ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE 2022 STANDARD BANK YOUNG ARTIST AWARD WINNERS

Receiving a Standard Bank Young Artist Award is a pinnacle point: this is one of the most prestigious prizes offered to South African artists under the age of 35. This year’s winners join the ranks of a stellar collective that have become household names over the last four decades. Standard Bank Young Artist Award winners are cherished as national treasures, and many have gone on to find new audiences on the African continent and achieve international acclaim.

When poet and scholar Gabeba Baderoon was a graduate assistant at the University of Cape Town in 1988, there was a conference on Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness. As she looked at the programme, her gaze paused, fixing its attention on the cover image. It was something “meant to be glanced at briefly before one went into the substance of the programme”. But she looked intently, instead, and saw that it was a “picturesque image of an enslaved figure”, caught in a “play of visibility and invisibility”.