Lexus Critics’ Choice Award
This year, in addition to providing private chauffeured drives to RMB Latitudes Art Fair, Lexus presents the Lexus Critics’ Choice Award, which celebrates the Best Stand at RMB Latitudes 2024.
Five exhibitions within the Fair were selected as Finalists and the winner was announced on Sunday 26 May.
The Lexus Best Stand Winner went to Reservoir Projects!
The Lexus Best Stand Audience Award Winner went to Under the Aegis!
Meet the five finalists below:
Under the Aegis
Occupying the Gallery
Abdus Salaam presented by THK Gallery in collaboration with Nirox
Reservoir Projects
USURPA
Meet our selection committee!
The selection committee for the Lexus Critics’ Choice Award comprises of:
Lekgetho Makola - former CEO of the Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria
Billie Zangewa - renowned half-Malawian, half-South African artist who hand sews silk fabrics to create collage tapestries
Lerato Bereng - art curator and director of Stevenson Gallery.
Alexia Walker - founder of the independent art advisory, Walker Art
More about the selection committee
Lekgetho Makola The 1st CEO of the Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria from February 2021 to March 2024, Lekgetho Makola is the former Head of Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg. His artistic philosophy is embedded in advocacy as the Ford Foundation Fellow (2010) on Social Justice.
Lekgetho’s participation in dynamic local and global visual storytelling platforms, contributed to the expansion of enabling support spaces for practitioners in parts of the continent of Africa. A post-graduate of Howard University, he accumulated critical cultural institution experience in arts management and programming over the past 25 years. He advocates for the humanisation of the arts practice by supporting building of new agile characters into artistic institutions beyond the traditional.
Lekgetho Makola, a Fellow in the inaugural Yale Directors Forum 2023, is a founding member of Centres of Learning for Photography in Africa, a continental network for photographic hubs. He led the Market Photo Workshop to receiving the International Principal Prince Claus Award 2018.
Billie Zangewa works primarily with raw silk offcuts in intricate hand-stitched collages, creating figurative compositions that explore her intersectional identity in the contemporary context and challenge the historical stereotyping, objectification and exploitation of the black female body. Working in a flat, colourful style, she depicts narratives concerned with experience: both personal and universal. These narratives do not make grand gestures or even overt political statements, but rather focus on mundane domestic preoccupations; universal themes connecting us to each other. Almost always the protagonist in her works, Zangewa becomes a heroine whose daily life is revealed through the scenes she illustrates.
Zangewa has exhibited extensively at institutions both locally and internationally, including at the Barbican (2024), Hirshhorn (2022), Brooklyn Museum (2021), Astrup Fearnley (2020) Smithsonian Museum of African Art (2019), Norval Foundation (2018), MACAAL (2018), MASS MoCA (2017), Stedelijk Museum (2017), Studio Museum Harlem (2016), Iziko South African National Gallery (2016), Johannesburg Art Gallery (2016), Guggenheim Bilbao (2015), WIELS (2015), La Maison Rouge (2013) and the Menil Collection (2012),
Her work is represented in several notable private and public collections, including LACMA, Norval Foundation, Hirshhorn, Tate Modern, Stedelijk Museum, Centre George Pompidou and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art collections. In 2018, Zangewa was selected as the Featured Artist for the FNB Joburg Art Fair.
Born in 1973 in Blantyre, Malawi, Zangewa lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Lerato Bereng was born in Maseru, Lesotho and lives and works in Johannesburg. She is a director at Stevenson, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Amsterdam. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art and a Masters of Fine Art majoring in curating from Rhodes University, Makhanda. Curated projects include How to make a Country, at FRAC Poitou-Charentes, France (2021); Conversations at Morija (Maeder House, Morija, Lesotho 2017; 2015; 2013); SEX, Stevenson Johannesburg (2016); Simon Gush: Nine O’Clock, the National Arts Festival, Makhanda(2015); Out of Thin Air (Cape Town, 2012) and Featuring Simplicity as an irrational fear (Cape Town, 2010). From 2008 to 2009 Bereng took part in CAPE Africa Platform's Young Curator's Programme for which she curated Thank You Driver, as part of the Cape ‘09 Biennale.
Alexia Walker is an independent art advisor based in Johannesburg. She established the art advisory Walker Art to help private and corporate collectors build collections and better understand and manage the value of their art. She has modern and contemporary art expertise with a special focus on Africa.
Alexia has developed the permanent African art collection for The Africa Centre in London. She has co-founded Capital Art, a startup and art management system aimed at supporting
collectors of African art. She is a board member at the Javett-UP Art Centre.
A regular contributor in the media, Alexia ran The Art Advisory column in the Business Day and has participated in panel discussions about collecting African art. Prior to Walker Art, Alexia co-founded the art advisory Walker Scott, was a business consultant in the art auction and advertising sectors and owned businesses in the marketing
and music industries.
She grew up in Paris and holds a Master in contemporary art history from Université de La Sorbonne.
Further Reading In Articles
African Artist Directory