Tag: colonialism

Nongqawuse Through the Sonic Lens of uKhoiKhoi

uKhoiKhoi is a live-looping duo that blends opera, indigenous chants, and praise poetry. Their sound, which they describe as “indigenous electro” is a fusion of traditional and contemporary instruments. uKhoiKhoi’s name pays homage to the KhoiSan tribe that once thrived in Southern Africa, but it is the vibrant city of Johannesburg that inspires the duo’s sound.

This band consists of musician and composer Yogin Sullaphen and vocalist and performing artist Anelisa Stuurman, also known as Annalyzer. Since 2019 their partnership has resulted in two EPs and a series of performances across South Africa and Europe. Not to mention that uKhoiKhoi performed at the BubblegumClub-produced Spotify X Thebe Magugu event at the Nirox Foundation earlier this year.

Image courtesy of CityLife Arts

Anelisa Stuurman came up in the rural setting of the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Raised in a family steeped in musical traditions within the village of Sterkspruit, Anelisa’s childhood introduced her to choral, classical, and indigenous music. Her passion for the arts led her to Durban, where she honed her skills on the stage, hosting events, and producing music under her pseudonym, Annalyzer.

Yogin Sullaphen is a multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, holding a degree in Jazz Composition from the University of Witwatersrand. His musical dexterity encompasses guitar, bass, keyboard, drums, flute, and an array of traditional African instruments. As a music producer with such a palette of instruments at his fingertips, Yogin found his true calling in live looping when he joined forces with Anelisa, resulting in the popular sound that defines uKhoiKhoi.

Nongqawuse (right) with fellow prophetess, Nonkosi, Image courtesy of South African History Online

Appearing on their EPK of the same name, uKhoiKhoi’s latest track is named after Nongqawuse. Born around 1841 in Gxarha, Cape Colony (modern-day Centane, South Africa), the controversial Xhosa prophet Nongqawuse is known for her role in the significant historical event of the Xhosa cattle-killing movement and the ensuing famine of 1856–1857 in the Eastern Cape.

Largely known through colonial and oral traditions, Nongqawuse’s early life remains a mystery. What we do know is that she was thought to be an orphan and was raised near the border of the British Kaffraria, formerly a British colony or subordinate administrative region in what is now known as Qonce and East London. She is said to have been brought up by her uncle Mhlakaza, who had been heavily influenced by Christianity during his time in the Cape Colony. Mhlakaza was known to interpret and organise Nongqawuse’s prophecies.

In April 1856, Nongqawuse, then 15 years old, claimed to have met the spirits of her ancestors near the Gxarha River. The spirits promised that the dead would return, and the European settlers would be swept into the sea, restoring prosperity to the Xhosa people if the Xhosa people destroyed their crops and cattle, their source of wealth and sustenance, in exchange for divine salvation.

Initially, when she relayed her message, not all Xhosa people believed in her prophecies. While a minority refused to obey her instructions, leading to the failure of her predictions over fifteen months, over time, many became inclined to believe her as her visions emerged during a period of prolonged Xhosa resistance against British colonialism. In addition, many Xhosa people had been afflicted by “lung sickness”, likely introduced by European cattle. She gained a large following and people began following her instructions.

Nongqawuse predicted that the prophecies would come true by February 18, 1857, and that the sun would turn red as a sign. Once her predictions proved to be inaccurate, her following dwindled and the prophetess was handed over to colonial authorities. Her later life remains shrouded in uncertainty and she passed away in 1898.

Widespread famine was the unfortunate consequence of her prophecies and subsequently, the population in the British Kaffraria decreased significantly. Despite this, Nongqawuse is often heralded as a hero by many. Today, the location where she claimed to have encountered the spirits is known as Intlambo kaNongqawuse, which translates to “Valley of Nongqawuse” in isiXhosa.

Image courtesy of Bandcamp

So it comes as no surprise that the band uKhoiKhoi chose to name their latest song after this confounding figure. Nongqawuse blends traditional African musical elements with afrobeat, resulting in a distinctively uKhoiKhoi sound. Nongqawuse is a ballad with earnest lyrics that pose the age-old question: “What became of the Xhosa people’s land and wealth?” Through this track, uKhoiKhoi offers their own account of the legend that is Nongqawuse.

Watch the Nongqawuse video here.

9 November 2023
Theatrum Botanicum // the botanical world as a stage for politics

In a moment where debates about land are at their peak in South Africa, Uriel Orlow‘s Theatrum Botanicum on show at Pool Space in Johannesburg fertilizes ideas around the botanical world as a stage for politics through film, photography, installation and sound. This ongoing project follows the trajectory of most of his work; research-based contemplations with collaborative methodologies, focusing on specific locations and histories, combining various visual evocations with layered narratives.

The beginning of the project was inspired by an accidental visit to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. Struck by the fact that most of the plant labels were in English and Latin, Orlow began to question what this means in South Africa where there are 11 official languages. This connects to a colonial history of exploration and conquest. Through this process botanists from Europe “discovered” new plants, and proceeded to name and classify them according to European systems of organisation. Through forcefully exporting this methodology for categorization and understanding, it displaced indigenous knowledge systems and views on the world. Orlow seeks to question this forced application of taxonomic methods, and in so doing unearths issues around assumed universality, colonialism and its legacies, plant migration, and how examining the botanical offers insight into labour, race relations, pleasures and sustenance within South Africa’s history.

The significance of the work is twofold. Firstly, framing plants as databases, organic stores of information. Juicy, fleshy memory banks that can testify to South Africa’s political past and present, and offer alternative entry points from which we can assess and think about history and politics. Secondly, Orlow’s work ascribes plants a form of agency, presenting them as active participants in the link between nature and humans.

Photography by Austin Malema

The project offers encounters and observations that are gateways to meditations on the above. Grey, Green, Gold forms part of Theatrum Botanicum, and is up in Gallery 1989 at Market Photo Workshop. The Fairest Heritage, a single channel video piece within the exhibition, perfectly exemplifies the larger aims of the project. Here Orlow, through his extensive research in the library of the botanical garden, found films that were commissioned in 1963 to commemorate the anniversary of founding Kirstenbosch by documenting its history.

The film’s main characters – scientists and visitors – are all white, with the only people of colour featured being those who worked on the gardens. Orlow collaborated with artist and performer Lindiwe Matshikiza, who inserts herself in front of these film, viscerally speaking back to their contents. A performative contestation to this archive, placing herself into the frame as a protagonist existing outside of the frameworks of passivity and labour for people of colour created within the archival footage. This work also highlights that plants are not neutral and passive, with flowers attached to ideas around nationhood, segregation and liberation.

To accompany the work, Orlow teamed up with editor Shela Sheikh on a book that catalogues the different works, but also connects with the research that is the seed from which project continues to grow. Writers were invited to contribute essays that do not necessarily respond to the works directly, but contemplate the thematics that come to the fore through their presence. Other artists with work relating to art, nature and history were also invited to share their work in the book.

Both exhibition spaces are pollinated with works that share the entanglements between plants and us across time and space. Go inhale the fragrance of latent histories until 21 October at Gallery 1989, and 3 November at Pool Space.

13 September 2018
Artist Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga on negotiating the relationship between the past and present

Eddy Kamuanga Illunga is a young artist from DRC whose work focuses on the nuanced layers of his country and hometown, Kinshasa. He began art studies at Académie des Beaux-Arts in Kinshasa, and found that it assisted him with the technical aspects as a painter, but muffled his work conceptually. As a result he decided to leave the institution, and found himself drawn to other artists with whom he found an affinity. Collectively they formed a studio called M’Pongo which offered a space for them to share ideas and exhibit together, molding their own styles that were plugged into the electricity of their city, and inserting this into the Fine Art space.

Individually, Kamuanga Ilunga zones in on the socioeconomic, political and cultural alterations that have taken place in DRC since colonialism. He has created work that unpacks the nuances around the impact of modernity on cultural groupings, and the way in which people in Kinshasa are negotiating change and tradition.

DRC is one of the largest exporters of coltran, a raw material necessary for the production of computers and cellphones. Kamuanga Ilunga makes reference to this visually through a stylized mimicry of a circuit board painted across the skin and backgrounds of his images. This also has the effect of placing his work, his city and the people he depicts in his paintings within the context of globalization, signifying its overpowering consequences. In his latest series, Fragile Responsibility, we see this motif used as the skin for the figures, while cloth, hats, suspenders, lace table covers, and porcelain objects tap into the history of the Kongo Kingdom, and the exchanges that took place with colonial traders. In this work Kamuanga Ilunga pays tribute to the slaves and ancestors who resisted the human trafficking. The figures appear somber and mournful, with their heads hanging low and cloth barely hanging on to their bodies, symbolically pointing to the loss of life and de-centering of African cultures through colonialism and the condition of coloniality.

To check out more of Kamuanga Ilunga’s works visit his Instagram.

12 June 2018
The use of fabric in art for preservation, reflection and identity

Throughout the history of art, artists have appreciated the versatility that fabric possesses. Viewed as clothing, skin and a source of identity, it can be manipulated and molded into an object (or subject) with conceptual depth. It allows for the creation of soft sculptures, or be used as aids in performance, but does not deny artists the ability to project a sense of hardness, scale or visual weight. Textiles can also be used as a presentation of and reflection on colonialism and global trade, as with the work of UK-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare with his investigations of political and social histories. Fabric also offers a way to think about personal histories, as with the case of Accra-based artist Serge Attukwei Clottey‘s work My Mother’s Wardrobe.

‘My Mother’s Wardrobe’ by Serge Attukwei Clottey

Clottey’s work generally examines the power of everyday objects. However, the above mentioned work is potent in the way that it gives an avenue for thinking about the use and signification that fabric offers artists and viewers. Through this work he explored the connection that fabric can create between mothers and their children. In this work he used performance as a way to interrogate gender roles along with notions of family, ancestry and spirituality. This was a personal work inspired by the death of his mother, and the performance unpacked the concept of materiality with the intention of honouring women as the collectors and custodians of cloth that serve as signifiers of history and memory. Clottey presents a vulnerability in the way that he brings across his own experiences, while inviting viewers to think about their own personal connections to his subject matter.

While is broader practice involves photography, installation, sculpture and performance, this work highlights the significance of fabric when thinking about personal and collective cultures, histories and intimacies.

Artwork by Turiya Magadlela

Johannesburg-based artists Turiya Magadlela uses fabric as her primary medium, cutting, stitching and stretching it over wooden frames. Her use of commonly found fabrics, such as pantyhose and uniforms brings the past life of the fabric into the exhibition space, where it’s very presence creates animated associations in the minds of viewers. Her use of familiar fabrics allows her work to oscillate between abstract art and a collection of memories interwoven with articulations of experiences of womanhood, motherhood and narratives from Black South African history.

Looking at the work of Clottey and Magadlela the significance of fabric as a container of history and memories becomes clear. Its physical and conceptual malleability highlights its ability to be a tool for preservation, reflection and identity.

12 April 2018
Kapwani Kiwanga // The Sun Never Sets

Ever thought about how throughout history, nature has earnestly witnessed the human experience? Be it grand or minuscule, the motions of humanity have an ever-present spectator that accounts for our hegemonic ways. In her first solo exhibition on the continent, Kapwani Kiwanga delicately investigates this meeting of the organic, history and politics.

Both disciplined in the social sciences and visual arts, Kiwanga’s works are interest driven and marry her training to create works that examine memories of historical moments and dissect different perspectives. Leading to her current exhibition, The Sun Never Sets, Kiwanga had been thinking about nature and how the organic witnesses our passage through the world.

During her residency in Dakar, Senegal, she began examining what was on “the periphery or the untold…what was happening on the outside, the edge of the frame” during the celebrating or documenting of the birth of independent African nations after colonialism. In her series, Flowers for Africa, Kiwanga looked at archival photos of these celebrations or negotiation tables and noted how the flowers present were documents or witnesses. Through collaboration with florists, Kiwanga recreated the flowers present at the independence of Libya, Namibia and the union of South Africa. The flowers access a moment of history that partially liberated fellow Africans. Through the duration of the exhibition, the flowers will gradually wilt and die, almost like the idea of an independent African state.

The centrepiece of Kiwanga’s exhibition is a video installation drawn from the 20th century expression, “the sun never sets on the British empire” and speaks to our colonial heritage in a way I’ve never imagined. As Kiwanga continued investigating how the organic can be documentation as well, she began thinking of our relationship to nature and landscape, and how it is influenced by the colonial project. In an effort to unpack this, Kiwanga asked people around the world, who live in places that were part of the British Empire or who are still under British subjugation to film the sun setting behind a landscape. “I don’t think we always think about how our relationship to nature or romantic image of landscape in nature was constructed so that we could then, under the colonial project, appropriate resources, kick people off of land, mine land to take resources, cut down trees, etcetera, were all an economic goal for all of us. It’s the capitalist’s colonial project,” explained Kapwani. By viewing the sun setting in Canada, Ireland, Myanmar, Tanzania, India, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Africa, Kiwanga interrogates the romanticisation of the use of land and the appropriation of its resources in a colonial project.

Kiwanga also looks at the agency of people under oppressive regimes through their use of unofficial footpaths in a series called Desire Paths. Using aerial photographs mostly in Cape Town during apartheid, Kiwanga observes how even during systems of discipline, surveillance and the militarisation of land, people still expressed their will by navigating themselves in a way that suited them. Kiwanga traced the alternative trails, which were initially documented on the terrain.

In another series called, Subduction Studies, Kiwanga observes the space between Earths continents, specifically Africa and Europe. The speculation of Pangaea Ultima suggests a supercontinent occurring again, which will see Europe slipping underneath Africa. This theory inspired Kiwanga to take photographs at the History museum in Paris of rock specimens from the Northern coast of Africa and Spain. She then folded the photographs together to demonstrate a new form. Again, how nature accounts for geological movements but also speaks louder to our relationship as separate continents. It is interesting to observe the reception of migrants by Europeans and imagine a world, which might eventually be geographically connected.

As Kiwanga talked me through each series that makes up her exhibition, the topic of colonialism reoccured. Colonialism as a project that was not strictly African but one that every continent is familiar with. The exhibition is driven by multiple observations Kiwanga has made about hegemonic moments and how the silent bystander, the organic, can account for our humanity. Kiwanga’s use of Anthropology causes her to produce works that voice perspectives that are causally overlooked. The attention she gives to the organic is fascinating and necessary.

The Sun Never Sets will be exhibited until 18 November 2017 at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg.

25 October 2017
Rethinking documentary photography – A conversation with Giya Makondo-Wills

Giya Makondo-Wills is a young British-South African documentary photographer based in the UK. I had a conversation with her about her latest project They Came From The Water While The World Watched, within which she explores both sides of her heritage through the history of colonization and the clashing of beliefs.

Tell our readers about your journey as a photographer and the approach you have to your work.

I just enjoy working with people. It’s about human interaction and meeting people. I am able to explore and visualize things that I am interested in that I otherwise would not be able to do. Things around history and race. It might be impossible for me to put these into words in the same way that I can describe in pictures. Photography started as hobby. I used to take photos with my brother’s camera. I started studying photography when turned 18.

What kind of themes do you like to work with? Perhaps you would like to talk about this through other projects you have worked on?

I started an ongoing project around Coloursim titled I take these differences and make them bigger. In this project I work from the alleged speech by William Lynch, a speech which was given to slave owners in America. After a slave uprising he was brought from the Caribbean to teach slave owners how to control the slaves. In his speech he said if they put men against women, light skin people against dark skin people, the slave owners would be able to control the slaves. In the project I photographed various tests that have been used throughout history to separate people of colour. These are used in relation to the social media. I was on Instagram and saw a lot of hashtags related to light-skinned vs dark-skinned. I realized that the roots of these was in something that was implemented by Lynch. I find it interesting that that way of talking has continued.

I also started another ongoing project by photographing her two grandmothers. One lives in a township in South Africa and the other in suburbia in England. Both women are incredibly similar. In the work I explore themes around identity and aspiration.

Tell our readers about the title for your project They Came From The Water While The World Watched. Discuss how this relates to the themes you look at (i.e. clashing of beliefs, colonizer vs colonized, etc.)

I don’t really remember how I came up with the title. I think I was in a lecture and someone said something about water and then I started piecing it together. But the title is referencing the first ships that came and landed in SA. ‘While the world watched’ is effectively saying that no one did anything about it because it was deemed normal. I am talking about Europeans here. The work directly carries on with the work on my grandmothers, which is looking at it from two sides. Being brought up in UK and being half British half South African, I think it does give me that dual perspective on themes of Britishness and South Africaness. In the work I am trying to find little pieces of both sides of my heritage in exploring this idea of a clashing of beliefs. The title talks more about beginning of European colonization in South Africa.

You deal with contested topics in this work. What made you feel you wanted to explore this in your work? Perhaps you would like to mention the research you conducted for this project as well as your creative process?

I came about it because my family in South Africa are pretty religious, Christian, but also have traditional ancestral beliefs. The combination of the two I have always found really interesting. The more I looked into themes around colonization it started springing up more and more – this kind of clash of beliefs and the attempt to rid a country of indigenous religion, which happened around the world. With regards to the research I conducted, I spent some time at the University of Johannesburg in their archives. But most of my research comes from talking to people. Especially with a subject like this, you have to have conversations with people. You are not always picking up a camera. Sometimes it’s just sitting and listening and observing, and sometimes you learn so much more this way. I get a more human perspective on it, because I don’t have a full understanding of it. I am just trying to understand people’s relationship with faith whilst looking at the historical implications of it.

Tell me about how you think photography helps you capture the themes you are trying to explore?

With this project in particular [They Came From The Water While The World Watched], it has given me the ability to visualize something that is hard enough to talk about. When you have a camera you can piece things together bit by bit, and you can make a story. Having a camera allows you to go into people’s lives and that is great because it becomes a two-way conversation. You make the pictures for your work and you can make pictures for other people. You can give them portraits or you can give them landscapes. And I really like that interaction. I am not just dipping in and out. I come back and I give people things and we continue our relationship. I think photography helps you build a relationship, and through the relationship themes are stronger. And they can also change completely. I can go into a project with one idea and come out of it with something completely different. It’s an amazing tool to be able to talk to people.

Elaborate more on your comment that, “This work looks from a new perspective regarding documentary photography and the western gaze.”. How do you think your work deals with this?

I think that the Western gaze and documentary photography are two things that have come hand-in-hand. I have been writing about it recently, non-African photographers photographing sub-Saharan Africa. It’s really easy to exoticize, to stereotype. It is easy to have pre-conceived ideas of what a country on the African continent is like. What you learn in school and what you know historically, depending on where you are from. More often than not it is quite an outdated view of countries on the continent, and the continent as a whole. Documentary photographers still pander to these stereotypes today. So I’m just trying to give a different perspective, you know, being from the West. I just want to make sure that my work isn’t feeding these old stereotypes. I want to show real people – how they are, and how I know them to be. I have been going to South Africa on and off since I was born so it is a country that I know. And I want people to see the South Africa I know.

They Came From The Water While The World Watched will be shown on the 2nd of May at Assemblage in Johannesburg.

To keep up with Giya and her work, check her out on Instagram.

19 April 2017