NEW: Faatimah Mohamed-Luke: Come as You Are (2022)

The University of Cape Town's Works of Art Committee is pleased to present Faatimah Mohamed-Luke's 2022 quadriptych 'Come As You Are'. Emphasising collaborative thinking, 'Come As You Are' sits in pertinent dialogue with its architectural site, where the university commissioned the piece for the recently built Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking Afrik*a. Here, the artist makes use of various creative disciplines and disrupts normative assumptions around identity, art and notions of play.

The Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking Afrik*a (shortened to d-school Afrik*a) aims to centralise innovative problem-solving within its pedagogical approach. In this instance, design thinking describes engaging with the world through forms of collaboration and play. It is a type of practical and creative lens that complicates the lines between artistic disciplines and scholarly borders. As such, Mohammed-Luke was the perfect choice for this form of speculative inquiry.

Her art is best encapsulated by what scholar Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung terms "disciplinary decadence", which imagines a co-existence of various academic and creative practices (Ndikung, 2020: 280). Thus, from its methodological approach and visual appeal, 'Come As You Are' presents an amalgam of design, fine art, and patternmaking, a process emergent from the artist's background in fashion and textile work. In this way, fine art becomes "just another medium" amidst a plethora of creative possibilities for the artist.

"These worlds [art and design] really aren't that different. You create the pattern in your head, you create it digitally, and then it physically exists in the world".

The Works of Art Committee will continue to introduce new acquisitions. We have invited art writers to produce short reflections on a particular artwork, which are published on our page "Think Pieces".