Heat Winter Art Festival
Curated by:
Anelisa Mangcu
Date:
2024
Heat is a winter arts festival set in Cape Town's City Centre, featuring 14 curated art exhibitions complimented by jazz, opera, theatre and Kizomba-dance programming.
Art galleries and arts practitioners experience a lull during Cape Town's winter months. This is due to the inclement weather and fewer tourists. HEAT festival was created to boost visitors to galleries in the city centre and to create another platform for live performances.
Through the themed programme and map, HEAT has provided the context to unite art galleries that are within walking distance from each other and different art forms. Their winter programme is intended to inject energy and interest during a quiet time of the year in Cape Town.
With a focus on small art businesses, emerging artists and live performers, musicians and singers, they aim to support young cultural producers and those that create visibility for them.
The organisers hope to establish an annual event that will grow in terms of participants, programming and audiences serving as a yearly cultural highlight to draw local and international audiences who will feel encouraged to visit its art node in Cape Town's city centre in winter.
Theme:
Common Ground
In times of economic, ecological and political turmoil most societies are experiencing some form of social trauma. Given this context, "what conditions are necessary (and possible) to encourage ‘a coming together’?” asks HEAT curator, Nkgopoleng Moloi, pointing to the central curatorial question informing the programming for the inaugural HEAT festival in Cape Town’s CBD.
This is a fitting direction for the HEAT festival as it has been conceived to connect galleries, artists, collectors and practitioners during Cape Town’s cold and quiet month of July. We anticipate artworks, exhibitions, conversations, walkabouts and cuisine that enacts, encourages, and investigates concepts of community and collaboration.
Social or political coherence is often advanced as a ballast against turmoil and uncertainty. It is viewed as essential for effective mobilisation. Our country's transition to democracy relied on this.
“Revolutionary or libertarian acts most likely fall flat without the central moment of cohesion; a sticking together, a merger, a union under a common cause,” observes HEAT curator Voni Baloyi.
“However, for a unit to form, individuals' identity markers and personal aspirations must fall to the wayside for the greater good. Similarly, a coherent and logical narrative must be sustained for the cohesive unit to exist harmoniously. This relies on logical narratives to be constructed. What silences and violations might occur to the individual in this process?” asks Baloyi.
For some, the validation of nationhood comes only through the invalidation of another which we have seen in the the atrocities that have occurred in places like Israel, Gaza, Rwanda and Sudan.