Ethna Frakenfeld's exhibition

Nelson Mandela Bay printmaker, Ethna Frankenfeld, was the overall winner of the third Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum Biennial Exhibition and Award. 

The Biennial Exhibition and Award is designed to promote artistic excellence in the Eastern Cape and attracted artists from a diversity of artistic competencies and backgrounds.  Submissions arrived from as far afield as Umtata and Middelburg and represented many different media including video, ceramics, painting, printmaking, sculpture, textiles and photography. Nineteen artists were selected to participate in the final exhibition; from these, eight artists were short-listed as finalists for the award.

Ethna’s work titled Abandoned, Bound, Corrupted, Silenced (2010) - four intaglio prints dealing with the abuse of women in traditional and contemporary society - won her the 2010 Biennial Award: a solo exhibition at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum.

Her award exhibition takes the form of a retrospective exhibition that explores the themes that have preoccupied her throughout her career.   A master printmaker, Ethna ‘s work is often autobiographical, using personal experiences to comments on the social political climate of the world around her.    Her work speaks of the highs and lows of life:   sensuous enjoyment, sexual adventure, pride and lust, taboos and dangerous encounters, death and loss.

Ethna’s exhibition will be opened on 19 June 2013 at 17h30 in the Lorimer Hall at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum, by Mary Duker, Director of the School of Music, Art and Design, at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.     The 2010 Biennial catalogue will be on sale at the exhibition opening.  It features an essay on Ethna’s work by Mary Duker.

This Award-winner’s exhibition was very generously co-sponsored by the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.

The fourth Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum Biennial will be launched on opening night.    We shall once again be calling for Eastern Cape’s top artists to enter this prestigious exhibition.