Tag: memory

Sam Vernon’s very suggestive, emblematic images and abstract scenes confront personal and historical memories

A human body lies covered in what appears to be thick, solid pieces of cutout paper. The body is fully covered; barring from the knee down. The image has all the components that engender a sense of familiarity. However, something is off. One of the legs is twisted and both are lifted —suggesting that the body underneath is still breathing. This photograph (Laid, 2011) by artist Sam Vernon seems to say something significant and fateful about the body (particularly the black body) and its presence in the world.…it breathes intrigue into our imagination.

Vernon is a multi and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the connection between memory, personal narrative and identity. “Through site-specific, staged installations and urgent performances my goals are towards the production of Gothic visual art in which Black narratives are included in the expanse of the genre,” Vernon states in an interview with African Digital Art.

Vernon goes beyond the confines of a single medium by combining drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptural components— transmuting their form from two dimensional to three dimensional works which become elastic and nonconforming. Her means of expression are constantly evolving as she continuously moves from illustrations, digital, performance and back.

Vernon’s digital prints, drawings and collages are typically black and white, perhaps an indication of an enhanced awareness of the past. The work is not always easy to process, and yet it remains vivid and clear. Through Vernon’s works, we travel through time towards the vast depth of her experiences. She describes an understanding of the past as a necessary means towards a better understanding of the self in the creation of the future.

Despite having a visual language that is difficult to pin down —with elements of abstraction, patterns and human-like figures —Vernon’s voice remains strong. This voice is further amplified by the specificity in the symbolism used to confront her subjects. “The active ‘ghosting‘ of an image, copying and multiplying the original, subtlety exploits the notion of a pure identification of black and white and signifies the essentialism of symbolic meaning and all its associations.”

Through her practice Vernon deconstructs and redefines narratives that inform memories and collective history through the lens of race and gender. Through her most recent show Rage Wave with G44: Centre for Contemporary Photography in Toronto, Vernon presented an ambitious exhibition bringing together images, photocopies, drawings and prints to reflect on post-coloniality, racial, sexual and historic memory. She has also presented works at Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Fowler Museum at UCLA, Seattle Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in Brooklyn, among many others.

Vernon’s work, with all its layers of complexity, remain a critical part of moving the conversation on black narratives forward. Her works have a sense of timelessness, where the past and the present seem to merge….perhaps because notions and conceptions of race and gender underpinning the work also have a sense of timelessness. Even as time passes, the trauma of the violent past continues to haunt.

13 July 2018
Fatima Tayob Moosa – Metaphysical Encounters and Cathartic Moments

Ephemeral. A momentary meeting of colour-spectrum bleed. Fluidity of form. Trickling tenderly. The suspended timelessness of abstraction. Fatima Tayob Moosa explores the intersection of analysis and unhindered expression. Throughout her life, Fatima has always been lured by the paint and brush. However, she initially in her career she studied design. In 2015 she decided to pursue fine arts more formally and began studying at the University of Hertfordshire for her MAFA.

Her latest exhibition, Encounters, combines three different bodies of work. Through her practice she locates herself within the context of her environment, cultural background and also explores aspects of science – approaching the cell as her subject. “I wanted to look at the deeper aspects of it, the cells in our bodies which I believe hold emotions and memory.” Fatima explores how our biological make-up contains the code to who we are as people. Science and art are often perceived as disparate disciplines. However, she locates the intersection between them.

Fatima’s process-centric work navigates aspects of the physical and metaphysical world – and what that means to us as human beings. Fatima is also interested in the complex dynamic between humans and our environments – the way we affect and experience our surroundings as well as how they in turn mold us.

There are traces of her design-background peppered throughout her work – especially in her collage pieces. She describes the process as a “balance between mind and heart”. The images appear almost sculptural – as representations of objects are layered and counterbalanced between forms and structure. Her paintings on the other hand, appear to be far more organic. “It’s quite a spiritual process for me”. Fatima notes that the process is a space for her to connect with herself, the earth, the environment and a sense of higher being. “When I sit down to make a painting, I have to complete it”. Painting seems to provide a transcendental space of catharsis.

“I use a lot of water in my paintings, I love the fluidity of it. The element of water talks to me in a different way, I feel very connected to it.” Fatima also explores elements of chance through her work – by allowing the paint to move and the colours to blend freely. The colour palette in her work relates to building a personal visual language, ‘the colours have also come to mean something to me, as I paint they sort of personify themselves.” Her work as an artist is in many ways an expression of her lived experience, cultural background, environment and biology. “As we go through life we seem to pick up little pieces of our past, whether it’s bringing it back to resolve something or not”.

7 June 2018
Artist Modupeola Fadugba on chance, human agency and conquering fears

Modupeola Fadugba, born in Togo and now based in Nigeria, is an artist who made a 180 degree turn from her studies in engineering, economics and education. However, these have not left been left behind, with elements of economics and education sprinkled on the conceptual foundations of certain artworks. Fadugba focuses on identity, women’s empowerment and social justice within the sociopolitical milieu of Nigeria. Paint, drawing, burnt paper and installations are the mediums through which she creates her socially engaging work.

Her 2016-2017 series Synchronized Swimmers takes its point of departure from an intimate and innocent memory she had as a child growing up in Lome. This memory was her fear of the sea, its vastness was too daunting and confusing to comprehend. The pools she was exposed to when she moved to the US for a while were less frightening, but her fear of the water remained until faced with compulsory lap-swimming classes at boarding school in England, aged eleven. Her first long drawn lap left her with a sense of accomplishment, and made her realize the water could be conquered. 20 years later in Nigeria she found herself facing another water-related fear, diving. With encouragement from her brother she leapt into the water from the diving board. While these may seem silly, they acted as forms of encouragement for her art, having decided to delve into the art world full time. Fadugba’s ‘pool’ works fall into two series of painting, Tagged (2015-2016) and Synchronized Swimmers (ongoing). Tagged sees a group of young women moving under and over the water in pursuit of a red ball. Synchronized Swimmers on the other hand sees young women clustering their bodies and hands together to lift one another into the sky. The red ball still makes an appearance, but the figures do not pay attention to it. Fadugba’s combination of acrylic, oil and burnt paper give the paintings a mysterious and confusing atmosphere, and yet the figures make the work visually appealing.

‘Synchronized Swimmers’

A second collection of work titled Heads or Tails (2014-2017) sees Fadugba unpack the Latin motto that appears on the American dollar bill – Annuit cœptis.In her artists statement she explains that “the US Mint translates Annuit cœptis as ‘He [God] has favoured our undertakings,’ and the United States’ official motto—’In God We Trust’—emblazoned across the centre of the bill leaves no doubt as to God’s supreme presence. Yet the original Latin could be more accurately translated as ‘our undertakings have been favoured’; there is no direct mention of God, no certainty as to who is bestowing the favour.” With this interpretation Fadugba questions the certainty of who does the watching over, and who receives the favour. Heads or Tails looks at the themes of chance and value and how they determine the course of people’s lives. The series consists of paper painted coins of various sizes, with the faces of Black women appearing on them. These paintings appear on burnt paper. The coins and combined with the title point to the idea of the coin toss, a recurring theme in Fadugba’s work, signaling her preoccupation with luck and human agency.

Her artist statements and explanations of her work channel the creative writing spirits of Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie with their poetic and relatable nature.

To check out more of Fadugba’s work visit her website.

‘Heads or Tails’

‘Heads or Tails’

‘Synchronized Swimmers’

6 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
Dreaming of the Flood // Singer-songwriter Msaki and artist Francois Knoetze collaborate for ‘Dreams’ video

Sometimes it pays to wait. Singer-songwriter Msaki and artist Francois Knoetze have been planning to collaborate for years, ever since their time studying Fine Art at Rhodes University. In particular, they wanted to make a video for ‘Dreams’, a beautifully haunting song of memory and regret. After a previous attempt didn’t work due to bad timing, they have finally unveiled their ambitious project. The video takes place on the streets of Yeoville, with Msaki’s subtly heartbreaking vocals paired with surreal images of performers in animal masks, creatures made from garbage and the singer floating down the road on a cardboard boat.

The striking film promotes her 2016 debut album Zaneliza: How the Water Moves. The release is a culmination of a long artistic journey for Msaki. She says that after years of running away from her true calling as a musician she confronted a personal situation where “everything fell away and all I had left was the music”. She played “in a brass heavy jazz band, an alt rock collective and alone in places that smelt like weed, unripe wokeness and confusion. In 2013 I recorded my first EP in a room with a boat hanging from the ceiling and called it Nal’ithemba.”

‘Dreams’ was one of her earliest works, initially inspired by the rawness of first heartbreak. But as the years have passed, it has taken on new layers of meaning. For Msaki the video shifted the song’s lyrics from the explicitly personal to broader questions of ” who can dream? who can follow their dreams? Whose dreams can become real?”.

Working with no budget, but vast creativity, Francois set out to realise images themed around ancient myths of the Great Flood. Shot over three days, the video incorporated interested passers-by into the shoot and features additional performances by Dennis Webster, Mthwakazi, Akhona Zenande Namba and Nomthawelanga Ndoyko. The result is a beautiful and evocative meeting of sound and image.

28 March 2018
Nkhensani Mkhari creates dreamy photographic masterpieces on film

“A visual dissertation, a meditation on time, place, memory and personal history; amalgamating the passage through life and dreams, bridging philosophy, politics and prose. A reflection of my being in abstract form.” – Nkhensani Mkhari on his work.

A dreamy reality caked with attention-halting architectural shots, documentary images and glamorous fashion depictions come together to create the visual language of a budding artist. Nkhensani Mkhari is a young multi-disciplinary practitioner who grew up in Mabopane, township in the North of Pretoria. “I consider myself a hybrid artist,” he tells me. Completing his studies in Film and Television production at the Open Window Institute in 2016, he traverses between directing films, script writing, photography, art direction and music.

Editorial with Ilaphulam for Inga Madibyi (2018)

His childhood was spent around a hum of creativity with his father practicing as a landscape artist and his mother as a Setswana teacher. Nkhensani shares with me that his mother’s vocation acted as an introduction to language and narrative. “I’ve had an affinity for storytelling and aesthetic for as long as I can remember. Cognizance of how concepts and ideas can affect society drove me towards wanting to participate in the creative field.”

‘Portraits for consolation’ (4) with Buyani Duma

Non-linear, acoustic, literary and artistic attentiveness attracted him to his chosen mediums of expression. “Growing up in the internet age assisted in idealizing and realizing my artistic vision. I always felt like we live in a multidimensional universe, which is also part of a multidimensional infinite consciousness we call God or the universe or nkulu nkulu or creation. We are multidimensional actualities. Therefore, I feel like my work should be multidimensional if it is to have a remarkable influence on human freedom. I make art in the hope that it will call me and the audience to a deeper awareness of living itself.” An interest in Afro Futurism was explored with his final film during his studies. The premise of the motion picture was that of software that alters human beings’ consciousness and is used by the government to indoctrinate citizens. Since graduation, he has been occupying himself with the writing of an African feature-length film. To add to his merits, the passionate creative self-published a photobook ‘grain’ Volume 1 and a conceptual EP, ‘23′ that he describes to me as a personal interpretation of science fiction soundscapes – released under the pseudonym, Ndzilo Xiluva.

Project Mayhem (1) in collaboration with Bambatha Jones (2017)

“I’ve also been busy shooting an array of photo series, portraits, editorials and experimental films themed on a range of subjects from mythology to Artificial Intelligence, I’m fascinated by the prospect of these ideas and how they influence society especially African communities.” The photographic side of Nkhensani can only be described as one of calculated risk. Utilizing manual, vintage Japanese film cameras and countless rolls of film as his visual narrative tools. “I come up with titles and captions from conversations, reading books or watching movies, certain words and phrases stand out. These titles usually form the centrifuge for my conceptual photographs like fashion editorials and commercial work, I’ll research the etymology of the word or the origin of the phrase or word and create a mood board from that. With my fine art photography, it’s a more organic cathartic process based on intuition, the work is unscripted.”

His widespread influences include Pantsula culture, African Neo-expressionism, conceptual fashion, Jean Michel Basquiat, Zanele Muholi, FAKA, Frank Ocean and Claude Monet, to name a few. Delving deeper Nkhensani shares with me the concept of his ongoing personal portrait series, ‘Portraits for Consolation’. It is focused on the idea of the “Gaze” and it confronts commonly held notions of beauty.

Essence editorial (4); (2017)

A preference for analogue photography is explained in his statement, “I like how skin tones, light and tone are rendered on emulsions. I like the simplicity of the technology, the mechanics, chemistry and the historical aspect. I like seeing photographs develop in a seemingly magical way in the darkroom, it’s an enthralling process I feel like films limitations have been advantageous in developing my eye.” From my own experience, I tend to agree with Nkhensani; nothing develops your eye, technical skill and understanding of lighting combinations quite like the unknown world of an image caught on film, only to be reviewed after development.

Nkhensani, like many young content creators, chooses not to box himself into a specific field of photographic study. “I don’t think photography is fissiparous. I shoot from an artistic eye whether it’s fashion, documentary or fine arts.”

‘Portraits for consolation’ (7)

Nkhensani’s sound technical understanding of his gear, his unique focus on titles, the etymology of words as well as an uncanny ability to traverse a multitude of photographic disciplines shows not only skill but talent. The artist has another ability, that which is perhaps the most difficult to cultivate – Nkhensani is a psychologist. To be a photographer means to have an innate understanding of the human psyche. The intimacy recorded in his technically excellent images is a clear signifier of his ability to relate to the models in his unforgettable images. His experience orientated work is hoped to take on a more holistic nature in the coming year. Keep an eye out for him, he’s taken my cognitive consciousness by a storm. On another note, I want a print of one of his images on a t-shirt.

‘Portraits of consolation’ (5)

‘Untitled Theory’ (1); (2017)

‘Between distance and time’ (2017)

16 February 2018
Creative Sisterhood

If you’re looking for young womxn who personify the young, creative spirit lingering in Johannesburg, you don’t need to look much further than multidisciplinary artists Jemma Rose and Anne-Marie Kalumbu. They are able to transfer this personification into their work, demonstrating the sense of evolutionary motion that Joburg invokes in creative practitioners.

Anne-Marie is a well-traveled creative born in Zimbabwe and currently calls Johannesburg her home. Her practice has revolved around mysticism and more recently she has become invested in the memory as an integral theme. Her memories of personal experiences take the physical form of negative film that she burns in order to suggest the power time has to alter memories. She expresses that Johannesburg cannot be removed from her practice as all things are holistic.

Photography by Marcia Elizabeth

Jemma grew up in the suburbs of Johannesburg and as a result she was sheltered from the harsher realities of South Africa. She takes photographs in an attempt to understand the world around her and to understand herself. Her work often speaks about queer identity and mental health. She aims to make people question certain realities of living within the city and the world as a whole.

With the streets as a backdrop, we chatted to them about their city, their work and their plans for 2018.

Credits:

DOP & Stylist: Jamal Nxedlana

Edit & Motion Design: Lex Trickett

Sound: Tokyo Black (trashgodd)

Production & Styling Assistant: Marcia Elizabeth

5 February 2018
Lebohang Kganye // living memory

Looking for a way to live in her late mother’s memories, Johannesburg-based artist Lebohang Kganye produced the work Ke Lefa Laka which was awarded the Contemporary African Photography (CAP) Prize. Ke Lefa Laka translates to ‘my inheritance’, and this was the starting point for her work. By embodying her mother through images she is able to combine the past, the present and memories of her mother without any chronological order being made to dominate the work. Kganye put on her mother’s clothes and inserted herself into photographs of her mother before she passed away, allowing herself to occupy two moments at once. Here she quite literally inserts her body into images to live in her mother’s memories.

Primarily a photographer, her work also incorporates sculpture and performance and focuses on the thematics of memory, the archive, narrative, storytelling and how photography relates to these.

‘Setupung sa kwana hae II’

Recognizing that family photographs are a documentation of personal and collective narratives, and how they are displayed projects a particular way in which those narratives unfold, Kganye also addresses how their construction can be performative and used to channel ideals around “family-ness”.

While Ke Lefa Laka was produced in 2013, it highlights one of the key aspects her practice, which is to make connections between macro level political and social issues and personal/familial narratives. By visiting places that her family had lived and by finding family photographs she was able to explore the stories told to her by her grandmother, and uncover the story of her grandfather, mother, clan names, and her own story. These stories involved the multiple times her family had to move due to apartheid laws and social conditions, and how her family surname changed with these moves. This work culminated in a reflection on larger political and social conditions by highlighting how the personal is political. This premise is carried through her artistic practice.

‘Ka mose wa malomo kwana 44 I’

‘The last supper’

27 September 2017
Claiming public space: Artist Sethembile Msezane on history and commemorative practices

History is often spoken about as one story which unfolds on a linear timeline. Artist and Masters student Sethembile Msezane thinks about the impact of this understanding of history in relation to commemoration, monuments and memory. When she completed her undergraduate studies she knew she had to respond in some way to the discomforts she was feeling about living in Cape Town – feeling as if she did not belong or exist as Black woman. So she began public performances in 2013.

The invisibility of Black women’s histories in public spaces stirred up her fixation and fascination with memory and monuments, as well as her public performance work. Her work highlights the plurality of history; pointing out that there are and always have been multiple stories unfolding at the same time. She works against the constant privileging of one history and a cutting out of others, specifically the histories of Black women. “I realized that there was an interplay between what histories were remembered and what histories are forgotten based on which symbols we choose to put in the landscape,” Sethembile explained. Her work engages with key debates on how the commemorating of history that has taken place in South Africa has been constructed through erasure.

Amanzamtoti (2015)

She has been frustrated and disturbed by constantly being confronted by white, colonial hyper-masculinity, and the few stories of women portrayed as symbols of piousness in the image of white women. “And if there was any kind of symbolism or remembrance attributed to Black women it was plaques which were on the floor which [allows people to] step over our histories,” Sethembile expressed.

Untitled (Youth Day) 2014

In her first performance on Heritage Day 2013 and the beginning of her ‘Public Holiday’ series she started to explore symbols which could have been attached to public holidays as well as trying to engage with what was happening in the landscape sociopolitically at the time of her performances. “[These performances are] living sculptures because they look like they are statues but they can never be because my body is living even though I am statuesque,” Sethembile explained. Her most recognized work, ‘Chapungu- The Day Rhodes Fell’ (2015), forms part the larger body of work called ‘Kwasukasukela‘ that looks at the reimagined bodies of a 90s born South African woman. This performance saw the personification of the Zimbabwe bird monument, that is in the Rhodes’ Groote Schuur Estate, stand tall in front of a crowd as the Rhodes statue was removed from the UCT campus. Originally thinking that she had put Chapungu to bed, Sethembile admits that “she [Chapungu] keeps wanting more”. She has plans to bring her back to life later this year in the form of a film part of another body of work.

Chapungu- The Day Rhodes Fell (2015)

The beaded veil she wears in all her performances works as a device to take away the attention from her face and her identity. “I am embodying other women in trying to bring their histories to the forefront so we can start thinking more about Black women’s histories,” Sethembile explained. This encourages viewers to think about who the woman in the performance could be. This is imperative as it refutes the continuous disavowal of the presence and stories of Black women in public spaces by allowing people to identify the women in their lives within her performances. “I guess these performances were a way in which we could start to identify and claim spaces as women so we can also start seeing ourselves within these spaces,” Sethembile explained. The veil also references her culture which brings a part of herself back into her performances.

At the moment she is working on completing her Masters in Fine Art with her show coming up at the end of this month. The show will display her wide range of work including images of her performances, sculptures and an installation.

“My work is definitely an experience. It’s best to be in the space to experience it. Whether it is through performance when I am in public spaces or in looking at the textures and the materials that I use such as hair, such as wine, and salt. It is a sensory experience. It is quite an experiential body of work”.

To keep up with her work check out her website or follow her on Instagram.

Thobekile (2016)

18 January 2017