Anyone who has sat in the backseat of a Quantum sandwiched between a dimpled elbow guarding a bucket of KFC on one side, and the sharp hip bone of a day labourer on the other, knows that it is easy to feel small in a taxi. As your stop approaches, you second-guess the volume at which you should speak; you doubt your ability to project, and most of all: you wonder about the authenticity of your accent.

When I learned about the discomfort Cinthia Sifa Mulanga felt in a taxi with her mother, something about the small, confined interiors that feature in her work clicked for me: “There was a time when we didn’t want to speak in a taxi because we didn’t know the language and we didn’t want to get caught or harmed. The taxi driver would be asking questions and we just kept quiet out of fear that if we pronounced the words incorrectly he would know we are not South African. If we would speak in English he would ask why we are not speaking in Zulu. It was difficult.”

As hostile as South Africans have been to foreign nationals, it makes sense for the Lubumbashi-born artist to be preoccupied with safe spaces in her practice. Before In The Becoming, lush green views through windows were not a common feature. The controlled environment nullified the xenophobic threat from without, but amplified the insecurities echoing from within.

Cinthia Sifa Mulanga, Mold Me I, 2022. Courtesy of Goodman Gallery.

“What are the conversations that we have at home that we wouldn’t normally have in other spaces?” asks the artist. It is often when we are most relaxed that the inner monologue is the loudest. Some people escape it by streaming, scrolling social media, and going out, but the four walls of home patiently await the most searching questions about ourselves. It would be pleasant if the internal interlocutor remained singular, but doubt has a way of multiplying until a monologue morphs into auditory hallucination.

Mulanga represents the many voices of the self by juxtaposing several women in the same frame. Their discretion correlates to separate states of mind, emotions, and personas. “My paintings are multi-perspectival portraits,” she declares, that work to highlight and interrogate the complexities of identity as it relates to at least one Black woman.

Cinthia Sifa Mulanga, Wrote Me a Letter, 2022. Courtesy of Goodman Gallery.

It helps to think of the setting in which these multiple perspectives are placed as the conversation. Refer to the earlier quote regarding things that can be said at home and nowhere else. Additional questions, considerations, and unsolicited inputs are introduced through the collage artworks that hang on the walls. Western values – as they complicate representations of gender and beauty – impinge on Mulanga’s subjects, perpetually testing their resolve and self-esteem.

This is why the artist’s recent endorsement by Gucci is both a gift and a curse. Yes, Mulanga’s rooms are ornamented with the symbols of an aspirational lifestyle, and we cannot begrudge ourselves for desiring the finer things. We are late to the party of ease and luxury to which white people are the season-ticket holders. So we cannot forget the many times we were turned away at the door by gatekeepers who told us to spruce up. Powerful fashion houses know that. “The culture does not move without us,” as Jay-Z enlightened them, which is why Gucci apologised for that blackface polo neck jumper and balaclava combo that embarrassed them in 2019. Floyd Mayweather did not mind; he kept shopping there. The rapper Mane did not drop it from his name, and no one stopped saying things were all Gucci, but the incident was a reminder that they use us for credibility – so, when they endorse us, get your pound of flesh and a quarter.

Cinthia Sifa Mulanga, Moment, 2021. Gucci commissioned the artwork to feature a tote bag popularised by Princess Diana.

Of course, there is an acute awareness in Mulanga’s work that the things that make us laugh eventually make us cry. The all-out social media debauch depicted in Accessive evokes a Roman victory banquet, at which soldiers gorge themselves on food, drink and the spoils of war, purge, then gorge themselves again. A supper of Last Suppers crams the dinner table with excessive delights that connote everything from conspicuous consumerism, to acquisitive materialism, to instant gratification. Impulse control is a thing of the past here, and trashed with it are the stabilising effects of moderation. Unmoored from any kind of equilibrium, excess reigns; perspective is lost and judgement operates only in extremes. Who or what is “cancelled” in this climate? I can only hope that the sign is an artistic prescription for the symptoms present here.

Cinthia Sifa Mulanga, Accessive, 2022. Courtesy of Goodman Gallery.

Exteriority, the outdoors, and a fresh outlook could be the antidote to the insidious navel-gazing witnessed above. Almost Clearly hints at this fresh perspective in the title, suggesting a newness that promises insight. The painting depicts two figures who occupy a frame split in two to accommodate a parlour, in which they stand to the right, and a living area to the left of the dividing wall. The foregrounded figure clutches a mask and stares out of the window as though an errand awaits her. The figure in the background admires her from the staircase, impressed and wishing her well. There is a resolve in the posture of the first figure: a calm determination that is the product of self-knowledge. The figure knows who she is because of the living room, which is serene, well-lit, and adorned with artwork symbolic of maternal love. The painting on the floor reminds us of Mulanga’s mother’s profession as a beautician and hair stylist. Immediately behind it, mounted on the wall is a painting of a Venus/Madonna-figure that conjures memories of the 90s township portrait A Mother Is Very Special. 

The groundedness offered by the maternal room provides the rootedness that is needed to engage confidently with the wider world waiting outside the windows. In any journey of becoming, encounters of the external kind are necessary to the formation of character and resilience. Life does not happen inside four walls; you have to go outside where there is danger and opportunity, risk and reward, supporters and detractors, and ultimately life and death. The progression from interiority to a nascent engagement with exteriority in Mulanga’s In The Becoming is evidence of an artistic vision that is evolving, while grappling still with the issues central to her identity as a Black woman, in a world that both informs and contests that identity.

Cinthia Sifa Mulanga, Almost clearly, 2022. Courtesy of Goodman Gallery.