The Norval Sovereign African Art Prize 2023 Benefit Auction | Hosted by Sotheby’s

Jess Atieno

Take Me To Your River

Reserves

Lot Closed

January 31, 05:13 PM GMT

Estimate

1,500 - 2,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Jess Atieno

Kenyan

b.1991

Take Me To Your River

woven tapestry

90 by 140cm., 35⅜ by 55⅛in.

Executed 2022

Please be aware of the Conditions of Sale when bidding. As a benefit auction, there is no buyer’s premium charged. The only additional costs due to the winning bidder are applicable sales tax and shipping. Works auctioned are sold “as is,” and condition reports are included with lot descriptions as available. In-person previews of the auction artwork will be available at Norval Foundation at 4 Steenberg Rd, Tokai, Cape Town, 7945, South Africa from 25 January – 20 March, Monday to Sundays 9AM – 5:00PM (Closed on Tuesdays).Please note that while this auction is hosted on Sothebys.com, it is being administered by Norval Foundation (“the museum”), and all post-sale matters (inclusive of invoicing and property pickup/shipment) will be handled by the museum. As such, Sotheby’s will share the contact details for the winning bidders with the museum so that they may be in touch directly post-sale.

This work has been kindly donated by the artist

Jess Atieno utilises mixed media techniques to question place and belonging in post-colonial Africa. In these explorations, Atieno time travels through historical photographs and maps, reappropriating them into serigraphs and tapestries. The materials from these archives contain traces of violent histories and repressed narratives. In mining them, Atieno seeks not to heal, but to investigate how the past continues to haunt the present.

In Take me to your river (2022), Atieno represents what it means to belong to a place through the lens of a colonial past. Atieno appropriates archival photographs and maps into a woven tapestry in which she invokes the symbolic power of the flag. Employing the gestures of fragmentation, weaving and collage, the artist questions the flag’s historical foundations that continue to inform our sense of identity, citizenship and agency. By replacing the flag flown with the carpet laid down, Atieno creates a potent symbol of our collective and individual agency.