Back to the directory

Home / Zurich Art Fair 2023 / Exhibitor

Reku Art Gallery

Spain

Reku Art is a diversity gallery. Its vision is to promote emerging talent in the field of visual arts and diversity - diversity in terms of identity, culture and social context, among others - with the aim of creating impact through art.

In doing so, Reku Art strives to present art that is distinctive because of its social, cultural, gender or identity-related components, while bringing exceptional artistic expression or innovative techniques into focus.

Crossroads: New Art from Africa

With the Crossroads Collection, the Reku Art Gallery presents young art from Africa at the Zurich International Art Fair. The collection - with themes such as identity, Afrosurrealism and sustainability - opens up new, pluralistic perspectives on contemporary African art and culture, techniques and aesthetics.
The term "crossroads" traditionally refers to different elements of an infrastructure that intersect, two paths that connect and allow for exchange. This exhibition is a crossroads between the works of several artists:

Phumulani Ntuli (Soweto, 1986)
Adeniyi Damilola (Lagos, 1989)
Nii Anyetei Ras (Accra, 1989)
Mireia Ruiz (Barcelona, 1983)

They are all emerging artists (between 30 and 40 years old) with different approaches to portraiture and landscape. Not only are their subjects diverse, but so are their techniques and formats. Their aesthetic approaches are heterogeneous, not only in terms of the concreteness of each series, but also in terms of the materials used in the creative process. Different concepts such as sustainability, cultural heritage and duality also come together.

---

Phumulani Ntuli

Phumulani Ntuli (born 1986 in Soweto, South Africa) graduated from the University of Johannesburg in 2012 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture. He holds a Master of Fine Arts - Arts Public Sphere from the Ecole Cantonale D'Art du Valais (ECAV) in Sierre, Switzerland, and was awarded the Prix-excellence for his ongoing research project Permutations of an Event, which explores notions of archive and surveillance.
His work fuses artistic research, sculpture, video installation and performative practices. He repeatedly engages different audiences and seeks to make visible gaps, ruptures, silences, pauses and remnants of history.

He explores these themes through the collision of documentation and fiction in collages, performances and video installations, questioning the format of objective media in the representation of historical events and situations within a geopolitical imagination.

As an artist and practitioner, Phumulani has participated in the 59th Venice Biennale. Venice Biennale 2022, ICA Performance Festival, Spier Light Art Festival 2021, Fak'ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival 2020, Young Congo Biennale 2019, Live Works V6 curated by Simone Frangi and Daniel Blanga Gubbay, Kampala Biennale 2016, Uganda, curated by Elise Atangana, Bone Performance Festival 2016, Bern, Switzerland, curated by Valerian Maly, and Act Festival 2016 in Geneva, Basel, Sierre and Zurich. In the same year, Ntuli participated in residencies and workshops at the Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella, Italy, and the Alps Art Academy in Chur, Switzerland. He had two solo performance projects at the Alps Art Academy in Chur, Switzerland, from 2016 to 2017, Umjondolo at the Goethe Institute, Johannesburg; Thupelo, Cape Town and Infecting the City, Johannesburg, from 2012 to 2014.

---

Adeniyi Damilola

Adeniyi Damilola (born 1989 in Lagos, Nigeria) creates surrealistic paintings and drawings in oil, acrylic and charcoal on canvas since 2016. Damilola's art consists of physical artistic expressions and the creation of designs and artistic participation.

He mentors young artists in the creative process. His work has been acquired by collectors in the USA, South Africa, France and Nigeria.

Featured exhibitions:
2022 - The wright art collection (A Tree Cannot Be a Forest), US
2021 - African Art Foundation (Group exhibition: Unusual Suspects), Nigeria
2021 - Mitochondria Gallery, US (Group Exhibition: Paradigms of Perceptions). / Whatiftheworld and Krone Gallery (Group exhibition: 40 under 40) , South Africa / FNB Art Joburg (Group exhibition: Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt), South Africa

---

Nii Anyetei Ras

Nii Anyetei Ras (born 1989 in Accra, Ghana) creates images that express the confidence, boldness and desire of people from African countries to express themselves through visual narratives and to attract attention to raise social awareness.

As an artist, Nii Anyetei Ras is not bound by movement, style or technique. Rather, his emotions manifest themselves in artistic creation and emotional surges from within. Nii does not simply reflect social realities. Instead, he constantly engages with and challenges realities.
His first exhibition was held in Accra in 2015, and since then he has exhibited at venues such as the Chale Wote Art Festival. He was also commissioned by the President of the Republic of Ghana and his team to create a snapshot portrait of former South African President Nelson Mandela in 2018. His work is held in private collections in the USA, Germany and France.

"I always dare to confront through art, the realities that confound society. For me, art is a dream, a vision, and a transformative system of human expression." Nii Anyetei Ras

The creative process of Nii Anyetei Ras:

---

Mireia Ruiz

Mireia Ruiz (Barcelona, Spain, 1983) is a visual artist who lives and works in Barcelona. She completed her graphic design studies at the BAU design school in Barcelona (2001-2005).
After working in various design studios, she joined Cocolia Studio (2009- 2019), where she was in charge of art direction and developed creative projects in photography and set design.
Today, she dedicates herself to her artistic passion, working with the use of colour as a communicative tool.

She has also been a member of the jury for the AdgFad Laus Awards for students, and also in the 080 Fashion Week Barcelona. she has had several solo exhibitions such as "Metáforas" (2021), Manuia; Barcelona; Spain; "My things" (2021) Sitges, Barcelona, Spain and "Mireia Ruiz" (2017). as well as participating in other Spanish galleries: 2022 "10 edition", El diluvio universal, Barcelona, Spain. 2020. "Tot comença per un punt", Galeria Stendhal, Barcelona, Spain. Her work can be found in private collections in Barcelona, Hamburg, London and Copenhagen.