Genna Gardini facilitated by Sometimes

A note to a stranger is an exhibition that situates itself in the city of Cape Town. The exhibition seeks to introduce artworks into everyday life by placing them within the city. The subtle disturbance of everyday life through video work playing in a bar, a performance that starts and ends without a press release, an installation that moves through Cape Town’s leisure spaces and text-based artworks installed at bus stops is a way of introducing moments that have the ability to cause tiny ripples in the experience of everyday life. The exhibition is curated by Kabelo Malatsie for the Honours in Curatorship course at UCT, Michaelis School of Fine Art’s Centre for Curating the Archive.

Sometimes is a collaborative project between Marc Barben and Matthew King, who explore various means in using the web to facilitate exhibitions. For the project at hand, Sometimes invited artists to respond to the title of the exhibition in the form of text-based works. These were then translated from English into Xhosa and Afrikaans. The text was printed on A3 sized paper and pasted on bus stops across Cape Town CBD, Camps Bay and Sea Point. Participating artists are: Sebastian Borckenhagen, Geoffrey Brink, Chris van Eeden, Genna Gardini and Heather Jones. The use of translations allowed for a wider public reach. Cape Town’s erratic weather patterns obliged by forcing people to take shelter at various bus stops, thereby expanding the audience beyond only those who use public transport.

Genna Gardini’s poem installed at Michaelis and Clifton bus stops, 2013

Genna Gardini is a writer based in Cape Town. Her poetry has been published both locally and internationally in literary journals including New Coin, New Contrast, ITCH, and The Common. Gardini has contributed work to various exhibitions, including The Sometimes’ 2013 An Exhibition of Texts and the Sober and Lonely Institute For Contemporary Art’s 2013 An Experiment to Test the Destiny of the World.