Artist Feature: Georgia Papageorge

Georgia Papageorge is a South African land artist, who attained her bachelor's degree in fine arts from the University of South Africa in Pretoria in 1979 and a higher diploma in graphics from Pretoria Technikon in 1981. Much of her work explores the theme of geographical rifts, and how they are metaphors for rifts between races, countries, continents, and also personal identity or experience.

Papageorge's work has been motivated and informed by evidence of the effects of climate change as well as the highly illegal and dangerous charcoal trade that is carried out in most Central African countries.

Left: MKAA III, 2008, installation with bags of charcoal and red chevroned banners, Northern Tanzania September 2006, Lightjet prints on Fuji Crystal archival paper, 230 x 110 cm. Right: Kilimanjaro – Southern Glaciers, 1898, 2010, mixed media on canvas, with inkjet print taken from the earliest known photograph of the glaciers, and lines of poured ash from the ash cone of Kilimanjaro itself, 230 x 140 cm

Kilimanjaro/Coldfire is the fourth in a series of major African land art projects which Papageorge has worked on since 1994. A crisp red temperature line moving across the surface of images of the mountain demonstrates an analysis of glacial melt. Photographic documentation of Kilimanjaro's southern ice field, taken over a period of 70 years by people living in the vicinity, is also shown in one of her works and bares testament of the enormous effect of global warming.

Georgia Papageorge. Global Warming Series: Kilimanjaro from the Tanzanian town of Moshi, mixed media on paper with collage of inkjet prints from photographs by local people in 1940's, including the 1943 film taken by General Jan Smuts, 100 x 100 cm

Exploring the Gondwana schism, she completed Africa Rifting: Lines of Fire, Namibia/Brazil in 2003, which featured broad lengths of red cloth wrapped around the oceanic borders of two nations: Namibia and Brazil, who once shared a border before the continents drifted apart eons ago.

"...transforming mere cloth into lines of fire and blood. They are symbolic lines, symbolic of fire and blood. In my Kilimanjaro works, I see water as the lifeblood of Africa.”

- Georgia Papageorge

Sources: 
www.artrabbit.com/all/events/event/21944/georgia_papageorge_kilimanjaro_coldfire
www.artfirst.co.uk/georgie_papageorge/pe_10.html
http://www.mac.usp.br/mac/templates/exposicoes/exposicao_contemporaneo/exposicao_contemporaneo_africa.asp
arttattler.com/archiveafricandiaspora.html
www.facebook.com/events/761380223873297 (initial introduction to Georgia's work)