997, three years after the end of apartheid. Using a wide range of media, her approach is explorative and substrate appropriate – from found and rescued objects, to time-layered and history-textured city walls, to studio-prepared canvas and wood. A self-taught artist, Faith47 is widely regarded as one of the most famous South African street artists, although her art has reached international fame. Faith47 is also one of the most famous female street and graffiti artists in the world. As both a notable South African and woman street artist, Faith47 speaks both to female and Third World issues, a unique position compared to most street artists.
Contents
- Faith47 street art on the road again barrabas
- Street art faith47 memorie urbane street art festival 2013
- Notable exhibitions
- Street art
- Reception
- Exhibition and Project History
- Publications
- References
Common themes across Faith47's work include sacred and mundane spaces as well as political problems, from environmental destruction, border abolition, and humanitarian issues. Compositional motifs include women such as angels, lady liberty, and African mothers with children on their back. These female figures speak to women's issues such as motherhood and the feminization of poverty. Her art and rich symbolism speaks to South African issues of injustice, poverty, and inequality. Her murals are often referred to as post-apartheid, as they confront the failure of neo-liberal politics of the South African Freedom Charter in violent and impoverished townships in South Africa. Some of her works were often associated with religion. In one of Faith47's books she writes, "I am not religious but I pray through my work to unknown devils and gods. I look for my soul in colors and empty my being through parables of rusted, lost metal doors." She also has mentioned in an interview her process in which she feels religious spirits, "In empty buildings that felt like spiritual experiences, exploring holy chambers of neglected architecture... finding something so beautiful in what society disregards, and bringing to life that which usually people throw away or ignore."
Major influences to Faith47 in her art and life include Patti Smith, Noam Chomsky, the Zapatistas, and Naomi Klien. Faith47 is the mother of a son, Cashril Plus.
Street art faith47 memorie urbane street art festival 2013
Notable exhibitions
Faith47’s first solo exhibition, Fragments of a Burnt History (2012, David Krut Gallery, Johannesburg), considered the transformation of Johannesburg into a more representative African city, exposing the harsh realities of day-to-day life and capturing the remnants of South Africa’s complex history in a personal and symbolic manner. Through the creation of an immersive environment in the gallery space, this work challenged the viewer’s detachment.
Aqua Regalia - Chapter One (2014, Moniker Projects, London), further extended the possibilities of immersive spaces, enveloping the viewer into a sacred ‘room’ filled with collected objects and other intricacies from everyday life that – together with figurative paintings – explore the notion of the mundane as sacred, celebrating the discarded and unwanted as holy.
"Aqua Regalia – Chapter Two" (2015, Jonathan Levine Gallery, New York) was a continuation of this, again exploring the dichotomy between the sacred and the mundane by enveloping viewers in a space with figurative paintings, as well as intricacies from everyday life in shrine-like artworks. The two exhibitions were named after a highly corrosive mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acid that has the ability to dissolve gold.
Street art
Following an active street art career spanning more than fifteen years, Faith47's work can now be found in major cities around the world. Notable works include:
Taking her inspiration from the old political slogans and stencils that were used during the struggle against apartheid, Faith47 brought to life sentences from the Freedom Charter document that she felt were still pressing in South Africa.
Faith47 painted ghostly rhinos on Shanghai walls at a time when the number of rhinos being poached for their horns was rising rapidly to meet demand from Asia.
These murals, of groups of men in various postures of waiting, reference photographs from Alexia Webster’s photographic series, Waiting for Work. The works imply different kinds of waiting particular to a contemporary South African context. As Faith47 told Wooster Collective, “Miners are waiting for justice. Workers are waiting for a living wage. People are waiting for service delivery. Refugees are waiting for assistance. Men are waiting for jobs. We are all waiting for an honest politician. So many people are waiting for others to do things first. To take the blame. To do things for them. To take the fall. To build the country. To admit defeat. There has been so much waiting in this country that much time has been lost.”
A partnership between Faith47, Design Indaba and ThingKing, the multi-story artwork lit up at night each time enough money was raised for one new light to be installed on a pathway in the informal settlement of Monwabisi Park, Khayelitsha, through the organisation VPUU (Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading). The intricate lighting pattern was an artistic endeavour that also served as a reminder that there were communities in the city that lack the luxury of light, which is a major public safety concern.
With this series, Faith47 reintroduced the energy of nature back into the urban metropolis, softening the harsh city architecture with the gracefulness and spirit-like presence of swans. “There’s an inherent irony in recreating nature on cement, so the series is a nostalgic reminder of what we’ve lost but also an attempt to reintegrate that into the present,” Faith47 said. “We have become so distanced from nature, so these murals are an attempt to reconnect us with the natural world.”
Painted as part of the Monument Art NYC project's focus on immigration, Estamos Todos Los Que Cabemos speaks of the migratory patterns of birds, observing that nature ignores human borders on a map. “We forget that the dividing lines specifying countries were merely drawn by politically hungry men. In reality, the earth is open. There are no countries, no borders, it belongs to no one. We are transient visitors and should travel as we please," Faith47 told Arrested Motion.
Reception
Faith47’s work has been featured everywhere from The Guardian to The New York Times, from Huffington Post to The Independent.
"Faith47 celebrates the commonplace as holy in an attempt to disarm strategies of global realpolitik and advance the expression of personal truth. In this way her work is both an internal and spiritual release that speaks to the complexities of the human condition, its deviant histories and existential search.” Juxtapoz
"Using different mediums, including graphite, spray paint, oil paint, ink, photography and collage, she usually paints on found objects or discarded documents, transferring the feel of her mural works. The transparency of her mark making and the texture of finished works give them a sense of age and spirituality. Often mixing religious iconography with ordinary, everyday elements and geometrical objects, her paintings, drawings and sketches seem to have an almost sacramental importance.” Arrested Motion
“A South African artist whose textured imagery brings spirituality and nature to the foreground of urban environments.” Huffington Post
"A rare incantation of both the earthly and the transcendent." Mass Appeal
"Transformative work... concerned with the valuation and transformation of things that have been lost or overlooked." Booooooom
"Deeply profound visions existing as physical aesthetic gifts for other viewers." Supersonic Art
"Equally at home in grimy alleys as she is in a studio, she creates murals that are both breathtaking and poignant. I challenge anyone to look at her work and not feel a little overawed by her talent.” Carte Blanche
Exhibition and Project History
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005