Jamal Nxedlana

Foreing Agent will be present with Jamal Nxdedlana at the unique and beautiful venue for the Art Fair, Shepstone Gardens which spans three acres in the heart of Johannesburg. From 24 - 26 May 2024,
Jamal Nxedlana’s new body of work, Made in Joburg, take this site as one of many cues for curiosity to travel across scales of time and space, using fashion as an interscalar vehicle to survey the aes- thetics and materiality of desire, identity expressions, consumerism, and subcultures. Produced on site at this landfill and other mine dumps across Johannesburg, his still and moving images invite consideration of the symbols and codes embedded not only in dress and performance, but also the global logistics, labour dynamics and class concerns often obscured from view when we talk about fashion.

Foreign Agent is excited to introduce Play/Mobile, a curated show presenting a body of photographs by Jamal Nxedlana which evoke a relationship with and to sculpture, putting the ubiquitous monobloc plastic chairs at the centre. These cheap, flexible productions index the repetition, replication and duplication processes that “drain culture, objects and life of their idiosyncrasy, their spark and potential. [Becoming] copies and copies of copies” (Jamal Nxedlana). The flexibility and fluidity of the plastic is further mirrored by the actors’ bodies, a celebration of the formless, which as the French philosopher Georges Bataille argued, was to bring “art down in the world”, down from its elevated status to its base materialism, as a vector for creativity.

This playful critique of the generic is set in dialogue with new productions in contemporary design from Africa and the Diaspora: selected pieces from Dokter and Misses’ new line of work Sketches from the Edge, as well as their Blue Chair, which is also referenced in one of Nxedlana’s work; the Yayoi chairs designed by Bibi Seck for Foreign Agent, recently featured in Elle Déco and his recycled plastic Taboo line; Jomo Tariku’s stools which appear in the forthcoming Black Panther movie series and iconic Nyala chair and Ousmane Mbaye’s new afrofuturistic Plus line. All presented for the first time in Switzerland.

Foreign Agent will also launch selected items from Ohiri Studio OUTLINES as featured in Vogue and worn by Bella Hadid at the Met Gala. Exclusively at Foreign Agent.

The show opens Saturday December 10 in presence of Jamal Nxedlana.