Aletta Alberts’ legacy lives on

Aletta Alberts was a force of nature. The late head of content and third-party channels at MultiChoice was smart, entrepreneurial and influential. She was a massive supporter and collector of art, served on the advisory board of Banditto Art, which offers an annual artist’s residency in Italy and co-owner of Kalashnikovv Gallery in Johannesburg. A “taste-maker” as some would say. A style icon as many experienced. A mentor and supporter of young artists.

Such was her love for the arts that a fund was launched in her name soon after she passed away in July 2021– the Aletta Alberts Young Talent Fund – to help young creatives achieve success.

The Aletta Alberts Young Talent Fund seeks to help emerging artists and cultural practitioners explore new perspectives and develop their practice on their own terms. Together with mentorship, residency and exhibition support programmes, the fund aims to contribute to a world in which visual arts and culture can exert transformative power and lead to meaningful positive change.

The fund is hosting an exhibition and sale of some of Aletta’s objets d’art, jewellery and clothing in Johannesburg, opening on 22 June 2022. The money raised at the exhibition will be used to send a super-talented South African artist to Tuscany to take up the Banditto residency, accompanied by a documentary filmmaker.

The artist who will take up the residency in Italy is Yolanda Mazwana. Yolanda is a young artist whom Aletta was very interested in both as a collector and a mentor. Her work deals with issues of the physical body, mental health and identity.

Over the past three years Yolanda’s career has taken root and grown significantly through residencies at the Nirox Foundation and The Fourth in Cape Town. However, she has never made it outside of South Africa and is set to benefit greatly from experiencing a foreign culture that is entrenched in the history of art and broadening her own horizons beyond her humble beginnings in Bezuidenhout Valley, Johannesburg.

Yolanda (left) will be accompanied by videographer Earl Abrahams (right), who will create a short documentary film about the fund. By sending one aspiring filmmaker to follow Yolanda on her journey and incorporating the content and interviews with key fund stakeholders into the 10-minute video, the fund’s caretakers can capture this important process, tell the story of Aletta’s legacy and create a powerful tool that can be used for further fundraising purposes.

“Aletta was a wonderful friend who would be very proud of what the fund is achieving in her name,” says CN&CO’s Carel Nolte. “We invite lovers of weird and wonderful pieces of art – in all shapes and forms – to visit the exhibition and make a purchase to support the work of this amazing initiative.”

The Aletta Alberts Tribute Exhibition gets under way on 22 June 2022 at 6.30pm at 72, 6^th Street, Parkhurst. Email Carel for further information on the fund.