In 2013 I won the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Performance Art in South Africa. In response to this award the winning artists are awarded time and money to make work for the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown - a small city in the Eastern Cape. I wanted to create a work that responded to this place and that included the people that lived, worked and played in Grahamstown. So, for three months I lived in Grahamstown and joined six different teams, learnt how to dance, sing, play the bag pipes, play chess and soccer and got my yellow belt in karate. I then single-handedly challenged each team to their own game, ultimately losing each battle but still trying my hardest. The main concept of the work reimagines victory as the act of learning rather than conqest. After Grahamstown I went on to challenge the city of Geneva in four different activities. In 2014 I had an exhibition at the Ithuba Gallery sharing my experiences with audiences here in Johannesburg.

 

The following text for the exhibition reads: 

 

Anthea Moys is a performance artist based in Dunkeld west, Johannesburg. Since 2013, she has also been a ballroom dancer, a chess player, a singer, a Swiss wrestler, an alphorn player, an ice hockey player, an indoor track cyclist and a member of the Scottish resistance army. 

 

After total immersion and intense training in each of these unfamiliar disciplines, the artist competed solo against the teams she had been training with. She faced these teams outnumbered, outmatched and with all odds stacked against her, in a series of public contests she could not hope to win. 

 

This video documents the artist’s journey from Grahamstown to Geneva; and that re-imagines victory as the act of learning rather than conquest.

 

The artist is currently learning to paint.