African Leipzig is a scholarship project of the LIA in cooperation with the Centre for the Less Good Idea and David Krut Projects, both Johannesburg, South Africa, and Vlado & Maria Ondrej Studio for Contemporary Etching, Leipzig, Germany, generously supported by the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany. Nine multidisciplinary artists from South Africa and one from Ethiopia took up residence in the LIA studios on the old spinning mill site Spinnerei in Leipzig for three months at a time. Part of the scholarship was a graphic symposium with printmaking in the Vlado & Maria Ondrej Studio, supported by ten German artists. Previous knowledge of graphic techniques was not required. One of the challenges was to create interfaces between one’s own artistic productivity and the classical techniques — especially between the analogue medium of printmaking, which has a long tradition in Leipzig, and digital forms of production. Twenty etchings were donated in April 2023 to The Centre leaving a trace of this fruitful exchange in South Africa.
Photos by Zivanai Matanyi
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