We are proud to support members of CUSS Group in participating in the 9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary art. (4 June until 18 September 2016).
Their latest exhibition in Berlin, Signposted as "Triomf Factory Shop," is an installation that appears to be a store filled with the products on sale at Triomf: a fragrance, a beer, LCD monitors broadcasting a TV channel… some of which are commissioned works by other South African artists. The shop serves as a virtual" front" for a back room, which is a site of production for a live programme of performances. Closed to the public, these events are streamed from behind closed doors and onto the internet.
CUSS Group's use of a shop not only speaks to the gap between official presentation and processes of creative production, but it also plays on how in the city politics and national interests that drive biennials. Participants are envoys, quasi-exports, quasi-emigrants, of cultural dissemination amid a globalised, though still nationally based creative economy.
The collective CUSS Group responds to commercial, cultural, and technological super-hybridity in contemporary South Africa and beyond.
Cuss group was founded in 2011 in Johannesburg, by Ravi Govender , Christopher Bryden McMichael, Mpumelelo Jamal Nxedlana, Philip Pilekjær, Lex Trickett and Zamani Xolo.