04.03.09 'Stigmata', Pieter Hugo at the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, Geneva
12.03.09 Nicholas Hlobo on 'Mythologies', at Haunch of Venison's new gallery

05.02.09 'Beauty and Pleasure in South African Contemporary Art', Stenersen Museum, Oslo
20.02.09 'Bigwood Berlin' at artSPACE Berlin
24.01.09 'Kuckei + Kuckei presents 'why not? - Contemporary South African Art' in Berlin

23.11.08 Urban Reflections, Santu Mofokeng in Edinburgh

24.09.08 'Short Stories in Contemporary Photography', Tillim in Zürich

THE AMERICAS

01.04.09 Claudette Schreuders in 'Mami Wata: Arts for water spirits in Africa and its Diasporas', Washington DC
27.03.09 'Integration and Resistance in the Global Era', the 10th Havana Biennial
23.04.09 ITASC's ICEPAC, art and science research project exhibits results at Bienal del Fin del Mundo

09.01.09 Test Patterns: Recent Video from South Africa in San Francisco
29.01.09 'Johannesburg to New York', Samson Mnisi in Brooklyn
31.01.09 'Black Womanhood: Icons, Images, and Ideologies of the African Body' at the San Diego Museum of Art
11.02.09 Pieter Hugo in 'Unbounded: New Art for a New Century', New Jersey

20.09.08 'Beyond the Familiar' photography in Massachusetts

'Stigmata' groups together six contemporary photographers: Gustave Germano (Argentina), Pieter Hugo (South Africa), Shai Kremer (Israel), Suzanne Opton (US), Robert Polidori (Canada) and Dana Popa (Rumania). Each of their work seeks to capture our attention through pictures of both people and places dealing with situations of crisis, be it on the frontline or behind.

Opens: March 4
Closes: July 26

Haunch of Venison launches its new London exhibition programme this March with a group exhibition acknowledging the building's previous role as the Museum of Mankind.

Turning the 21 500 square feet gallery into a giant cabinet of curiosities, 'Mythologies' will feature work by over 40 international artists, including major figures such as Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Sophie Calle, Christian Boltanski, Tony Cragg, Kiki Smith, Bill Viola, Keith Tyson and Damien Hirst, alongside emerging talents such as Carlos Amorales, Jamie Shovlin and Nicholas Hlobo.

Opens: March 12
Closes: April 25

Kay Hassan, Lawrence Lemoana, Athi Patra Ruga, Andries Botha, Langa Magwa, Berni Searle, Nontsikeleo Veleko, Nandipha Mntambo, Senzeni Marasela, Frances Goodman, Nicholas Hlobo and Dineo Bopape are included on 'Beauty and Pleasure in South African Contemporary Art' at Stenersen Museum, Oslo in Norway.

Work on show explores identity issues, individuality, sensuality, sexuality and gender issues through a wide variety of media - photography, installation, video, works on paper, textile works, performance and sculpture.

The selected artists share an interest in expressing provocative themes within highly tactile and formally orientated works. The works in this exhibition are not only decorative and visually appealing, but also speak on a very poetic level about the beauty that is found in everyday life not only in Africa but all over the world.

As a strong counterpoint to the socially engaged, politically entrenched art often featured in exhibitions of contemporary art from Africa, the theme of this exhibition is linked to notions of beauty and pleasure.

Opens: February 5
Closes: May 10

The conceptual focus of of 'Bigwood Berlin' is the idea of 'wood', as in forest and all things that live in it.

The first 'Bigwood' exhibition was held at Manna in Durban in 2007. The second installment, 'Bigwood 2', expanded its scope by including grafitti artists along with graphic designers, fine artists and illustrators who came together to create something unique, fresh and memorable.

The 19 participating artists, from all over South Africa, are: Vonkberg (Werner Viljoen), Liezel Prins, Wesley van Eeden, faith47, Daniël du Plessis (daan), Louis Minnaar, Mitchell Horn (Reddprime), Ulricke Lourens, Richard Phipson, Justin Southey, Yvette Terblanche, Gabriel Metcalfe, Trevor Paul, Hylton Warburton, Paul Senyol, Ross Turpin, Tempest van Schaik (Ellomennopee), Christiaan Nagel and Maaike Bakker.

The success of 'Bigwood' is largely due to an underlying element of fun that runs through all the work on show.

Opens: February 20
Closes: March 21

'why not?' is the second of two exhibitions on contemporary South African Art at Gallery Kuckei + Kuckei in Berlin. The first show, 'A Look Away', was dedicated to photography and included works by Pieter Hugo, Sabelo Mlangeni, Mikhael Subotzky, Lolo Veleko and Guy Tillim.

Part two focuses on the latest developments in the field of sculpture, installation, performance and conceptual art. Artists included are Avant Car Guard, Zander Blom, Michael MacGarry and Nandipha Mntambo. The exhibition is curated by Christian Ganzenberg.

Opens: January 24
Closes: March 14

'Urban Reflections', an exhibition curated by Kirsten Lloyd and Christine Nippe, presents five different artistic positions which reveal a range of contemporary responses to the idea of the city.

The development of industrialised modernity in the 18th and 19th centuries brought a fascination with new technologies, speed and progress. Population explosions resulted in new types of urban environments while advances in optics and chemistry gave birth to photography and film. Since then the lens and the city have been bound together in artists' imaginations as they attempt to represent, comment upon and re-imagine their everyday environments through documentary, avant-garde experimental approaches, photomontage and film.

Drawing references from pop culture, urban studies, literature, and the documentary genre, each of the five exhibiting artists seeks to explore a different facet of contemporary urban realities. A concern with the fragmentation of perception runs through the works: images are overlaid, spaces and emotions are distorted. In these places there are no fixed horizons; boundaries between imagination and reality are blurred, everything reflects and nothing is truly transparent.

Exhibiting artists are Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani, Germany; Dan Graham, USA; Sabine Hornig, Germany; Santu Mofokeng, South Africa; and Rhona Warwick, Scotland.

Opens: November 23
Closes: March 22, 2009

'Short Stories in Contemporary Photography' presents various approaches by international artists to the strategy of contemporary photographic storytelling, and thus becomes a space of very distinct narratives.

In literature, the short story is a concise fictional narrative often perceived as an ideal form for modern storytelling. One can see parallels between the short story and contemporary photography in which distinct narrative possibilities emerge: documentary photography, in which a story is condensed visually; staged photography, in which a plot is developed as in the theatre; video stills that condense a complex story in a single image; and photography mixed with different media that distorts or transforms into a new storytelling form.

Contributors to this exhibition include Harry Gruyaert, Bertien van Manen, Aernout Mik, Erwin Olaf, Eric Stitzel, Guy Tillim and Erwin Wurm

This exhibition brings together a wide variety of cultural artefacts, from headdresses and masks to film posters, as well as artworks by contemporary practitioners who have seen Mami Wata as an inspiring muse. The contemporary component includes paintings, etchings and sculptures by artists including Alison Saar, Sonya Clark, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Twin Seven-Seven, Claudette Schreuders and Edouard Duval-Carrié.

Opens: April 1
Closes: July 26

The Havana Biennial celebrates 25 years of existence with its tenth edition in 2009, bringing together more than 200 artists from 40 countries.

'Integration and Resistance in the Global Era' includes South Africans Hassan and Husain Essop, Johannes Phokela, Andrew Putter, Berni Searle, Minnette Vári and Manfred Zylla, and Zimbabwean Dan Halter. Zanele Muholi, Nicholas Hlobo and Steven Cohen have work on 'Gender, (Trans) Gender and (De) Gendered', a special project of the biennial.

Opens: March 27
Closes: April 30

The projects and site-specific installations at the ICEPAC, Antarctic site will be exhibited as part of the 2nd Bienal del Fin del Mundo, an exhibition curated by Alfons Hug entitled 'Intemperie' (Tempest), focusing on weather, climate and Antarctica.

The main venue of the Bienal is Ushuaia,Terra del Fuego, Argentina (April 23 - May 25) with satellite exhibitions taking place at Centro Cultural Oi Futuro, Rio de Janeiro (Jan 19 - March 1), SANAE IV, Antarctica (Feb 3 -17), and OCA, Sao Paulo (March 7 - April 12).

Opens: April 23
Closes: May 25

San Francisco Camerawork presents 'Test Patterns: Recent Video From South Africa', a new exhibition that brings together the work of nine contemporary South African video artists who explore ideas of citizenship and belonging in the post-apartheid era.

Artists included are Churchill Madikida, Penny Siopis, Berni Searle, Simon Gush, Jo Ractliffe, Ismail Farouk, Ruth Sacks, Steven Cohen and Usha Seejarim.

Video's breakaway from its exclusive use as a television broadcasting tool into the hands of activists and artists is significant, and in South Africa, even more so. With rigid government controls even on consumer electronics, South African artists' videos are primarily a post-apartheid medium.

The racialisation of space from colonialism to apartheid had enabled the State to control the ways in which people perceived their own citizenship. And television provided further means to perpetuate the racialised divide. As television had largely been the preserve of white people, video is a tool for amending traditional notions of identification in relationship to the transformation of space in South Africa.

In these videos, the artists have developed alternative narratives about South Africa's sordid past and are grappling with the country's current relationship to the issues that are transforming the landscape and creating new forms of identification.

The exhibition will be presented in two parts. 'Part One' explores ideas of memory and identity under colonialism and apartheid. 'Part Two' surveys post-apartheid South Africa as it struggles to define a new national identity amidst the significant challenges of skyrocketing unemployment, HIV/Aids and Xenophobia.

Opens: January 8
Closes: March 25

The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art (MoCADA), the first and only contemporary African Diasporan Art museum in Brooklyn, New York, presents 'Johannesburg to New York'.

Curated by Kimberli E. Gant, the show is the first retrospective of the collaborative work between South African artist Samson Mnisi and New York artist Cannon Hersey.

Combining their various perspectives on the changing cultural dynamics of South Africa and its emergence onto the world stage, these artists have created mixed media imagery that is socially conscious while also being visually stimulating.

Mnisi incorporates ancient Zulu symbolism and rituals with Hersey's captivating photography to give viewers insider and outsider perspectives on contemporary South African societies.

Opens: January 29
Closes: May 17

The San Diego Museum of Art, presents 'Black Womanhood: Icons, Images, and Ideologies of the African Body', a major travelling exhibition, curated by Barbara Thompson, that explores the historical roots of a charged icon in contemporary art - the black female body.

Originally presented in Dartmouth at the Hood Museum of Art, the exhibition explores the complex perpetuation of icons and stereotypes of black womanhood through the display of over 100 sculptures, prints, postcards, photographs, paintings, textiles and video installations by artists from Africa, Europe, America and the Caribbean.

Presented in separate but intersecting sections, 'Black Womanhood' reveals three different perspectives - the traditional African, Western colonial, and contemporary global - that have contributed to current ideas about black womanhood. These three sections explore themes such as ideals of beauty, fertility and sexuality, maternity and motherhood, and women's identities and social roles, and examine collectively how these overlapping perspectives penetrate the complex and interwoven relationships between Africa and the West, male and female, and past and present, all of which have contributed to the inscription of meaning onto the black female body.

Zanele Muholi, Senzeni Marasela, Nandipha Mntambo, Penny Siopis and Berni Searle exhibit contemporary representations of black womanhood which, in contrast to the historic representations of the African female body on display, dissect the layers of social, cultural, and political realities that have influenced the creation of stereotypes about black women.

Also expected to feature in the exhibition are well-established contemporary artists living in Africa and Europe such as Hassan Musa, Ingrid Mwangi, Robert Hutter, Sokari Douglas Camp, Emile Guebehi, Magdalene Odundo, Fazal Sheikh and Maud Sulter.

Opens: January 31
Closes: April 26

'Unbounded: New Art for a New Century' opens at the Newark Museum, New Jersey in February. This provocative exhibition presents 50 masterworks created in the past 15 years by more than 30 contemporary artists.

The exhibition is drawn from the Museum's African, American, Native American, Asian and Decorative Arts collections and encompasses painting, sculpture, ceramics, fashion, jewellery, textiles, photography and video.

A dynamic thematic display highlights the universal concerns and ideas that inspire artistic creativity, creating unexpected connections or groupings that transcend traditional divisions based on geography, genre or media.

Opens: February 11
Closes: August 16

'Beyond The Familiar: Photography And The Construction Of Community' is one of a four part programme at Williams College Museum of Art which focuses on the role of photography and film as it reflects, and potentially constructs, cultural identity.

The exhibition brings together 10 photography projects from around the world that span the history of the medium. These projects portray individuals from distinct cultural, economic, and professional groups.

Each of these artists has defined a group - whether by race, class, occupation, or neighborhood - and depicted individuals in a manner that moves beyond portraiture. Instead, each artist explores personal identity in the larger context of social groups.

Artists included in the exhibition are Felice Beato and Peter Henry Emerson from the 19th century; Edward Curtis, August Sander, and Aaron Siskind from the first half of the 20th century; Robert Frank, Barbara Norfleet and David Goldblatt from the second half of the 20th, and recent work by Tina Barney and Zwelethu Mthethwa.

Opens: September 20
Closes: March 8, 2009