Hot on the heels of its exciting Johannesburg launch, the very first Digital Fine Art gallery in South Africa USURPA is bringing its pioneering technology to the Mother City at Decorex Cape Town 2023. USURPA joins a 200-strong lineup of leading brands showcasing the latest trends in design, decor and art at the Cape Town International Convention Centre in the heart of Cape Town between 22 and 25 June 2023. This gives Capetonians the chance to interact with digital art presented by this progressive gallery which sits at the forefront of culture in South Africa and on the continent.
USURPA will mount a stand-alone display on the Decorex Cape Town show floor featuring an array of dynamic works by the gallery’s South African artists. These include Seth Pimentel, Baba Tjeko, Naledi Modupi, Sinalo Ngcaba, Mncedi Madolo, Nene Mahlangu, Mark Draws, vonMash, Oliver Pohorille, Terence Maluleke, Samurai Farai and Navel Seakamela.
With the sole mission of empowering established and up-and-coming African artists, the USURPA team has created a platform that introduces digital art as a modern form of fine-art investment in the form of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens – digital versions of artworks that are unique or irreplaceable. Just as you could own a one-of-a-kind physical artwork such as the ‘Mona Lisa’, buyers of USURPA’s NFTs become the sole owners of new kinds of fine art that are captured on the blockchain and secured through individual smart codes.
Visitors to Decorex Cape Town 2023 will get the chance to experience artworks that have been adapted from either physical or static digital forms into dynamic artworks displayed on crisp Samsung Frame TV’S. Guests can view this pioneering Samsung technology and display of African innovation up close — seeing how each line, hue and expression comes to life in a way that is defining a new future of fine art.
USURPA co-founders photographer Steve Tanchel and culture-shaper Kay Kay Ribane will also be presenting a free talk as part of The Future of Design Studio at Decorex Cape Town. The Future of Design Studio will present talks across all four days of the show, and the USURPA duo is part of an impressive lineup of South Africa’s top design authorities who will address some of the most pressing issues currently facing the design industry. Speakers include Georgia Black from Littlegig Festival & Retreats, Hannerie Visser from Studio H, Bathandwa Ngwendu, Tracy Lee Lynch, Greg Truen from SAOTA, Robert Silke, Hardy McQueen, and others.
