One of the highlights of the Louis Vuitton Foundation’s large showcase of South African art, one of three exhibitions devoted to Africa currently on view in an attention-grabbing Frank Gehry building in Paris, is a suite of 16 portraits by Johannesburg painter Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi. Installed at eye level along two walls in a darkened space, between two contrasting films by Sue Williamson and Bogosi Sekhukhuni, Nkosi’s washed-out portraits depict mostly women, many of them public figures.
A 2013 portrait of exiled writer Bessie Head, her eyes glancing sideways, sits comfortably next to a 2013 portrait of American civil rights activist Betty Shabazz, her mouth ajar and eyes trained elsewhere.
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