When an artist is welcomed into the monumental interiors of a structure such as the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa for a retrospective of their work, it suggests the levels of recognition they enjoy. The gallery, crafted from old dockyard silos in Cape Town, South Africa, opened in 2017. It is built to have such a pedigree; a solid foundation for African artists to gain global visibility and scrutiny.
Tracey Rose is a South African multimedia artist whose practice spans performance, film and video installation, sculpture, photography, print and painting. Such a range is head-spinning. Most artists become distinctive for mastering one or two media at most, but not Rose. Equally impressive is her litany of pet subjects: race and deracialisation, South African coloured (mixed-race) identity, radical feminism, parenthood, post-apartheid South African politics, outrage and shock.
