ARTIST PORTFOLIO STOMPIE SELIBE
ARTIST PORTFOLIOSTOMPIE SELIBE
2Berman Contemporary South African Art / ArRTIST PORTFOLIO/STOMPIE SELIBE
ARTIST STATEMENT AND BIO
My work is a dialogue between the image making process, the visual representation
itself and the transformation and expression of that into vibrations and sound shared
with others. It explores the continuity of the creative process. My new work continues
to explore and give a voice to that which is dark, hidden, unseen, that which I call the
shadows. As social beings, we learn to create new tools with the old, the broken, the
discarded and dismissed, which enables us to see new possibilities with and from the
shadows. Creating new opportunities with these tools results in an unleashing and
transformation of potential and creativity emerging from this obscurity.
This artistic process on my part is an offering to the viewer/audience of a different
experience of art and the role of the viewer. I offer an opportunity for the viewers to
experience and be a part of the performance of creation and the ensuing
conversation, to not be a passive recipient of an image but to be a part of building
something new out of the old. To claim the shadows, to be able to see the creative,
humanistic and developmental value of the hidden, the lost, the ugly, as these are
rooted in our shared history with vibrations, energy, rhythm and impulses that are the
fertiliser for our becoming as individuals and as groups, communities, and societies.
Music plays an essential part in the inspiration and creation of a piece of art; it begins
by me listening to music and using the process of musical improvisation that is free-
spirited and without boundaries; that allows the possibility to both play and express
myself. I can then share this process and new ideas with fellow musicians, artists, and
the viewers/audience. Early on I found the process to be healing and since then it is
one I want to share. The most important thing is that it shaped me into the person I
am today. The use of different materials helps the whole thing become a therapeutic
process for myself and others and I take a lot of pleasure in this process – this is what I
pictured 20 years ago and it has inspired me to be an artist ever since.
My artistic signature and style have been shaped by the joy and exploration of a daily
practice of making things and being able to be reflective as well as self-critical of my
work. This back-and-forth process of creating and reflecting, and of engaging in
making meaning with others, has resulted in the definition of my style. I enjoy weaving
together elements of artist-philosopher-creator-builder-connector-musician-
questioner-explorer and the ultimate culmination of it all being amalgamated into one
thing.
Selibe was born in Soweto in 1974, and his art education came in the form of arts
programs such as those offered by Manu College, Dorkay House, Art Therapy Centre
and Artist Proof Studios: “They, as well as other programs, played a significant role in
the development of my career, they taught me about different materials and
processes that I could then experiment with more confidently and with greater insight
into what I wanted to say and do, and who I wanted to do it for, and with.”
Website bermancontemporary.com
Instagram @stompie.selibe
Solo Exhibitions
2019 Listen to the Sweet Sounds of the Shadows, Berman Contemporary, Johannesburg, South Africa
2018 House & Leisure Private Launch for Johannesburg Gold Edition Oct/Nov 2018, Berman Contemporary, Johannesburg, South Africa
2018 Discovery Leadership Summit, Berman Contemporary, Johannesburg, South Africa
2016 Broken Chords, Candice Berman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Group Exhibitions
2018 Welcome to Berman Contemporary, Johannesburg, South Africa
2012 Alliance Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
2010 David Krut Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Art Fairs
2019 Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg, South Africa
2017 Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg, South Africa
2017 Cape Town Art Fair, Berman Contemporary, Johannesburg, South Africa
2016 START Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, London, South Africa
2016 Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg, South Africa
2016 That Art Fair, Cape Town, South Africa
2015 Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees (KKNK), Oudtshoorn, South Africa
2015 Turbine Art Fair (TAF 15), Candice Berman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
2015 Guest artist Ballhaus Naunynsse Theater, Berlin, Germany
2014 Turbine Art Fair (TAF 14), Candice Berman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Collections
KBH Investment Group, Dubai
Tricolt Property Development CC
Magnolia Ridge Properties, South Africa
LTF Trade Finance Group, South Africa
LEETEK Electro Projects, South Africa
Oakleaf Capital CC
Fani Titi, CEO Investec Wealth, South Africa
Sharon & Paolo Calderari, Miami, USA
Mandy Lamb Collection, Singapore
Winer Collection, South Africa/UK
Gillian Gamsu Colleciton, South Africa
Publications ( 6/17 – full list available on request)
2018 Black Soul by Ashraf Jamal, Cape Town, Publication Berman Contemporary, Johannesburg, South Africa
2018 Golden City. Launch of House & Leisure issue Golden City, November 2018, Johannesburg, South Africa
2018 The Neo-Expressionists: Stompie Selibe | John-Michael Metelerkamp by Ashraf Jamal, Publication Berman Contemporary, Johannesburg, South Africa
2018 Thoughts on Stompie Selibe's Art of Abstraction by Thembinkosi Goniwe, Berman Contemporary , Johannesburg, South Africa
A Fine Art Investment by Shereen Lurie, SA Homeowner Magazine, June 2018, Johannesburg, South Africa
2018 Neo-Expressionist Revival by Thembinkosi Goniwe and Ellen Agnew, Publication by Berman Contemporary, Johannesburg, South Africa
2018 Expressing Therapy by Ellen Agnew, Art Africa Magazine, March 2018, South Africa
Residencies | Conferences
2017 House & Leisure, Johannesburg Gold Edition, Featured Artist, October/November Issue, Johannesburg, South Africa
2018 Discovery Leadership Summit, Johannesburg, South Africa
2004 Recasting Reconciliation through Culture and the Arts, Brandeis University, Massachusetts, USA
Education
2000/04 Art Therapy Centre Training Programme
1998 Dobsonville College
1999 Wits Technikon Training Course
1991-1993 Dorkay House Music School, RSA
ARTIST RESUME
3Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBIE
LISTEN TO THE SWEET SOUND OF THE SHADOWS
SOLO EXHIBITION 2019
4Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
I lie here thinking of you, 2019
Mixed Media on Canvas
100cm in diameter
LISTEN TO THE SWEET SOUND OF THE SHADOWS
SOLO EXHIBITION 2019
5Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
How sad that I hope, 2019
Mixed media on canvas
224x151cm
LISTEN TO THE SWEET SOUND OF THE SHADOWS
SOLO EXHIBITION 2019
6Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
Love found, 2019
Mixed media on canvas
76x180cm
I wanted to be, 2019
Mixed Media on Canvas
76x180cm
LISTEN TO THE SWEET SOUND OF THE SHADOWS
SOLO EXHIBITION 2019
7Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
In a silent way, 2019
Diptych mixed media on canvas
180x153cm
LISTEN TO THE SWEET SOUND OF THE SHADOWS
SOLO EXHIBITION 2019
8Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
Passion & Partner, 2019
Mixed media on paper
112x76cm
Passion & Partner, 2019
Mixed media on paper
112x76cm
LISTEN TO THE SWEET SOUND OF THE SHADOWS
SOLO EXHIBITION 2019
9Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
Upon this earth, 2019
Mixed media on paper
208x100cm
End in the darkness, 2019
Mixed Media on Paper
208x100cm
LISTEN TO THE SWEET SOUND OF THE SHADOWS
SOLO EXHIBITION 2019
10Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
Shangaan colours, 2019
Mixed Media on Paper
70x100cm
Shangaan colours, 2019
Mixed Media on Paper
70x100cm
Shangaan colours, 2019
Mixed Media on Paper
70x100cm
Shangaan colours, 2019
Mixed Media on Paper
70x100cm
SHANGAAN DRESS SERIES
2019
11Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
Shangaan Dress, 2019
Mixed Media on Canvas
70x60cm
Shangaan Dress, 2019
Mixed Media on Canvas
70x60cm
Shangaan Dress, 2019
Mixed Media on Canvas
70x60cm
Shangaan Dress, 2019
Mixed Media on Canvas
70x60cm
12Berman Contemporary South African Art / ArRTIST PORTFOLIO/STOMPIE SELIBE
Thoughts on Stompie Selibe’s Art of Abstraction
By Thembinkosi Goniwe
Music and images are key features in Stompie Selibe’s works of art – most of which are concerned with a desire to discover the
‘unknown’ and the possibility to express, if not touch, that which resides in the remote realm of a human’s ‘inner being’. What seems
to be at the centre of Selibe’s quest is a creative investigation of mystery – he is after the potentiality of a curative wonderment.
Selibe’s work sensibly speaks about healing through art, where the subjective undertaking of art making is considered as an eternal
mission necessary – not only to discover, but most importantly – to excavate and liberate the obscure interiority in the life experience
of being human in the world.
The art of abstraction in the form of musical sounds and visual images seems to afford Selibe the expressive means to uncover human
depths – tapping into those sensitive areas of inexplicable emotions or psychic energies. These are the energies that so many people
find impossible to identify, comprehend or appreciate. Here, the ‘inner being’ and the ‘unknown’ perhaps reside in what Selibe calls
the ‘sacred self’.
The challenge to tap into this ‘sacred self’ – what could be a repository of (unfamiliar though charged) emotional, psychic and intuitive
attributes of being human – supposedly owing to the perversity of the violence, trauma and depression that most people experience
in our overwhelmingly materialistic world – the condition of never existing without tension, conflict and uproar.
It would seem we live in a world devoid of harmony, calm, amity or serenity, but certainly we are familiar with chaos, madness,
clamour and pandemonium – the consequences of which include the impossibility to attend to our inner-selves, to listen to our
internal beings, or to hear the whisper of our interior voices.
How is it possible to do so, in what Guy Debord once called “the society of the spectacle”, which, in our immediate context, Njabulo
Ndebele dubbed “mind-bogglingly spectacular”? Many South African artists, both young and established, tend to make artworks that
reproduce – if not reinforce and thus render normative – this spectacular society of ‘social absurdity’, further critiqued by Ndebele as
“the emptying out of interiority for the benefit of its exterior signs”. Notwithstanding the limit of these types of artworks, let alone
their deficiency of imagination, they fail in effecting a different understanding – novel knowledge about our complex world where
creative engagement in visual representations, for example, cannot be constricted within the threshold of the real. Not to say these
subject themes are not important, but the problem is their constancy, as if nothing other than objective representation matters.
To hear Selibe speak about the ‘unknown’, the ‘inner being’, the ‘sacred self’ or ‘sacred transactions’ is encouraging precisely because
he reminds us of other subjects’ themes. And to look at his abstract artworks is also an important reminder that there are other
creative procedures through which to engage society, to invite us into an abstract universe of different and novel visual content, form
and character. For his art of abstraction affords us a minute inside a world not populated by subjects, objects and places that are
known or knowable.
13Berman Contemporary South African Art / ArRTIST PORTFOLIO/STOMPIE SELIBE
Even if not persuasive enough, Selibe’s body of abstract artworks partakes in the curious search for a creative means to unearth and
discover the ‘unknown’. In such effort, his work brings into existence something fresh. His aspiration is not a definitive quest for
originality or authenticity, but rather a potential mission premised on shifting perceptions – opening up unusual paths that might lead
us to strange destinations where there awaits discoveries of unknown phenomena and experiences.
Here, I am also not referring to the key attributes of art as a practice of initiating and introducing unfamiliar areas of thinking, feeling
and acting – instead of illustrating, demonstrating or representing the already known properties of our (discernible) world. I am also
thinking of an artistic imagination whose potential lies in the way in which one is able to bring to life that which is known anew; or if
not anew, it should, at least, posit refreshing configurations that are enabled by a consciously effective manipulation of aesthetics,
contents, mediums and materials. This is what Selibe strives for.
After many years of exploration and experimentation, Selibe has developed a resourceful method of “deconstructing and
reconstructing musical sounds” that are then translated into visual constructs and forms. He pays close attention to his surroundings
and allows his various senses to respond by absorbing and transmitting what he hears, sees, touches and feels into expressive
imagery. Though we encounter these artworks in their externalised objecthood, they should be understood as imaginative expressions
of his inner soul, for they speak to Selibe’s desires that are constitutive of an inextricable play between yearning for the unknown and
the need to express the inexpressible.
Enabling him such a possibility is the art of abstraction, which also somewhat affords him a way to explore what Ndebele refers to as
the “interiority of self” instead of being preoccupied with the “exteriority surface” of social life. An undertaking of this nature is
noteworthy, as it also recalls Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness philosophy – one of whose central precepts is the criticality of
introspection which requires “an inward-looking process” so necessary for an outward-looking reflection in a world read by Frantz
Fanon as “wretched” and “anti-black”.
When Selibe speaks about his work and experience in creative arts and therapeutic education, integrating music and visual learning, it
is important to read them in the context of the “wretched” and “anti-black” world – one which needs not only healing but
transformation that takes into account the psycho-emotional interiority of people who continue to suffer from the devastation of
colonial apartheid and its afterlife in democratic South Africa. For people are not only physically affected; they are also psycho-
emotionally damaged.
Selibe is quite correct to say “we are engaged in a sacred transaction which we know only a little, the shadow not the shape” of what it
means to be human, to be alive in the world. Such shadow and the sacred self are the unknown inner being, which he tackles through
abstraction – even if some of his artworks are wanting in their visual grammar, refinement of artistic form, innovative language and
experimentation of the medium and material. Yet, such deficit does not detract from Selibe’s curious art of abstraction, which enables
him a proximity from which to engage with the realm of human introspection, through a creative manoeuvring whose result is a body
of artworks inviting our engagement and appreciation.
???
2018
14Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
Beautiful to Each Other, 2018
Mixed Media on Canvas
83x174cm
But They Know About Us, 2018
Mixed Media on Canvas
83x202cm
Here We Are, 2018
Mixed Media on Canvas
76x212cm
LOVE FOUND
2018
15Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
Love Found, 2018
Mixed Media on Fabriano
142x100cm
I Know I Have Been Dreaming, 2018
Mixed Media on Fabriano
142x100cm
MY BABY JUST CARES FOR ME
2018
16Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
My Baby Just Cares For Me, 2018
Mixed Media on Fabriano
211x290cm
Jazz Interpretation, 2018
Mixed Media on Fabriano
211x290cm
BROKEN TEXTURES
2018
17Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
Cannon-ball-run-theme, 2018
Mixed Media on Fabriano
71x100cm
Feel So Good, 2018
Mixed Media on Fabriano
71x100cm each, Diptych 71x200cm
18Berman Contemporary South African Art / ArRTIST PORTFOLIO/STOMPIE SELIBE
Expressing Therapy – Daniel Stompie Selibe at Berman Contemporary
By Ellen Agnew
Perhaps most noted for his work within music and the visual arts, Daniel Stompie Selibe – more commonly known as Stompie – has
also worked extensively with outreach programmes across South Africa.
Having trained in art therapy at the Art Therapy Centre in Johannesburg in 2001, Selibe has over a decade of experience and is
equipped with the correct tools to work with survivors of abuse, rape and those living with HIV/Aids. Selibe also works with teenagers
who share both his talent and passion for the arts, encouraging South African youth to express who they are through creativity.
This extraordinary ability to communicate with teenagers and those in need of healing can be put down, perhaps, to Selibe’s
philosophy of using both music and the visual arts to explore ‘textures’ within society – where ‘textures’ can be loosely translated to
mean ‘layers of our existence’. Selibe’s artistic processes and artworks are invitations to explore the known and the unknown, asking
questions such as ‘who are we?’, ‘who are we to each other?’, and ‘how did we become who we are?’ – undoubtedly, questions that
subsist within his Healing Through Art workshops.
While exploring ‘textures’ within society through music and art, Selibe also uses his practice to explore ‘texture’ as it exists in sound,
space, colour and rhythm – all impacting on how he communicates with those around him. A significant question of ‘texture’ in
Selibe’s work is his concern with “how the fingerprints of history shape us and our environments. The world is as the shoreline –
shaping much of our experience, and each of us is like the river – full of our unique energy, feelings, desires, secrets, pains and actions.
Over time, we shape and re-shape each other by our actions”.
This is a philosophy that can be seen in his mixed-media paintings, where Selibe has visibly left traces of his shaping and re-shaping of
the artwork – at once a vibrant expression of colour, and a reminder to us all that we, too, are a work-in-progress, always a flowing
river.
This can most notably be seen in The Love I Lost / Deep Tech, where the Fabriano stretches across almost two metres, and demands
the viewer’s attention with its brilliant hues of turquoise. The figure-like shapes are surrounded by expressive dark lines, flowing
through and around, and finding both conception and cessation in a heaving, dark lump between the figures.
It speaks of human presence, and how this presence affects the environment – socially, politically, culturally, and historically. The Love
I Lost / Deep Tech is also an exploration of layers – what lies on the surface, and below the surface – and the ripples and tensions
between the two. Its very title alludes to this same relationship between visual art and music and how Selibe uses the two to explore
‘textures’ within society.
Another artwork that captures these ‘textures’ is The Long Road. Playing with contrasting primary colours – yellow and blue – figure-
like shapes also exist in this work, almost resisting the expressive dark lines that surround them as they lean back, towards the end of
the frame. Perhaps the expressive, dark, swirling lines speak of our unique human energy – our emotions and desires, our secrets,
pains and actions – pulling us forward along the long road ahead.
Selibe’s work articulates a remarkable ability to understand the many different aspects of human life and proves how music and the
visual arts are great tools for human expression. To the very core, his work communicates his exploration of ‘textures’ in sound, space,
colour, rhythm and life, and demonstrates how his very understanding of ‘textures’ – on all their surfaces – may be in aid of his
outreach programmes – those with which he heals through art.
This article was first published in ART AFRICA magazine, March 2018.
BROKEN LINE SERIES
2017
19Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
Broken Line Series 30, 2017
Mixed Media on Paper
100x70cm
Broken Line Series 28, 2017
Mixed Media on Paper
100x70cm
Broken Line Series 27, 2017
Mixed Media on Paper
100x70cm
Broken Line Series ??, 2017
Mixed Media on Paper
100x70cm
BROKEN CHORDS
2016
20Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
Broken Chords, 2016
Mixed Media on Canvas
165x135cm
ABSTRACT LYRICS
2016
21Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
Lyrics, 2016
Mixed Media on Fabriano
100x70cm
Abstract Lyrics, 2016
Mixed Media on Fabriano
100x70cm
Abstract Lyrics, 2016
Mixed Media on Fabriano
100x70cm
22Berman Contemporary South African Art / ArRTIST PORTFOLIO/STOMPIE SELIBE
Visual Jamming with artist Daniel ‘Stompie’ Selibe
Creative Feel – April 2017
Stompie Selibe’s artworks are sonorous, using mark-making and melodies in “an intuitive process of experimentation and discovery,
similar to jamming musically”, a method he refers to as “visual jamming”. With paint, spray paint and charcoal, he explores the world
around him; “the layers, complexities, textures, histories and often hidden processes of life”. Newspapers, sheet music and, more
recently, fabric, also make their way into his mix, “along with ‘overwriting’ with scribblings, drips, softly delicate line drawings and
wildly expressive brush marks”. Selibe has been working on his upcoming exhibition at Candice Berman Gallery “for over a year now.
The work is rooted in exploring how indigenous methods and styles, be it music, images of cultural gatherings, identities or beliefs can
be tools for connection, healing and development in the world of today; they give us new possibilities”. In these works, he uses “space
as a means of showing and creating the connections of rhythms and space, a way to show and introduce new ways to improvise using
mark making and melodies, new ways of creating our lives together”.
In 2015, Selibe was working on artworks centred on the metaphor of “the shadow and the scream”. Is this still relevant in his current
works? “This metaphor of the shadow, the darkness that trails us, is about how contorted we become; we are broken chords, within a
broken city, which is made up of many different rhythms. The work is still relevant to me as we are living in the shadow of the
magnificence of the music we all make, the rhythms and chords, our aspirations and dreams! The broken shadow is a look at how our
lifestyle of today impacts us, our experiences of living in the shadow of journeys, desires and aspirations for a better way of living
together.”
Jazz plays an important role in both his life and in his artistic output. In his creation of both music and visual art, Selibe uses “a similar
style of improvisation as a method of creation, of taking what is around me, creating new connections and associations, trying to travel
to places of memory and history, as well as new places still to be created”. “South African indigenous jazz creates a music that heals,”
he says. “Following in the tradition of religious and spiritual music, the indigenous music of SA helps people connect to parts of
themselves and others that are often not reached in this day and age. Music enables us to experience things in ways that go beyond
the intellect and words, it can bring us together, with ourselves and with others, with our histories and, most importantly, with our
creative and spontaneous ability to create anew each day; it frees our imagination and expresses the magic of being human. Working
with sounds that evoke memory, that evoke forces and energies greater than ourselves, jazz sound engages people in a different and
spontaneous kind of experience, one that refreshes, invigorates and connects with the magic and sacredness that both surrounds us
and of which we are an integral creative part. The freeing of this magic invokes the power to alter and enhance lives and to create our
wholeness.” Selibe plays a number of instruments; he lists the cajón drum; djembe; bamboo sax and mbira, “and anything that has an
interesting sound”.
In addition to his artistic talents, Selibe is also a qualified art counsellor: “Working with art and music as tools for healing is as much a
part of my artistic life as making a painting or making music. Working as an arts counsellor is another way of using the tools of
creativity and art to express the complexity, depth and mystery of being human. I think, as an artist, I have the opportunity and tools –
If not the responsibility – to address, explore and question what it means to be human today, to inquire about how and what we see,
to look more deeply and uncover what is beneath so many layers of our social conditioning, which can blind us or distort what we see.
I am an artist of post-apartheid South Africa, of a newly democratic South Africa, of a struggling multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-class
South Africa. So much of what we see and how we see is still shaped by apartheid, it will take many decades for that to change. I am
an African artist wanting to explore and show new ways of seeing African lives and our experiences. Too often in the art world, we do
not see images of ourselves, nor are the images we see of ourselves created by ourselves, for ourselves, nor are they about ourselves.
We are many voices, many rhythms, many colours, dimensions and textures, we are complex, complicated, often hidden or distorted
at the same time as we are, along with others, builders of a new country that needs new ways for all of us to live, grow and dream
together. I hope that my art can be an improvisational invitation to explore the timeless questions of how we must be, see, listen,
respond, interact, build community, heal, live, grow and create our future, together.”
SHEET MUSIC ORIGINAL
2015-2017
23Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
Sheet Music Original, 2016
Printing Ink on Sheet Music
38x27cm
Sheet Music Original, 2015
Acrylic on Sheet Music
?? cm
Sheet Music Original, 2015
Acrylic on Sheet Music
59x31cm
Sheet Music Original, 2017
Mixed Media on Sheet Music
32x25cm
HANDMADE PAPER MUSICIAN
2015
24Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
Handmade Paper Musician 5, 2015
Acrylic on Handmade Paper
40x60cm
Handmade Paper Musician 6, 2015
Acrylic on Handmade Paper
40x60cm
ART AND SCIENCE
2014
25Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
Art and Science, 2014
Acrylic on Canvas
50x70cm
TELLING THE STORY
2014
26Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
Telling the Story, 2014
Mixed Media on paper
58.5x86.0cm
GOING TO WORK
2012
27Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
Going to Work, 2012
Mixed Media on Paper
29,5x22cm
Their Bodies, 2012
Mixed Media on Paper
31x21cm
28Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE
Berman Contemporary is rooted in the growing understanding of the
cultural richness and diversity of South African contemporary art. The
gallery’s collection centres on a vibrant group of artists living and working
in South Africa.
Through studio visits, the gallery establishes connections to artists from all
walks of life whose unique artistic processes celebrate their historical and
cultural heritage and give voice to their complex societal realities, evoking
an active and interpretative experience for the viewer.
Berman Contemporary was established to promote the work created by
these local artists. The gallery further aims to establish a synergistic
network between South African artists and their global contemporaries,
many of whom evidently want to engage with the current South African
art scene – not only as observers, but as active analysts, experimenters
and contributors within this context and with this specific audience in
mind.
29Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE