Statement by Jochen Zeitz, Chairman and CEO of PUMA

Creative Africa Network

www.puma.com
creative.puma.com
www.creativeafricanetwork.com

PUMA is honored to support the Joburg Art Fair, and honored to support the spirit and creativity of the artists and representatives present here. The PUMA brand experiments with the new, joining together creative spirits with major figures of the sports and fashion worlds—figures such as Usain Bolt, Samuel Eto’o and designer Hussein Chalayan, now the creative director of the PUMA Sport Fashion collections. In view of our longstanding commitment to creativity and service, it feels a natural step for PUMA to participate in this important project on the African continent.

At PUMA we believe that our position as the creative leader in Sportlifestyle gives us the opportunity and the responsibility—to contribute to a better world for the generations to come. A better world, in our vision, the PUMAVision, would be safer, more peaceful, and more creative than the world we know today. The tool we’ve developed to help us stay true to this PUMAVision is called the 4Keys, and we use it by constantly asking ourselves if we are being Fair, Honest, Positive, and Creative in everything we do. PUMAVision combines the work of our sustainability program through puma.safe, the support of Peace One Day through puma.peace, and our passionate involvement with creative talents through puma.creative, and blends all these projects into a coherent vision that will unite our company, stakeholders, shareholders, and customers alike. With puma.creative, we aim to bring together individual artists and cultural organizations, and provide them with a platform for creative exchange and international exposure.

The first puma.creative project was the support of the exhibition 30 Americans in collaboration with the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, Florida. Other ventures include the Hussein Chalayan retrospective at the Design Museum in London, England and support of Creative Africa Network (CAN).

An initiative of puma.creative, CAN is a virtual platform with global reach, connecting the creative world within and outside of Africa, giving visibility to the talents working in contemporary art, film, architecture, design, and the performing arts. The website, www.creativeafricanetwork.com, includes a cultural directory and is updated weekly with news of events, biennales, art and book fairs, music and film festivals, awards, reviews, calls for artists, and other opportunities, providing professional information valuable to high-profile and emerging artists and cultural liaisons.

The project was developed by Dutch curator Macha Roesink, director of Museum de Paviljoens; Zimbabwean curator Raphael Chikukwa; French-Cameroonian art critic and editor Christine Eyene; and South African curator Mark Coetzee, who serves as program director for PUMAVision and chief curator of puma.creative. The website was designed by Mediamatic, the Amsterdam-based leading new media and network company.

We are delighted to be able to express our PUMAVision through this collaboration with the Joburg Art Fair and Creative Africa Network.

Jochen Zeitz
Chairman and CEO of PUMA