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Image credit: Scott Rudd. -
Detail. Haroon Gunn-Salie in collaboration with James Matthews. _Amongst Men_. 2014. 150 M1 casts with marble aggregate and fiber-glass blanket, gut, sound element. -
Haroon Gunn-Salie. _Senzenina_. 2018. Sculptural installation with sound element, 17 life size crouching figures cast in M1. Fibreglass resin. Each figure approx_ 70.1 x 100.1 cm. -
Instalation view. Haroon Gunn-Salie. Soft Vengeance series. 2015. Reinforced urethane. Variable dimensions. -
Instalation view. Haroon Gunn-Salie. Soft Vengeance series. 2015. Reinforced urethane. Variable dimensions. -
Detail. Haroon Gunn-Salie in collaboration with James Matthews. _Amongst Men_. 2014. 150 M1 casts with marble aggregate and fiber-glass blanket, gut, sound element. -
Detail. Haroon Gunn-Salie in collaboration with James Matthews. _Amongst Men_. 2014. 150 M1 casts with marble aggregate and fiber-glass blanket, gut, sound element.
WORDS Cheri Morris
Artist and activist Haroon Gunn-Salie has been announced as the 2018 winner of the prestigious FNB Art Prize, ahead of the 11th annual FNB JoburgArtFair.
Haroon joins an esteemed succession of previous winners including Peju Alatise, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Turiya Magadlela, Portia Zvavahera and Kudzanai Chiurai. Haroon walks away with a cash prize and the thrilling opportunity to create a new project that will be exhibited at the FNB JoburgArtFair next month.
Chief Marketing Officer at FNB, Faye Mfikwe, says that the FNB Art Prize aims to honour exemplary artistic talent as well as provide the winner with exciting opportunities both locally and internationally.
Hailing from Cape Town and based between Johannesburg and Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Haroon has a BA Hons in sculpture, which he received from Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2012. His graduation exhibition, Witness, showcased a location-specific body of work that explored the unresolved issues of the apartheid-era forced removals.
Haroon’s installation at the FNB JoburgArtFair continues to explore other deeply intricate issues in contemporary South African history with another location-based installation, Senzenina. This transportive installation takes the viewer back in time with a life-like soundscape complete with calls for mineworkers to disengage protests, the echoes of workers trapped by police, an anti-apartheid freedom song interrupted by open gunfire, and bomb blasts followed by low-frequency sonic vibrations bouncing off the surrounding granite boulders.
The FNB JoburgArtFair runs from 7 to 9 September 2018. See the full list of exhibitors and buy your tickets, here.
