STEVENSON presents Ukwanda kwaliwa ngumthakathi, Mawande Ka Zenzile’s 10th solo exhibition with the gallery and Lusochroma, a solo exhibition by Guy Tillim.
This is what Zenzile had to say, “To celebrate this milestone in my art career, I have titled this exhibition Ukwanda kwaliwa ngumthakathi. This isiXhosa phrase translates to ‘The witch obstructs the success of others’. ‘Ukwanda’ signifies the act of multiplying, growing or expanding. There is a notion in African cultures that perceives umthakathi (witch) as someone who cannot tolerate the prosperity of others due to jealousy and envy. In this view, ‘umthakathi’ utilises sorcery knowledge exclusively to cast curses or inflict pain and dysfunction onto individuals they disdain.”
Zenzile arrived at a juncture where it is increasingly challenging to differentiate between his art practice and his existence and his journey of becoming an iTola (healer/seer) is central to this transformation. As this transition progresses, creativity emerges more organically and innovative concepts emerge unprecedentedly. This exhibition explores the relationship between spirituality, existence and art.
Spirituality is a vital component that allows Zenzile’s artwork to present his audience with diverse creative sensibilities – characterised by using cow dung as both motif and material. This material is also used for healing in isiXhosa and in other African healing traditions. This further speaks to the artist’s intuition, which has always been a part of his art practice.
Zenzile primarily draws his creative processes and guiding conceptual frameworks from his heritage and worldview. To illustrate the diversity of his work, he often integrates many techniques and materials, encompassing ‘traditional’ and conventional media such as cow dung, oil paint, hessian, earth, sculpture, photography, collage, installation and performance. His practice inherently celebrates this tradition, deliberately contesting dominant non-African art’s normative interpretations and perceptions.
Zenzile’s multifaceted approach to painting often integrates pictures and themes from several sources, including history, visual culture, memory (personal, social, historical and archival), popular culture, literature as well as philosophy. He aims to broaden the parameters of his creativity to the extent that knowledge serves as both a subject and a medium, this merger is entirely deliberate. While exploring painting, a medium that has the power to expand understanding and meaning, he plays around with the senses of sight through colour and brushstrokes.
Cow dung permeates our sense of smell and that alone gives meaning to the work of art. How colours interact with each other, layer on layer, the feel of the fabric, the fabric with pigment – all these add to our sensibilities and how we receive, react to, or interact with the work of art. Nonetheless, some of Zenzile’s artwork has emerged from the artist’s obligation to be more intuitive. The exhibition focuses on decolonisation processes and their relationship to cognitive discourse. His formative years and socio-historical recollections shape these works, which interconnect the past and present.
Ukwanda kwaliwa ngumthakathi opens on Saturday the 17th of May at 10am at STEVENSON’s Johannesburg space and a discussion with the artist will take place on the day of the opening at 11am.
Secondly, STEVENSON presents Lusochroma, a solo exhibition by Guy Tillim. Following Avenue Patrice Lumumba, Joburg: Points of View, Museum of the Revolution and Hotel Universo, this body of work represents the latest chapter of Tillim’s long-term investigation into the traces of colonial power in Southern Africa. Across the colour and monochromatic works in this new chapter, the artist makes interventions on his pigment prints using acrylic paint, signalling a shift in his aesthetic and archival interests.
Cities have been the stage for both the establishment and abolition of colonialism, their trajectories often such that they witness and facilitate the transformation of socialist, post-independent societies into capitalist regimes. Their monuments, structures and urban planning reflect such transitions.
Lusochroma, offering an interpretive window into how these eras flow through cities, unfolds along four sections: the titular selection features colour images taken in Quelimane, Beira and Maputo in Mozambique; Colony presents a more abstracted view of colonial monuments across Congo; Luanda focuses on the vibrancy of the streets in the Angolan capital; while Republic, composed from Tillim’s most recent street photographs, interrogates the status quo in South Africa.
Guy Tillim, Luanda, Angola, 2007, Hand-printed silver gelatin print, 15 x 20cm, 20 x 25cm, Image courtesy of STEVENSON.
Aside from those in Republic, the photographs were all taken in the early 2000s. The artist recently reconfigured their size to a more intimate scale and altered their surfaces through geometric interventions with kaleidoscopic effects. According to the artist, this is to postpone recognition of the photograph so that the elements can be seen for themselves, outside of the obvious political dimension. Zenzile has a desire to transport the viewer in a present sense rather than by a journey into the past.
Zenzile is inspired by the Germann art school Bauhaus particularly Hungarian painter and photographer Laszlo Maholy-Nagy. Their geometrical shapes and accessibility have this irresistible communication with modern buildings of a certain era Zenzile picked up in Maputo. There is something deliberate in the act of painting on the photos with these shapes that gives a resulting image a sculptural dimension.
Lusochroma is Tillim’s 17th solo exhibition with STEVENSON and it opens on Saturday the 17th of May at 10 am at the gallery’s Cape Town space.
