NEW: Kim Karabo Makin: Colour Theory (2021)

It is our pleasure to welcome Kim Karabo Makin's Colour Theory (2021) to the UCT Works of Art Collection. This recent acquisition will enrich our African Modern Art collection. This recent acquisition will enrich our African Modern Art collection.

Kim Karabo Makin (b. 1994) is a Motswana artist from Gaborone, Botswana, and Cape Town, South Africa. She navigates her national and transnational identity between both spaces since the socio-historical and cultural significance of these landscapes implicate her. Her artistic practice is a vehicle of disruption, negotiation, contention and agreement through symbolic strategy.

Colour Theory is visually derived from the concept of a colour wheel, in which colour relationships are determined in relation to each other. These materials hold symbolism and are transformed into an object charged with cultural meaning, implying racial skin tone. Adjoining neutral tones, or skin tones, allude to the relationship of one race to another. The colours in Makin’s work are shades of the in-between hues of commercially available pantyhose (a racial and feminised commodity) – available predominantly in bare beige, beach bronze, Mexican silver, and blackmail – the colour codes that exist in the middle of black and white.

Read the think piece:
Kim Karabo Makin: Colour Theory
by Cheriese Dilrajh

In the following months, the Works of Art Committee will be introducing new acquisitions. We have invited art writers to produce short reflections on a particular artwork, which will be published on our website, so stay tuned for more.