Zander Blom is a Johannesburg-based artist who uses painting, drawing, assemblage sculpture and photography to investigate conceptions about the creative process and the presentation of art and art making. As he does in most of his paintings, prints and assemblages, Blom, in "2.8 Untitled," focuses on different configurations of lines, shapes and forms that he has staged on paper, thereby confining his materials, gestures and marks within the frame. Blom creates such works on a range of surfaces as well as in various places throughout his studio's corners and walls.

Artist Alexandre Arrechea's "Dancing Lovers" is the artist's first etching since the 1980s and exemplifies his openness to experimentation with media, scale and color. In this print, Arrechea responds directly to his environment, drawing inspiration from the urban architecture he viewed while spending time at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, Georgia. The imagery, however, references his sculpture series "The City that Stopped Dancing," with miniature representations of iconic buildings as humorously oversized toy tops.

Artist Carrie Mae Weems employs the power of storytelling and unfolding narratives in her photographs and films.

For over a decade Youssef Nabil has been developing three unique yet interconnected series of hand colored photographs—staged cinematic stills; portraits of artists, writers, actors and filmmakers; and haunting self-portraits. In the cinema series, the earliest of the three, Nabil pays homage to the glamour of classical Egyptian films of the 1950s, '60s and '70s that mesmerized him as a child. The cinema series narratives are not driven by a specific storyline, but rather present beautiful, anonymous starlets in settings that require the viewer's interpretation.

For more than a decade Youssef Nabil has been developing three unique yet interconnected series of hand colored photographs—staged cinematic stills; portraits of artists, writers, actors and filmmakers; and haunting self-portraits. In the cinema series, the earliest of the three, Nabil pays homage to the glamour of classical Egyptian films of the 1950s, '60s and '70s that mesmerized him as a child.

The paintings, sculptures, photographs, films and performances of Yinka Shonibare, MBE, examine colonialism and post-colonialism through a contemporary lens. In many of his works, Shonibare integrates Western art history and literature in order to call into question what comprises our collective contemporary identity. In "Odile and Odette IV," Shonibare relies on characters from Tchaikovsky's 1875 ballet "Swan Lake" to realize his story. In this image, the duality of womanhood in the characters Odile and Odette are mirrored before the viewer’s eyes.

For artist Wangechi Mutu, the female form is a primary source of imagery, and her work is recognized worldwide for its unique representations of beautifully exaggerated and morphed figures. Mutu's works are primarily sourced from the photo-based materials of popular magazines that the artist recontextualizes and reconfigures to create dynamic, stylized beings. Mutu's women are amalgamations, complex hybrids that speak to reclamation, empowerment and identity politics via the female form. In the contemporary portrait "Homeward Bound," a bust is created from natural and constructed elements.

"Globe" is one of two works Cvijanovic created in response to the structure in the exhibition "Low Country Babylon" that he and his students at SCAD produced for an intensive painting class themed "Painting a Memory Palace."¹ The project was designed to evoke the ideas of individuals speaking their own language to create a collective story — a story of Savannah, Georgia — inspired by Pieter Bruegel the Elder's "The Tower of Babel" (1563).

Ingrid Calame's art is inspired by the grooves, stains, graffiti and other ephemera found on urban surfaces. Calame's working process is labor intensive and inextricably tied to her travels to specific locations where she traces onto Mylar directly from the found textures of ground markings. After recording her data, Calame combines her findings to create colorful overlapping drawings and paintings of the detritus of daily life that have been left behind in various cities.

During the course of his career, artist Nicholas Hlobo has developed a distinctive body of work stitching and weaving together disparate materials such as ribbon, rubber, gauze and leather to create seductively tactile sculptures and drawings. His works are richly layered, anchored in references to Xhosa culture and the experience of life in post-apartheid South Africa, while reflecting upon themes of language and communication as well as gender and sexuality.