Multi-award-winning Joburg filmmaker and sculptor Michael MacGarry’s stark films typically highlight the shifting urban realities of African cities. In his latest exhibition titled We are now, what you once were he continues his exploration of the mechanics of identity construction, the legacies of Modernism and objects as narrators.

We are now, what you once were takes its name from a creative corruption of a memento mori (a Latin epitaph) in one of the chapels of Rome’s Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini church that reads "What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be."

A mixture of sculpture, video, installation and performance, the exhibition is split into five parts. These include MacGarry’s 2017 two-channel video Parang and a new feature-length video titled Der Magnetiseur. A carnivalesque self-portrait, Der Magnetiseur features MacGarry playing a 60-minute composition on a digital piano with extended prosthetic arms and is named for E.T.A Hoffmann's 1814 novel about a doctor who tries to cure a sleepwalking woman using hypnotism.

Also featured is MacGarry’s latest addition to his ongoing installation series Tontine, a collection of large-scale sewn textiles made from found cement packaging and bamboo that speak to the growing partnership between China and Africa ,and Kilamba Kiaxi a new limited-edition photographic monograph about a new city just outside Luanda, Angola which was financed and built by Chinese companies.

Mar 24 at 11:00 Artist walkabout