Dylan McGarry is a founding member and curator at Cloudigital Art: a gallery – and I would argue, an art community hub too – which is rethinking the role of art spaces and exhibiting in the age of a digital ‘renaissance’. Cloudigital Art hosts the meaningful stories and livelihoods of the artists it shows, while simultaneously offering a range of enriching spaces and empowering features which prioritise social activism, artists’ agency, and embracing new opportunities which digital avenues can allow.

The gallery is currently showing a group exhibition titled ‘Wit(h)ness’. Here, a collection of artists engages the “poly crises” facing the world today. From the most intimate forms of loss, to the devastation experienced in environmental decline and human rights abuses. In such a space, the exhibition offers viewers with methods to withstand the overwhelming nature of these issues. To witness them, and simultaneously to maintain a sense of personhood.

Located in the heart of Cape Town, the physical gallery operates under a mindset of “hope with your shirt sleeves rolled up” – an idea inspired by a quote originally said by David Orr, but mentioned by Dylan himself when describing what Cloudigital is. It’s an environmentally conscious, technologically innovative, and creatively nourishing space. 

Simona Stone chatted to Dylan to get a deeper sense of his role in the gallery, an overview of Cloudigital Art, and his creative and social missions that aim to make real change.

Interview with Dylan McGarry

Simona Stone: From your point of view, what is Cloudigital Art?

Dylan McGarry: Cloudigital is a kind of passion project [generated] with Dipesh Handa… We ended up having this really profound conversation about the future, climate change, social-ecological justice and social movements. He, for a long time, has wanted to support artists and their role in building a better world… As someone who’s involved in ‘big business’, he’s seen the ways in which capitalism has impoverished so many cultures, including the art world… so he thought, ‘What if the artists were not just leading in intellectual activism – as they do – but also to take the reigns on the finance?… The proceeds and the profits from the art world, where do they go to?’.

So he imagined a model in which artists would choose social movements they want to fund. They would get paid what they would normally get paid in a gallery… instead of a 50/50 split,  there’s a 45/45 split, and 10% of the profits go to social movements. And so what ended up happening is the digital part came in… The move to NFTs and online currencies means that there are other ways in which artists can maintain sovereignty around the sales of their work…

We wanted to create a gallery that opened up the world in that way, and really thought about artists’ very important role in society and how we can support them even more. And being an artist myself… I had a beef with galleries… they’re just rarefied, clinical spaces. In the post-apartheid South Africa… They need to be more convivial spaces where we build a community. Galleries should also be places you come to eat in, and dance in, and move in, and gather. Not just places to look at art as if it’s some kind of object, when they’re actually these instruments of consciousness…

… we’re asking questions of: What are galleries for? In the contemporary world where we are facing poly crises… from climate change to genocide… in what ways are galleries stepping up? And recently, there’s many galleries that have been very unsupportive to artists doing commentaries around Palestine, for example, and artists should never be censored in that way.

We need to be thinking: How are we supporting artists to act in more sovereign ways?

I picked up on the phrase ‘digital renaissance’ mentioned on your site… Could you please elaborate on this?

We’ve been working with technology for a long time. The digital space brings us to a whole other realm. And I think it’s quite curious… The Renaissance, in a way, was a thinking about ‘enlightenment’, which actually caused such damage to the planet and to culture, especially indigenous cultures. I suppose that term is used both in the light and the dark. I think technology or, the digital space, is only as dangerous as the people who use it, weaponise it, or turn into an instrument of consciousness.

The ‘digital renaissance’ we are hoping for… I see it as artists claiming their space in the digital realm while it’s quickly, quickly changing into a space for AI. All those are really just tools. And I think artists could wield those tools if they navigated it as a community.

So, if we build strong enough social tissue between artists to navigate the digital realm,  I think it could become quite a powerful renaissance, especially because art is also one of the bases of blockchains and the basis of actual whole currency. So the NFT space… it looks like what’s on the horizon is art being one of the truly original forms in the world that could actually form the base of a future, decentralised currency, that’s borderless… I see a huge potential in it.

Art and its spaces are so tied to a reckoning with our sense of self and identity… This rate of digital expansion is really shaking that sense of identity for artists and people in general. It seems like you’re really examining ‘what is our identity within the digital era?’.

And ‘what is our community?’… if you think about any other pre-colonial society, there was no such thing as the individual… And I think we share that as a vision in the Cloud art space: we’re trying to build a community that’s strong enough to navigate all kinds of things, including the shifting digital realm.

You mention that we are in a ‘poly crisis’, where we are experiencing multiple crises simultaneously… Would you say that this digital era can be a useful tool in this conversation, especially relating to our environmental crisis?

Yeah, I do… Cloudigital is also saying, ‘In what ways can artists step away from the traditional capitalist models and actually use these crypto-currencies or these other currencies to become more independent?’…

If artists are also in art communities and movements who are supporting and building relationships that can navigate all these really fast changes that are afoot… I think that would be a really important move for the art world.

…I’ve been a sociologist and an educational sociologist specialising in environmental education. I’ve been looking at the role of art, in arts-based movements, in activism, but also in education, in policy change. And what I’ve come to learn, is that we can develop all kinds of policies, and we can develop all kinds of economic strategies… the thing about art, is that it has this potential to build social tissue. It has this potential to allow us to look at ourselves in very critical and not just logical ways, but also emotive…

As far as what Cloudigital is doing: we can’t see the environmental crisis without also seeing that it’s a cultural crisis, right? So climate change has emerged out of a cultural crisis of this hyper individualist Western mindset… I once had a slogan during a climate conference, where we had banners and protesting, and I said, the cure for climate change is empathy. And then I realised later, to create empathy, you need art. And so the cure for climate change is art. 

Would you say that art helps to humanise these crises in a way?

Yes, and in a way, post-humanise. So they allow us to see our humanity in this crisis, our implication in them. It’s like the African feminist principle that no innocent position exists. Artists allow us to realise that there’s no innocent position in any situation, and that we are implicated. But by post-human also, I think artists can also help us see how we’re entangled with the more-than-human, whether that’s animals and oceans and ecosystems, but also spirits and ancestors and memory and colonial hauntings. Art allows us to look at ourselves without our defenses up…

Dylan went on to explain Cloudigital’s new exhibition, ‘Wit(h)ness’, curated by him:

The exhibition’s title is inspired by the work of Bracha Ettinger, who is a descendant of Holocaust survivors who grew up in occupied Palestine and she names it as such… what she does by combining witness and ‘to be with’ in one word is that witnessing atrocity no longer becomes a passive state, but rather becomes an attentive solidarity state. It’s… actually participating and trying to metabolise what you see and are witnessing. So the thing that artists do beautifully is that they’re able to digest and metabolise the world through their making practice.

… I think the role of artists as researchers and as ‘wit(h)nesses’… has not really been celebrated enough.  At its core this exhibition is honouring the very ancient origins of art…

I’ve visited the space: it’s a gallery, but you’ve incorporated a cafe and a cosy video nook downstairs. It’s very multifaceted.

…We wanted to create a space that was a gallery, but it was also a place where people would enjoy to gather. Help us to build community, while you can also have delicious food. It’s kind of ‘sacrilege’ to eat in a gallery, but we are doing that, and also showing conscious films and activist films.

Every Thursday evening, there’s a gathering where people come and also spend time together and can also play board games in the gallery. 

And there’s unplugged Sundays, where people can leave their phone in a basket at the door and spend time with each other without phones, watch beautiful films, engage with the art – even make art – in the space.

Could you explain this role of digital and decentralised currency in relation to Cloudigital Art?

So you can buy art in a very traditional way – you can just buy a painting, or you can buy a sculpture with regular currencies – but you can also buy art with cryptocurrencies.

Artists can also opt to digitise their work and sell them as NFTs. In a way, they’re like prints. There’s a limited edition of, let’s say, three or four NFTs of that artwork… the NFT also acts as a certificate of authenticity. So you own the physical work. Let’s say you own the sculpture, but then there’s also three NFTs of that sculpture. 

It means that every time that those sell, it makes money for the artists and for their cause they are trying to support. Because NFTs work like that on a blockchain. So they increase in value over time. If you have an NFT, and you want to break it into 10 shares, you can sell off shares of your NFT, which means that it democratises or makes more accessible buying art in the art world. At the moment, only very wealthy people can afford art…

And in a way, you are then investing in artists. Even if you can only afford a small portion of it…

It sounds like it really engages conversations about accessibility and community-building within art investment.

Yes, because you could basically support other artists, because it’s affordable. Think about how up-and-coming artists could support each other and make their work more valuable over time… 

So we will have work that is very rare and inviting world famous artists to also potentially offer digital art and sell it in that way, so people can start like having access to that and that value space. And then… you can buy art from particular exhibitions. But then we’re making a platform where artists who have their own solo shows and can also be available on the platform. also, collaborating with other galleries. So it’s not like we’re a closed gallery. We are happy to collaborate with other galleries in helping them set up similar systems and and share artists so that artists don’t feel like they you know, that they can work and collaborate with selling their work on the online space. And we’ve already had two amazing galleries who… very kindly lent us work.

…I think people really want a different kind of system. I think the art world needs a complete overhaul, and people want something that is more conscious and community oriented.

Keeping to the gallery’s consistent theme of collectiveness and community, Dylan made a point of asking for those more ‘behind the scenes’ to receive celebration for their role in the making of Cloudigital Art: “Grethe Maritz is the gallery manager, who is in many ways the co-curator of this exhibition. She is very much on the front lines engaging with artists and all daily activities required by the space, Grethe is a powerful force.”

An example of the members making up the team required to manage such an operation: those rolling up their sleeves to turn hope into something we can see and experience. And join.

How to book tickets

Cost: R75 for SA citizens with presentation of valid ID | R150 for standard price tickets | Tickets give access to the exhibition at any time during the day as well as access to its Cloud Café and 0% Bar.

When: Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm | Weekends 9am to 6pm
Where: Cloudigital Art, The Old Foundry, 74 Cardiff Street, De Waterkant, Cape Town

Website: cloudigitalart.io
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 021 001 3477
Facebook: @cloudigitalartgallery
Instagram: @cloudigitalart

See more art exhibitions and experiences in Cape Town here