Author: Alessandra Di Sarro

Woodstock Public Art Tour

The starting point is the Woodstock station, but the path is done on foot, walking through the streets where once there was the sea, and this is the first discovery that visitors make during the exciting ride through one of the trendiest neighborhoods of Cape Town.

Elena Giustozzi, Caterina Silva and Luca Coclite, italian artists in Cape Town thanks to the ARP-Art Residency Project and VAA-Video Art Award organized by the Centro Luigi Di Sarro, respectively with the contribution of Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Italian Institute of Culture, among the many activities have been in Woodstock with the guidance of Massimo Dal Corso the founder of Animatours

The path to discover the public art and design district runs along the two lines that cross the old port area, now completely renovated. The streets of Woodstock are undergoing continuous changes under the impulse of unbridled building development and gentrification is creating many imbalances: the destruction of many old houses, demolished to put in their place new buildings that will largely host offices and hotels.

But what the tour offers is above all the visit of the street art that fills the streets and the alleys of Woodstock and that has changed its appearance.
The district is a kind of open-air art gallery. Over the last few years there have been many local and international artists who have come to Cape Town to leave their works on the walls of the houses, but also still abandoned and ruined corners or parking spaces.
And cars, which often seem to be disturbing the vision of the murals, sometimes end up becoming themselves contour elements at work.

Some walls in time are scratched, some paintings are covered or replaced by a new one. It is the destiny of Street Art, still looking for its definition and its codified space. Woodstock changes day by day and always promises new discoveries: as well as the tour that now reaches the neighboring Salt River district and that accompanies step by step in the discovery and understanding of a Cape Town area that concentrates in itself history, art and social life .

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CENTRO DI SARRO AND RAINBOW MEDIA AT CAPE TOWN ART FAIR 2018 – ON SHOW THE ARP VI EDITION’S YOUNG ARTISTS

The show aims to investigate the different possibilities, both material and immaterial, of a very complex idea: identity at the time of the Millennium. Curated by Alessandra Atti Di Sarro, ARP – Art residency Project Director. The ARP project offers at the ICTAF an exhibition by four young artists who have travelled between Italy and South Africa to find the meaning of the Identity notion. South Africans will just be back from the residency period in Rome, and Italians will start their experience in Cape Town just with the Art Fair. What we propose is a fruitful collaboration between young artists who live in ‘geographic’ South and North, but in a global mixed world. So, the question is: what identity means if you hide the geographical ratio and only base your expression on feelings? This is the real issue at the present time, we promise you, everywhere and worldwide. Elena Giustozzi will look on small and finite landscapes to find in her oil painting the essence of what we often miss in our outlook and Caterina Silva creates with her canvases open images available to the interpretation of the observer, consequence of a process of deconstruction of language. She works with colours like a performative dance like Skumbuzo Vabaza does with his spray portraits that tell about the place humans have in the environment. Landscapes which are an intriguing forest in the vision of reality of Jordan Sweke, that seems to draw the life in which we can often feel lost. The big collaborative work by Jordan and Skumbuzo finally is a summary of what they’ve done during the recent residency in Rome, observing faces and nature around them, opening up space for the interrogation of our own identities as being natural or urban creatures.

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