UBUZWE SIKHUMBUZO MAKUNDULA
04.02 – 15.03.2017
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Opening Reception & walkabout:
Saturday, 4 February 2017 from 11h00
ROOM is pleased to announce the first solo showing of an installation, video based and photographic works by the artist Sikhumbuzo Makandula, under the title UBUZWE (isiXhosa) denoting the concepts of Nation, Nationalism, Nationhood.
Aligned to the artist’s ongoing interest in space and architecture and how these coalesce in the formation of memory, identity and belonging, in UBUZWE, Makandula explores the tension between monumental sites as signifiers of a nation/nationhood and nationalism (built on the back of its colonial and Apartheid legacies) and the possibility of creating a “new ways of being and of identification” (Fouad Asfour, 2016).
On his practice and its relationship to the exhibition the artist says: “ …is concerned with an intersection of the arts, politics, and public space in a post-apartheid South Africa. This body of work seeks to deconstruct a Diktat, echoing an order or decree that must be followed and this is aided through use of symbolic gestures and apparel. The Diktat is constructed as ‘I is another’, a quote by Arthur Rimbaud, portraying multiple identities. The exhibition Ubuzwe is produced in a time when I am grappling with the question: what is the foundation of the South African nation? Through use of an instal¬lation, video and photography the ‘foundation myth’, is critiqued and represented through institutionalized forms of remembrance, including commemorative monuments and public statuary. This is in light of how South Afri¬can people came to be defined and produced through the politics and culture of nationalist struggle. In concep¬tualizing Ubuzwe, I approached facts not in their crude facticity, but through the contemplation of which facts acquire immediacy and how. This exhibition is a psycho¬logical, historical and ideological meditation on the facts and myths of nationhood.” (Sikhumbuzo Makandula, 2016)
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sikhumbuzo Makandula was born in De Aar, and currently lives and works between Johannesburg, Cape Town and Grahamstown, South Africa. A Fine Art graduate of Rhodes University, South Africa, Makandula’s practice engages with post-colonial african identities in space through photography, video and performance art. He explores the relations between self, spirituality and nationhood, engaging ritualism and indigenous cultural signifiers.
Makandula’s engagement with the self, spirituality and ritual speaks to the exhibitions’s exploration of spirituality in transplantation, illness and healing.
