In 2018, I had the privilege of serving as academic coordinator for ISEA Durban, one of the leading international symposia on electronic art. Alongside this, I collaborated with Nicole Sarmiento to present a land performance video commemorating 100 years of the Native Land Act in South Africa, reflecting on the ongoing impact of colonial land dispossession.
This work was part of Conversations in Gondwana, a project fostering dialogue between artists from Brazil and South Africa around shared histories and complex genealogies. The exhibition, Fracture Zone, curated by Juliana Caffé and Juliana Gontijo, was hosted at Durban University of Technology’s Faculty of Arts and Design and featured a group of exceptional artists including Gabrielle Goliath, Mikhael Subotzky, Paulo Nimer PJ, and others.
Fracture Zone does more than present artworks; it maps tensions between human and natural worlds, explores urban exclusion, and uncovers the hidden, entwined histories linking Africa and South America. It creates space to surface fractures, affects, languages, and epistemologies that emerge from shared but divergent experiences.
Both my coordination role and participation in this project continue to influence my research and practice, underscoring the importance of intercontinental dialogue in shaping decolonial futures.
For more information, see the Conversations in Gondwana project here: https://conversationsingondwana.tumblr.com/
Also: https://www.isea-symposium-archives.org/art-events/land-and-erasure-by-ismail-farouk/
