All Stories from
ROAR AFRICA

As anticipation mounts for the launch of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art (MOCAA) in September this year,

It’s hard to believe that it’s just a decade since Babylonstoren first opened its doors in the Franschhoek Valley near Stellenbosch.

While it was the landmark findings of a Census of Marine Life in 2010 that gave the world its first inkling into the largely unexplored depths of our oceans,

Don’t be fooled by the pint-sized stature of Turkish-born but Cape Town-based creative Yelda Bayraktar.

With an international career spanning two decades, South African artist and sculptor Dylan Lewis’s works are beloved, acclaimed and highly collectable because of the magnificence with which his sculptures capture the form of wild animals, towering mythological figures and fragmented beings.

When you consider that historically Africa’s cultural narrative has largely been told by outsiders and that some of the continent’s best artworks have long languished in private collections, the extraordinary importance of what businessman and philanthropist, Jochen Zeitz has set out to do with the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) packs a positive punch.

Conservationist Map Ives’s story is a classic tale of character and calling. At its core is the belief that each of us is called to a certain destiny. Plato and the Greeks called it a daimon, the Romans saw it as genius while the Christians likened it to a guardian angel. In Map’s case, it was unequivocal and asserted itself from an early age.

Did you know that trees and plants carry 15% of the human genome while insects carry 40%, and that birds and crocodiles carry a staggering 88% and 85% respectively?

To doubt the genius of nature is to never have seen the beauty of a pangolin in the flesh.