Sandile Goje
Sandile Goje (b. 1972) is a South African printmaker who studied and taught at the Dakawa Art Centre in Grahamstown. Goje was awarded a bursary to study at the Grafik Skolan in Stockholm, Sweden (1994), and had a solo exhibition in the town of Norkeping in 1995. He has exhibited in South Africa and abroad, and his work is well represented in public and corporate collections in South Africa. Over the years he has taught printmaking at Dakawa and acted as studio manager, apart from volunteering in various capacities, running printmaking and skills-development workshops for children and young adults and co-organizing exhibitions and workshops on South African printmakers in Sweden.
Sandile Goje (b. 1972) is a well-regarded contemporary artist from the Eastern Cape in South Africa, where he studied at the Dakawa Art Centre in Grahamstown and from there was awarded a bursary for the Graphic School in Stockholm. He then returned to Grahamstown and taught printmaking at Dakawa until it closed and then later coordinated its re-opening in 1998. He has since moved to Koch Ceramics. Sandile Goje was one of the first students at Dakawa Art and Craft Community Centre, founded by Artists Against Apartheid in Grahamstown in 1992. Dakawa refers to an African National Congress camp in Tanzania before the unbanning of the organization. He was taught etching and ceramics by Eric Mbatha from Rorke’s Drift and Joel Sibisi, as well as by Swedish printmakers Malin Selman and Kristina Anshelm. In 1998 Goje won an award in the PG Glass Competition, and his prints were included in the exhibition Printmaking in a transforming South Africa at the National Arts Festival. Although his works remain inalienably African both artists (Goje and Anselm) create intricately and carefully textured works. His remarkable tool work brings a rich variety of textures to the black and white surfaces of his prints. Frequently he designs directly onto the lino although the conceptual process may sometimes involve sketches with or without minimal notes. The artist expresses the wish to reveal the nature of his culture to those to whom it is unfamiliar, and he does this through images. His vision of this culture in the Eastern Cape during the years of social change is intriguing and uniquely personal.
Goje’s works are in the collections of the World Bank, Wits Technikon, MTN Art Institute and various others. In 2002 he was invited to produce works at the David Krut Workshop in Johannesburg.
