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Carriers

30 August - 18 October 2025
Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg

Goodman Gallery Johannesburg is pleased to present ‘Carriers’, a group exhibition that brings together the work of Maxwell Alexandre, Pélagie Gbaguidi, and Ibrahim Mahama. This exhibition marks the first time Alexandre and Mahama have exhibited at the gallery. These three artists’ practices bear witness to histories that have been inscribed on bodies, materials, and territories. Across painting, installation, photography, and assemblage, each artist engages the act of “carrying”; as a burden, a legacy, a gesture of continuity, and a strategy of resistance. Opening during FNB Art Joburg, a pivotal moment in Johannesburg’s cultural calendar.

Together, these artists engage the concept of carrying: transporting the past into the present, bearing witness to and transforming what has been inherited into something emancipatory. Carriers are an active conduit; where stories move, where burdens shift, and where new forms of solidarity are made possible.

Maxwell Alexandre (b. 1990) grew up in Rocinha, one of the largest favelas in Rio de Janeiro. Through his large-scale compositions on pardo paper and canvas Maxwell Alexandre carries the visual and spiritual weight of contemporary Black experience in Brazil, drawing from the iconography of the favela and institutional critique. A former skater, Alexandre’s practice attempts to capture the dizzying flow of images and transfer it into artworks. The works operate as sites where everyday rituals meet sacred memory, and where the figure, often anonymous and in motion, becomes a vessel for presence and power. Alexandre’s figures move through systems that seek to erase them, insisting instead on being seen, worshipped, and remembered.

Artworks

wax pastel and coloured pencil on paper
36.7 x 55 cm
wax pastel, grease and coloured pencil on paper
69.9 x 50.7 cm
acrylic on used tarpaulin from Lubumbashi
197 x 152 cm
Mixed media on paper, canvas Tryptich.
Work: 149.4 x 330.6 cm
Unavailable
Mixed media on paper, canvas
Work: 189.9 x 167 cm
Photo cut outs and archival materials on paper
Work: 101 x 234 cm
Group of 5. Mixed media on paper, canvas.
Work (ea): 31 x 21 cm
Oil on pardo paper]
160 x 160 x 1 cm
Oli on Canvas
125 x 195 x 4.5 cm
Unavailable

About

Pélagie Gbaguidi image

Pélagie Gbaguidi

Pélagie Gbaguidi (b. 1965, Dakar, Senegal), describes herself as a contemporary ‘griot’ – a West African storyteller – which she defines as someone who functions as an intermediary between individual memory and ancestral past. Her work is an anthology of the signs and traces of trauma and is centred on colonial and postcolonial history. She recontextualises archives and official histories to reveal processes of forgetting. The materially embodied images created by Gbaguidi through painting, drawing, performance and installation seek to break out of binary thinking, archetypes and simplifications.

Biennales and major international exhibitions include: Berlin Biennale (2020), Lubumbashi Biennale (2019), Dakar Biennale (2004, 2006, 2008, 2014 and 2018) and documenta 14 (2017). Her work has featured in group shows at Centre Pompidou-Metz, WIELS (Brussels), Musée Rochechouart, Middelheimmuseum (Antwerp), Stadtmuseum (Munich), MMK (Frankfurt), and the National Museum of African Art – Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.).

Collections include: Artothèque, Saint-Denis, Réunion, France; Casa África, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain; CNAP Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris, France; Holocaust Memorial Foundation, Chicago, United States of America; KANAL-Centre Pompidou, Brussels, Belgium; Kunstmuseum Basel, Kupferstichkabinett, permanent loan from the Hüni-Michel-Stiftung, Basel, Switzerland; M HKA Museum of Contemporary Art / City of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium; Memorial ACTe, Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, France; and the Mu.ZEE, Ostend, Belgium
S.M.A.K. Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art, Ghent, Belgium

Gbaguidi lives and works in Brussels.

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