CAPE TOWN — Brooklyn may be 7,816 miles away from Cape Town, but the New York borough has inspired a new show at Stevenson Gallery here called “Kings County,” which opened last week and runs through Nov. 22.
The gallery, which opened in the art-meets-design district of Woodstock in 2003, represents a wide range of contemporary African artists focused on the continent itself: from Anton Kannemeyer’s darkly satirical comics to Pieter Hugo’s unnerving photographs. This year the gallery participated in Frieze New York, is currently at Frieze London and will be at Paris Photo and Art Basel Miami Beach.
For its latest show, the gallery wanted to focus on geography and its limitations, said the curator and gallery director Joost Bosland in a recent interview. Mr. Bosland had been in talks with the gallery’s artists — including Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Meleko Mokgosi, Wangechi Mutu and Paul Mpagi Sepuya — individually about where they each live and how that influences their work, but the show didn’t materialize until Mr. Bosland realized that all four artists had one thing in common: Brooklyn.
“The artists in this exhibition are all, in different ways, invested in this imaginary place called Brooklyn, and use the idea of the borough as a backdrop to the making of their art,” said Mr. Bosland. The show spans installation, video, work on canvas and work on paper by the artists, who have all lived in Brooklyn (called Kings County by Dutch settlers in the 17th century). “We have two works by Mr. Meleko, one video by Ms. Mutu, four works on paper by Ms. Akunyili Crosby and a room installation containing 20 photographs by Mr. Sepuya,” Mr. Bosland said.
For these artists, Brooklyn is a rich source of inspiration, from its new creative economy, to its immigrant history and recent gentrification. “Each person had their own unique relationship with the place,” said Mr. Bosland.
The show also came about in part because of Mr. Bosland’s chance encounter with the Brooklyn-based Nigerian writer Teju Cole on a balcony in Lagos.
Mr. Bosland recalled, “Teju spoke very passionately about Brooklyn as the only place in the world where he does not, in one way or another, stand out.”
Mr. Cole, who wrote an original piece for the exhibition, said, “When I’m in Brooklyn, at least in certain parts of it, I feel that no one can walk up to me and demand to know what I’m doing there.” He added, “Anywhere else in the world, even in Lagos where I grew up, I’m not so sure — I have a metaphysical confidence in the place.”
One of the artists, Meleko Mokgosi, 33, from Botswana, is known for his large-scale project-based installations often focusing on the perception of historicized events; his view of Brooklyn is focused on a specific area, Sunset Park. “Crucially, it is a workspace, and I feel comfortable getting off the train every day at 8 a.m. and heading to work alongside the numerous factory workers going in the same direction; so no mystery, suspense or romanticism here — its just work,” Mr. Mokgosi said.
For the mixed-media artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby, 31, the coexistence of universality and difference that exists in the city is often portrayed in her work: from intimate scenes of lovers to Nigerians dancing at house parties, all done in various collages. Her work explores how young cosmopolitan Nigerians maintain their Nigerian identity even as they integrate into foreign communities across the world. “Brooklyn reminds me of home (Nigeria) — both are spaces of constant cultural negotiation made up of cultural imports due to globalization,” Ms. Akunyili wrote in an email. The appeal also lies in the fluidity of cultures. “People with many differences — not only cultural, but also racial, national, class, level of education, age, etc. — exist next to each other and so Brooklyn creates its own new and unique cultural space,” she added.
According to Mr. Bosland, the show is all about the significance of geography — something that galleries from outside Europe and the United States “cannot avoid whether they want to or not.” He continued, “In a sense Brooklyn becomes a mirror for our own continuous negotiation of being from elsewhere.”
This group show is a first for the artists at the Stevenson Gallery although they have individually been exhibiting worldwide. Wangechi Mutu, 42, a Kenyan sculptor and artist, has exhibited widely, and just opened a solo show at Victoria Miro in London. Ms. Akunyili Crosby, Mr. Mokgosi and Mr. Sepuya have primarily exhibited in the United States. Mr. Sepuya’s self-published photographic periodical entitled “SHOOT,” which started in 2005, is available worldwide.
“In 10 years, the more interesting story could be the Bronx, or Newark. But that’s the way of the world,” Mr. Cole said. But for now, he added, “we need a place like Brooklyn to exist, a place of dedicated cosmopolitanism and insistent tolerance.”
“Kings County” is showing at the Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town through Nov. 22.
An earlier version of a picture credit with this article misstated part of the attribution. The credit for the still from Wangechi Mutu’s animated video is Courtesy of Wangechi Mutu studio and Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg; not Courtesy of Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg.