The quote in the title comes from artist Ejler Bille on the work of Ernest Mancoba. Born in South Africa, Mancoba also lived and worked in Europe where he met and married Sonja Ferlov. His engagement with the art of “Others” whether traditional African, pre-historic Nordic, Danish medieval frescos, European Modernism — and the works of Sonja Ferlov — find their way into his artistic language. This talk considers these various influences and how — as Bille aptly puts it — Mancoba’s work transcend the cultural vernacular.

About the speaker: Winnie Sze is a visual art scholar and independent curator based in South Africa. Her research in Mancoba began with a research fellowship at the VanAbbe Museum (Eindhoven) in 2017. She has since contributed an essay to the catalogue for the Centre Pompidou retrospective (Sep 2019), in press, and convened and international symposium on the artist in Cape Town (Feb 2020).