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Sitting atop one of his spectacular coffins, carried by a bevy of chanting men and women in traditional Ghanaian attire, famous coffin sculptor Paa Joe officially opened the annual Joburg Art Fair at a VIP preview on Thursday night.
Art stars abounded at the fair. South African video and photo artist Candice Breitz has developed a huge reputation in the rest of the world. She flew in to present a genius video work involving 28 Meryl Streeps and 23 Jack Nicholsons.
International award-winning photographer Jodi Bieber talked to us about her big retrospective at the SA National Gallery in Cape Town and fashion design icon Marianne Fassler was promoting a new set of coins to help raise funds for the Joburg Art Gallery.
A bit more lacklustre than last year’s opening, there were at least more gorgeously decorated performance artists than you could shake a selfie stick at.
In between the business bigwigs, actors and film makers, the vanguard wandered around taking in the Pan-African display. Fashion entrepreneur and social-media star Maria McCloy was in the company of actor and film maker Isaac Chokwe and artist Breeze Yoko, fresh from the Chale Wote street art festival in Ghana, which a group of South African artists attended.
Just before his grand entrance, Paa Joe told us he’s been in the country for a month – in Cape Town and Pretoria.
In that time, he’s carved three spectacular new coffins – a Porsche, a shark and the eagle that bore him into the room. Asked what he thought of South Africa, Paa Joe raved: “Everything is sorted out and everything works. It’s not Africa. It’s like Europe.”
