THE BIG READ
An impressive space that fuses culture and nature in a perfect harmony opened in Cape Town yesterday
Norval Foundation: A new giant in the art world
When Serge Alain Nitegeka was 11 years old, an ethnic civil war drove him and his family to flee their home in Burundi for Rwanda. His trauma intensified when Rwanda was also plunged into hostilities and he had to run away again. The experience of being a young refugee still haunts the Johannesburg-based artist and the tangled mess of stained dark wooden planks that fills the atrium of Cape Town’s latest large-scale art space is testament to his pain. The chaotic structure that juts out in all directions with its twisted and interlaced beams resembling makeshift barriers is designed to mimic the harrowing experience of being a refugee. I had to duck under or step over the planks as I passed through the sculpture, palpably experiencing the fear and anxiety of crossing secretively and cautiously over borders. But the imposter, an exit sign tacked to the installation, insisted on by the fire inspector, is a reminder that I’m in this new, impressive space that is a tribute to the vibrancy of the old and the new South African art scenes.
Nitegeka’s sculpture is one of the large-scale works that forms part of the first group of exhibitions at Cape Town’s latest art attraction, Norval Foundation.
I first heard about the project from an art journalist friend over a year ago, when all eyes were on the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA), an imposing architectural feat of an art museum, designed by British celebrity architect Thomas Heatherwick — who designed London’s new-look buses and Manhattan’s New York Yards with its strange honeycomb structure.
“Why would they build an upscale art museum in Tokai? (it’s actually Steenberg),” was the question my journalist friend was asking himself, and I’ve heard it repeated many times since, along with speculation about why Cape Town would need two major temples to local and African contemporary art. Gossip abounded. A competition of egos between rival businessmen? A front for some dodgy tax evasion? An excuse to draw people to the 200-seat restaurant on the site? None of these speculations is true. But comparisons between Zeitz MOCAA and Norval are going to be inevitable.
Unlike the all-star cast behind MOCAA, (including German businessman, philanthropist and art collector Jochen Zeitz), the team behind the opening of Norval Foundation is not clamouring for the limelight. In fact, property mogul Louis Norval, the original funder of the project, positively and adamantly avoids it. Norval is the co-founder of Attfund, one of the largest private-property investment companies in South Africa, managing director of the Parkdev Group of Companies, executive chairman of Homestead Group Holdings, and serves on the board of a number of other major companies, including Hyprop Investments, which bought Attfund in 2011. But when Top Billing wanted to interview him about the museum he politely declined.
The tangled mess of stained dark wooden planks ... is testament to his pain
Instead the face of the project is executive director Elana Brundyn, who cut her teeth with the huge challenge of art museum openings as part of the MOCAA launch team — their Director of Institutional Advancement and External Affairs.
“My previous experience at Zeitz MOCAA taught me exactly what it takes to build up an institution of this size, especially with the eyes of the world watching your every move,” she said days before the opening. Brundyn also owned her own gallery, called Brundyn, in Cape Town for three-and-a-half years.
Clearly amped about the project, her eyes shiny with excitement as she talks about it, her energy and