Kay Hassan / South Africa

South Africa born 1956

South African artist Kay Hassan has worked in various media including painting, installation, video, sculpture and photography, but he is best known for his large-scale ‘paper constructions’. Hassan creates imposing portraits by shredding billboard paper, and gluing the tattered scraps of commercial advertisements back together to assemble large collages. The portraits and his technique are inspired by the people of Johannesburg. He says that ‘our lives have always been torn and put together – people have always been pushed around. You see it in the streets, in the kids begging, those eyes, the way they look at you’.

BIO

Hassan was the first recipient of the DaimlerChrysler Award for South African Contemporary Art in 2000. He has exhibited widely in South Africa as well as internationally, including at the Venice Biennale in 2015 and 2009; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in 2008; Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland, in 2003; and the Gwangju Biennale, in 1995.