Bubblegum Club

Tag: Moshekwa Langa

  • Dusty roads and ocean waves, Moshekwa Langa’s ‘Fugitive’

    As a fine arts student trying to get some insight into what contemporary South African art might be (let’s not open that can of worms though) I remember coming across an image online of Moshekwa Langa’s Untitled (Skins) 1995, installed at the Iziko South African National Gallery. Dirtied and torn cement packets hung in an exhibition space from a washing line. It was a moment of sublime understanding, encountering a work so rich with multiple references, yet rooted in a simplicity of form and material that was breathtaking. And so I first encountered Langa’s work (albeit online and not in the flesh), and since then I have followed his artistic output with a fair amount of excitement. He is an artist that works across a wide array of mediums, refusing to be pigeonholed into one specific mode of working, which is actually rather unusual for a contemporary artist. His exhibitions are famed for combining painterly works, collage, installation, drawings, and film, presenting the viewer with a multi-sensorial experience. Whilst there is a definite sense of creative freedom in his practice, he owns and continues to master his approach. And you can’t help but get the feeling from looking at his work that Moshekwa Langa enjoys being an artist.

    Fugitive, the artist’s first show in Johannesburg since he last exhibited in the city in 2009, is evidence of an artist who is thinking and working through a studio practice. Where this relationship between process and product is most noticeable for me is in the works incorporating collage. A technique that Langa has employed since his early years as an artist, it allows him to juxtapose and think through images, drawing onto them, manipulating them. It leaves you with the sense that as the viewer you’re witness to the inner workings of the artist’s mind; drifting between the black and white grainy images referencing the landscape of his home town of Bakenberg, whilst caught up in the swirling colour of his imagination. Masking tape, a staple of any artist’s studio, is a material generally used and discarded once the “job is done,” but for Langa it’s a material that becomes part of the very fabric of an artwork, utilizing it practically as it holds used sandpaper and photographs, and formally for it’s opacity and ability to layer, building up texture.

    Overseas I, 2017

    The evidence of a man displaced, separated by land and ocean from a place he once called home, is subtly woven into what might be referred to as abstract paintings. Just as Langa flits between process and product, so he seems to traverse the terrain between abstraction and representation. As a viewer, this terrain is somewhat pleasant to explore, as one feels free to stand in front of a work, lost in the physical experience of colour and one’s own thoughts, yet still able to root it in a present and geographic reality (often through the titles given each work by the artist.) As the artist does not start with a predetermined image of an artwork in mind, but rather makes through experimentation, the evidence of this creative play and struggle are embedded in the works, which translates to the viewer a vulnerability. We are not being presented with a particular agenda, but rather we are encouraged to observe the path of one still finding their way. The result of this organic studio process is rather refreshing, works that are situated in personal memory and experience, which then ripple outwards to reflect a larger social and political discussion. The personal becomes public with Langa’s work, and just as with his Drag Paintings, created by literally dragging large canvasses through dusty dirt roads, the debris of society gets tossed up by the motion of the artist through the studio.

    The artist will be giving a walkabout of his work at Stevenson, Johannesburg, on Saturday 9 September at 11 am.

    Bokwidi. 2017

     

  • Subverting Historical Whiteness – The Evidence of Things Not Seen

    The free-standing building is isolated – a visual juxtaposition to the once-high-end and now dilapidated apartments around it. Surrounded by a colourful and bustling city center – it is a relic of a bygone era in Johannesburg.

    A façade of stone and traditional columns preceded by grand stairs elevate up from the local hustle and lead one into an architectural time-capsule. The sandstone cladding was originally sourced from Elands River. The presence of museums in the South African context relates directly to the Colonial project. The physical orientation of the original south facing building designed by a British Architect is implicit of a lack of understanding regarding the African environment – overlaying European norms and values at every turn.

    maswanganyi_johannes_1Maswanganyi Johannes

    However, on entering the historical building – it is difficult to restrain a sense of awe. Immersed in a space flooded with niggling nostalgia. From the Southern entrance one is absorbed into a white rectangular space with arching high ceilings, accompanied by floral embellishments. Several hardwood expansive doors with golden filigree open onto an internal courtyard. Above, gold flakes cascade off chandeliers. ‘The Phillips Gallery’ appears over a pair of curved hallways monumentalizing the institution’s former patrons in the glittering typeface of white capital.

    Only a little more than twenty years after gold was first struck on the Witwatersrand, the Johannesburg Art Gallery was established. Just over one hundred years on, the building and its immense collection still stands. However, in the ‘post’-apartheid, ‘post’-colonial context a radical shift has occurred in the spatial and visual representation within the museum walls. Its latest exhibition, The Evidence of Things Not Seen, opens its doors to the public on the 19th of November. It shares its title and conceptual articulation with a text by James Baldwin – in exploring the lived experience of people of colour. Pain that historically, has been systematically silenced by an overriding and enveloping whiteness.

    belinda_zangewa_1Belinda Zangewa

    The exhibition, curated by Musha Neluheni in collaboration with Tara Weber seeks to engage in social discourse surrounding notions of identity – manifested in the realms of queerness, feminism(s) and the Black experience. The show initially emerged as a “side-project” – mirroring as a platform for the Black Portraitures Conference – but grew into something far larger. One of the aims of the project was to actively engage the work of contemporary artists and allow their work to activate other historical works in the collection. These historical giants include the likes of Dumile Feni, Gerard Sekoto, David Koloane and Cyprian Shilakoe.

    Other artists featured in the show include: Mary Sibande, Belinda Zangewa, Nandipha Mntambo, Tracey Rose, Berni Searle, Zanele Muholi, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Reshma Chhiba, Johannes Phokela, Santu Mofokeng, Johannes Phokela, Mustafa Maluka, Portia Zvavahera, Moshekwa Langa, Nicholas Hlobo, Nandipha Mntambo, Donna Kukama, Gabrielle Goliath, Senzi Marasela, Turiya Magadlela, Kemang Wa Lehulere, Mohau Modisakeng, Sam Nhlengethwa, Ranjith Kally, Ernest Cole, Valerie Desmore, Ezrom Kgobokanyo Legae, Winston Churchill Saoli, Sydney Kumalo, Julian Motau, Helen Sebidi, Mohapi Leonard Tshela Matsoso, John Muafangejo, Azaria Mbatha, Daniel Sefudi Rakgoathe, Charles Nkosi, Johannes Maswanganyi and the FUBA Archive.

    kally_ranjith_3Kally_Ranjith

    The Evidence of Things Not Seen articulates a critical reformulation of the institutional space, one underpinned by an engagement with a Pan Africanist ideology. A position rarely embraced by public art institutions in South Africa. Tara Weber describes the exhibition as a kind of “homage to James Baldwin” noting that his treatment of identity politics is, “sensitive, but brutally honest”. The curatorial strategy has been made visually manifest in a similar vein – located in a space that seeks to subvert its own historical context.

    “There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.” – James Baldwin

    johannes_phokela_2     Johannes Phokela