Bubblegum Club

Tag: coloniality

  • Artist Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga on negotiating the relationship between the past and present

    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.

  • Future 76 // In dealing with the colonial wound

    Future 76 // In dealing with the colonial wound

    Coloniality describes the hidden process of erasure, devaluation, and disavowing of certain human beings, ways of thinking, ways of living, and of doing in the world – that is, coloniality as a process of inventing identifications – then for identification to be decolonial it needs to be articulated as “des-identification” and “re-identification, which means it is a process of delinking

    This statement by Walter Mignolo during a 2014 interview with Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández describes the pervasive nature of coloniality. Certain parallels can be drawn between the tragic events of June 16th, 1976 and the recent Fallist Movement. These historical moments have enacted  ruptures of resistance. Recognizing moments of erasure is crucial to redefining historical narratives and addressing systemic disparities of power. However, ‘the voice’ of youth is not merely a homogenized entity. Issues of representation require a nuanced and considered approach – allowing passage to spaces that have been previously inaccessible. Within the context of contemporary art in South Africa, opportunities for self-representation and exploration are often scarce.

    It is in response to this, that Bubblegum Club has created an annual micro-residency to cultivate the talent of young artists. A group of four womxn have been selected for this years programme – to participate in a series of workshops, close conversation and ultimately exhibit a new body of work at the end of June. The programme has been conceptually framed around decolonial options – to tentatively consider and critique this notion beyond the buzzword.

    Jemma Rose, a self-identified visual activist and Gemini, uses her camera to capture daily realities. She also uses it as a mutual point of contact –  a device to generate encounters with people. Photographic work is in part a family tradition, it has always had an element of familiarity to it, as both her father and grandfather have engaged with the medium.

    Through her work she often works with themes of queerness and queer identity as well as drawing attention to mental health issues. Jemma notes that there are some performative qualities to her photographic work and usually focuses on using her images to convey a message relevant to her experiences. She is interested in locating herself and her work within a larger context based on her personal subjectivities.

    “I initially thought of ‘decolonisation’ in relation to breaking things down. I’m starting to realize that it’s much more than that. There are so many things behind it that you have to unravel…masculinity, heteronormativity and sexism are also all part of it. You need to slowly start unraveling it so that you can see the bigger picture.”

    This sentiment echoed by Mignolo “Patriarchy and racism are two pillars of Eurocentric knowing, sensing, and believing. These pillars sustain a structure of knowledge.” (2014). Thus through untangling the history of colonization, racisim and the patriarchy must also be addressed.

    Boipelo Khunou is currently in her final year of Fine Arts at Wits. “It’s been an interesting journey trying to find out what this so-called-fine-art-world is – what it means to be making art and making work.” This process can often be dissolusioning, especially once you realise how the elements of capital and nepotism are entertwined in the system.

    As a multi-diciplinary artist, Boipelo focuses her practice on photography, print and digital media. Thematically she works through ideas of personal power. “I use to reflect about the things that I experience. Experience is one of the most important parts of my work.” Through her work she investigates the kinds of spaces it is possible to find and claim power. She describes how oftentimes it’s within the walls of the institution that power is forcibly relinquished and autonomy is lost.

    “I didn’t know anything about decolonization until Fees Must Fall.” During the movement, the concept gained an immense amount of traction. Pedigogical systems and western epistemology within the university and beyond were challenged. “After the protests, so many people I know went through this weird depression because they realized that institutions have so much power, but what does that mean for people who want to dedicate their lives to decolonial practices?.”

    “The interesting thing is to actually see how you can put decolonization into practice. You can do all the readings, go to the talks, go to all these places that advocate for it, but what does it mean to practice it every day? I think that it is a very complex thing, it’s something that challenges me. You realise that there are so many aspects of your being and how you operate in life that you need to figure out how to prevent institutions and conditioned ideas to creep back into your life – it’s a constant battle.”

    Natalie Paneng is a 21-year-old artist and student. Her background in set design gives her a unique application of her use of space. Her work is often located virtually as she explores what it means to engage with the internet as a black womxn. The mode in which she does this is often through the use of alter egos. Hello Nice is a character she created on youtube and utilizes the ‘vape wave’ aesthetic.

    Recently Natalie created a zine called Internet Babies, it chronicals the profiles of five girls: TrendyToffy @107_, Black Linux otherwise known as the Mother of Malware, Silverlining CPU, Fuchsia Raspberry Pi and Coco Techno Butter. It explores their relationship to digital space and how they’re the “fiber of the internet.”

    She decribes how, “trying to find myself is like the decolonization of myself. Learning how to push those boundries and be more radical as well as owning the need for decolonization and acknowledging that it’s going to have to start with me.”

    Tash Brown is a young painter who approaches the concept of White Suburbia as well as investigating her place and participation within that space. While working through the lens of decolonization she describes how “white suburbia becomes a distortion of reality”, one which is also often still racially segregated. Her distorted paintings are often a grotesque depiction of the suburbs.

    As a white artist, she is critical of her own voice. Noting that, “it’s a time and a space in South Africa where black artists should be prioritized. So I guess I’ve struggled to find myself relevance in the art world, but through the critique of my own cultural issues and the problematics is a way that I can approach it, without having my voice crowding out other voices.”

    Credits:

    Photography & Styling: Jamal Nxedlana

    Makeup: Orli Meiri

    Photography and styling assistant: Lebogang Ramfate
  • Group exhibition ‘shady tactics’ shows how throwing shade at institutions is a productive past time for artists

    Group exhibition ‘shady tactics’ shows how throwing shade at institutions is a productive past time for artists

    The group exhibition shady tactics showing at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town purposefully throws shade at institutions, and presents this as a productive past time for artists. For this show ‘throwing shade’ is a kind of playful, at times flirtatious, interaction with the use these institutions present for the practice of artists. This productive cheekiness highlights the power matrix within which these institutions operate and emphasizes their maintenance of the heavy, pungent presence of coloniality. In an email interview with the show’s curator, Thuli Gamedze, she explained that for her criticality is a “deeply creative impulse.” The show’s title opens up a space for work that “chooses to be explicitly political and critical” and for artists who “resist the stylistic desires of art institutions, who can be guilty of pushing for a certain ‘look and feel’ when artists begin to be ’political’.” The projects for the show share a number of alternatives – “new, incorrect uses for things, along with incomplete and drifting ideas, failures, jokes and strange approaches to logic.”

    When asked about her approach for curating shady tactics, Thulile explained that she wanted to work with artists of colour who are serious about the role of playfulness in their practices. The fact that the people included in the show are not represented by specific galleries brings a kind of open playfulness and unbounded approach for critical expression. “I was really anxious when I was trying to figure out who to ask – I scoured the last few years of catalogues from art schools around the country, gained a stalker-like edge on instagram, and made like a hundred lists, torturing myself trying to make rational sense of what was actually quite an intuitive process.” shady tactics includes work by Sitaara Stodel, Callan Grecia, Simnikiwe Buhlungu, Mitchell Messina, Katleho Mosehle and Bonolo Kavula.

    In getting the idea for the show off the ground, Thulile explained that conversation and sociality are important for how she wanted the process to unfold. Having never worked closely with a gallery as a curator before, and only havng educational spaces as reference points, Thulile created a rhythm of regular dialogue with the selected artists and, when possible, shared space with the artists to work through ideas for the show.

    Following her creative impulse, Thulile found connections between the works, ensuring that they speak to one another as well as the title for the show. The text for the show came out of watching the various stages of creation for each work. “The objects were not that important though. I think I was interested in giving space to people as whole creative entities – people whose sensibility, tone and politics I respect as generative, if visually unpredictable and always swinging. I think things weaved themselves together quite nicely visually, but I also think there was a big chance it could’ve ended up looking off as a whole because I hadn’t pinned people down specifically on my expectation of their stylistic approaches. But that’s interesting too.”

    ‘fuck you I tried my best’ by Callan Gracia

    Each artist’s work connects with the exhibition title by engaging in some form of institutional appropriation – “using ‘standardised’ language but messing around with it to change the message.” Callan Gracia’s fuck you I tried my best looks at public walls and the messaging conveyed on them through his depiction of a giant rainbow sprinkled with fear and anxiety-inducing images. In this way he unpicks the rainbow nation rhetoric that is used in post-apartheid South Africa. “Callan’s huge rainbow is complicated and disrupted by his numerous depictions of dystopian destructions of post-1994 middle-class idealism,” Thuli explains.

    In A Brief History of the Institute Mitchell Messina uses a collection of high quality image files which are curated and repeated over a number of scenes, accompanied by sound and text, to tell the stories around the fictional construction of a new art institution. The stories illuminate the money-driven nature of the art world within our neoliberal environment. “Mitch’s detailed storytelling…parallels familiar narratives of big money’s relationships with art in Africa.”

    ‘(NO) SEX IN CT’ by Katleho Mosehle

    Katleho Mosehle’s (NO) SEX IN CT makes a comment on white feminism within the media, embodied by the character of Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City. This work demonstrates the violence of white femininism. Mosehle’s absurdist recreation of Carrie uses humour and caricature as devices to highlight this. Bonolo Kavula’s Fragile: this way up looks at the ways in which the colonial gaze ‘others’ and reinforces cultural dominance. By using the discursive and visual language of the YouTube DIY tutorial, Bonolo teaches the printing process and simultaneously problematizes the divide between ‘art’ and ‘craft’. “Bonolo’s work, combining a satirical commentary of art versus craft has intense political relevance in SA’s super elitist art world,” Thuli adds.

    In her work Homesick, Sitaara Stodel constructs a section of a living room, with the overall work teasing out definitions of ‘homeness’. She uses still images collated from the internet and secondhand stores that demonstrate idealistic ideas of home to create a collage and video present in the installation. Her play on suspension and stillness creates an uneasy mood, recognizing that this home is not fully formed or able to contain a fixed comfort. “Sitaara’s work acts as quite an intimate reference point for the whole show, where her appropriation of images of other peoples’ homes to make her own narrative speaks to the desire for whatever ‘being at home’ means – an inherently political notion here, but also one she tackles in a deeply personal way.”

    ‘Homesick’ by Sitaara Stodel

    Simnikiwe Buhlungu’s performative installation A Loooooong Ass Message, ya dig? uses an old fax machine to deliver a message that spills over a stack of office boxes. This indirect presence of the artist speaks to questions around lack of access. The interruption of the gallery’s telephone line to deliver faxes of “the content erased and re-erased by art institutions” points to the importance of inserting politicised work that speaks against this erasure.

    The show will be up at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town until the 9th of June.

    ‘A Brief History of the Institute’ by Mitchell Messina
    ‘Fragile: this way up’ by Bonolo Kavula
  • Thulile Gamedze // a transdisciplinary approach to disrupting the coloniality within educational institutions

    Thulile Gamedze // a transdisciplinary approach to disrupting the coloniality within educational institutions

    Thulile Gamedze is an artist and writer based in Cape Town, working towards a Masters in Philosophy. Her research and creative endeavors look at ways to unpack and disrupt the coloniality embedded within institutionalized pedagogical practices, and develop relevant, experimental and Africa-centred teaching methodologies and content. Hers is a personal, artistic and textual intervention, and a research-based undertaking.

    As part of the all-womxn collective iQhiya, Gamedze’s practice draws on her own investigations and that of her collective. Her work offers strategies of intervention, departure points and moments of reflection entangled with contemplations on South Africa’s tensions and history. As someone who took art as a subject at school, and as a past Fine Arts student, Thulile has recognised gaps in the curricula, and actively attempts to add in and connect dots for a fuller picture of South African art history, and its relationship to other aspects of society.

    Installation view at AVA Gallery Cape Town, 2016

    Thulile is continuously active in animating and stimulating spaces that exist outside of traditional art spaces. Her participation in the two week online residency, Floating Reverie in 2017 is evidence of this. Taking on the visual and discursive markers present in online teaching videos, Thulile asked participants to unpack ideas related to transdisciplinary learning, knowledge production and the dissemination of such knowledge.

    Thulile is interested in the “radical potential of education as a central project of liberation, with her practice borrowing from strategies of collaboration in popular pedagogy, and subaltern African histories.” In this sense, she thinks about decolonisation as an art practice.

    Thulile’s online residency with Floating Reverie, titled WOW_3000ZF