Nicholas Hlobo at Michael Stevenson Contemporary
by Bettina Malcomess
It seems appropriate that Nicholas Hlobo's first solo show was preceded by his winning this year's Tollman prize for an exceptionally promising young artist. Hlobo has already produced an impressive body of work: selected for 10 years 100 artists in 2004, he has exhibited on several group shows locally and internationally, most recently, 'Erase from who I am' in Las Palmas, and the South African National Gallery's 'Second to None'.
Hlobo's work creates conversations around questions of masculinity, gender and culture in contemporary South Africa. As such, 'Izele' (which means someone or something has given birth, but can also mean something (like a jug) is filled), a sexual innuendo, continues an already rich conversation, adding to it a subtle and playful statement: 'coming out' in an artistic, sexual and masculine sense is both painful and pleasurable.
In 'Izele' Hlobo continues to negotiate the politics of identity in contemporary South Africa in and on his own terms: rubber, pink, blue and red ribbon, Sunlight soap, Fabriano and silicon, wood and metal, isiXhosa and English. It is unusual to find an artist who is as articulate as Hlobo about his own work. In his accompanying text, and during his walkabout Hlobo translates, not only from isiXhosa into English, but also from his materials, where every detail attains significance, often cultural. It is the ambiguity and playfulness of Hlobo's translations, both of materials and language, that I enjoy the most. With Hlobo, meanings and associations only multiply.
In Ndiyafuna, a male figure, made from rubber inner tubing, either enters or emerges from a sort of amorphous rubber bag, stitched together with pink and red ribbon, both carrying associations of homosexuality, HIV, or traditional female needlework. The allure of the work is that the title directly translated means, 'I am looking' or 'I desire', putting the viewer in the ambiguous position of looking for something lost (in the bag) or the position of desiring, behind this figure whose low slung jeans reveal what's best described as a hot ass.
Hlobo, in many ways a process artist, subtly works his materials, staying true to their substance, whether rubber tubing or Sunlight soap, and this carries through the ambiguity of translation. He keeps the patches where there has been a puncture, and even the label, 'Two way tube repair'. At the entrance to the gallery we are greeted by Bhaxa and Iqinile, two Edwardian ball and claw chairs with seats sculpted from Sunlight soap, a model's naked buttocks imprinted on them. Hlobo mixes the evocative with this symbol of a Colonial past. Hlobo's materials have a particular history and significance and, in maintaining the ambiguities of what they are (or were) and what they become in his sculptures, he explores both the limits and possibilities of negotiating cultural and sexual identities within contemporary South Africa.
Umthubi, carefully constructed out of wooden stakes held together by wire, fills most of the third room of the exhibition, both with its more or less circular enclosure and the quiet shadows it casts on the floor. This kraal, a sacred male space where young men consult with their elders, is threaded through with a weave of pink ribbon that brings the feminine into a masculine space, referencing as much a woven grass mat, as a trampoline. Again Hlobo plays wittily with culture and language. The kraal is round, like a Zulu not a Xhosa kraal and the stakes are made of both indigenous and exotic woods.
In an iconic Robert Mapplethorpe photograph Louise Bourgeois wears, so to speak, her phallic sculpture, Fillette. Strangely two of Hlobo's phallic works, Intente (which makes reference to a saying, 'umis' iintente' or 'he's got his tents up' , isiXhosa slang for erection) and the more difficult Isisindo Samadlozi remind me of Fillette, but are mirror images of each other. The latter is a penis with a kind of botched circumcision, with two oversized balls, hanging from a meat hook attached to a scale. Intente is a celebratory maypole, a black rubber dress revealing at the same time as shyly concealing, anchored down by stones as if it could take off. Similarly to Bourgeois, Hlobo engages with the most difficult translation of all, that of 'desire' and 'difference', into form. Within the South African context this becomes all the more complex. An artist like Hlobo takes the risk of translation. Subtle and articulate, 'Izele' successfully makes Hlobo's statement: 'coming out' involves both pain and pleasure.
It is an interesting dilemma that unless one reads the text or attends the walkabout, a lot of the cultural references and nuances of Hlobo's work would be lost. However, in different conversations with people about the show, reservations were expressed about making the references too specific or too literal an illustration of a particular aspect of identity. There is a certain amount of pressure on young artists to theorise their work. Hlobo organised a discussion called 'Arttalk' where he stated that: 'it is important for artists to begin to engage in the theoretical conversation about their work'. So this rich text of cultural references should be seen as part of Hlobo's ongoing conversation between material and identity.
Bettina Malcomess is a lecturer in art theory and history at the Stellenbosch Academy of Graphic Design and the University of Cape Town
Opens: August 19
Closes: September 16
Michael Stevenson Contemporary Gallery
Hill House, De Smidt Street, Green Point
Tel: (021) 421 2575
Fax: (021) 421 2578
www.michaelstevenson.com
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 1pm
