Visual artists Mbali Dhlamini and Phumlani Ntuli proved to be the most innovative artists in an international competition, beating 61 counterparts to the big prize.
Ntuli and Dhlamini of Preempt Group Collective recently won the Visionary Award, an annual art award aimed at discovering, nurturing and supporting creative outputs with special focus on the mediums of film and photography.
The award, which is administered through a collaborative partnership between Tim Hetherington Trust and Javett-UP, was initiated to commemorate British photojournalist Tim Hetherington.
Hetherington, who died in 2011, was a famous journalist who created documentaries and wrote books telling stories about West Africa.
The Preempt Group Collective impressed the judges with their series of works that looks at the intersection of archives, trans-media and open source technologies where they engage in the translation research through film and hypermedia.
The duo’s work challenges the conventional gallery presentation and encourages audiences to not just look but to also be part of an experience.
Speaking to Sowetan, the artists said they were excited and looking forward to use their cash prize to grow the research project and take it to another level.
The 34-year-old Ntuli said: “When we entered we were open to either losing or winning because of the work we had put together. We are excited and happy that we won. Our work was different and how we presented it showed that we are developing something interesting.
"When we responded to the open call, we wanted to focus on photography and video. We used archived material mostly, creating a more interactive work, just wanting to see how audiences engage with photography. We added interactive in one of our works.”
Dhlamini said: “Winning the award was beneficial to Preempt because we wanted to grow our viewership and introduced different technologies to different people as part of our residences working with schools and other artists. We plan to introduce and educate people about using technology to share information.”
Dhlamini said they submitted digital art work to the competition that included a digital archive, stop-motion film and an application that tackled different subjects.
“Our proposal spoke about using technology devices to speak about things that already exist. For instance, in one project we used technology and we scanned artefacts which we used to start to build a digital library. We scanned different sculptures from different African artists.
"We presented different ways for the audience to engage with the digital archive, and using something like holographic [imaging] that creates a 3D image of the sculpture. We want to use technology to bring back the artefacts that belong to the continent that are outside the continent,” said the 31-year-old.
Gabi Ngcobo, curatorial director at the Javett-UP, said the opportunity to collaborate with the Tim Hetherington Trust for the 2021/22 Visionary Award had provided Javett-UP with a fresh lens with which to view the vastness of creativity from Africa.
"It has become clear that artists working in lens-based mediums use their work to respond to current societal challenges in ways that are as poetic as they are critical. The Preempt Group represents this critical shift and innovation that is on the edge of rethinking the language of memory and its visualisation.”
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