Description
Hope is one of South African artist Wayne Barker’s most significant works — a mixed-media collage created in 1994, as the country stood at the edge of a new democratic era.
Three years later, the finished piece was exhibited at the Colours exhibition in Berlin. There, Nelson Mandela saw the work and signed it himself — a rare, direct connection between a South African artwork and the man whose legacy it honors.
Hope later featured in Barker’s major retrospective at the Standard Bank Gallery in 2010. Barker, founder of the influential F.I.G. (Famous International Gallery) — which helped launch the careers of artists including William Kentridge and Kendell Geers — remains one of South Africa’s most collected contemporary artists, with work held in the South African National Gallery, SASOL, and Anglo American collections.
