Guided tour through Je est un autre – Ernest Mancoba & Sonja Ferlov Mancoba by guest curator Winnie Sze
These tours will be in English
Time: 2 p.m. – 2.45 p.m., with afterwards some extra room for audience questions
Price: free (excluding museum entrance)
Reservations: the number of participants is limited to 20 people per tour. Make your reservation for Friday 27 January here or for Saturday 28 January here.
Instructions for reservation: first select the type of museum ticket during the time slot of your choice (before 2 p.m.). Next you select ‘Tour Winnie Sze’ and follow the further steps. *
During this first weekend of the anniversary program Cobra 75, we organize two exclusive guided tours by guest curator Winnie Sze. She will guide the audience through the exhibition Je est un autre – Ernest Mancoba & Sonja Ferlov Mancoba that she curated for the Cobra Museum.
The tour will go further into the lives and works of the artist couple Sonja Ferlov Mancoba (1911-1984, Copenhagen-Paris) and Ernest Mancoba (1904-2002, Johannesburg-Paris). Both could be considered ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ of the Cobra art movement. Like some of the other Cobra artists, Ernest Mancoba became inspired by Nordic prehistoric art. Together with his engagement with African sculptures, European modernism, and arts of other cultures, he came to develop an artistic language that Ejler Bille described as “combin[ing] an African feeling with a living Western culture”.
Sonja Ferlov Mancoba explored both the intuitive and the rational in art, the two sides of the artistic argument that tore the Danish avant-garde apart. Her search for a dialectic between seeming opposites was to become a crucial element in her work, including in her late sculptures that recognised the tension between the individual and humankind.
Sonja’s and Ernest’s relationship, of a white woman and a black man, was rare, and Sonja Ferlov Mancoba also stood out as a woman in a male-dominated art movement. Whilst identity politics were addressed and discussed differently in their time than ours, how might considering their art help us today?
Winnie Sze is based in Cape Town as an independent curator. During her fellowship at the Van Abbemuseum, she researched Ernest Mancoba’s relationship with the Cobra artists. Sze has a deep interest in a broader approach to visual art and focuses on socially-oriented, creative collaborations. She studied art history at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver) and previously operated a contemporary art project venue in London.
* Questions about ticket sales and reservations? You can always call us from Monday till Friday between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on 020 547 50 37.