Standard Bank Gallery
04.08 - 15.09.2023
Blessing Ngobeni’s solo exhibition Ntsumi Ya Vutomi was opened at Standard Bank Art Gallery on 4 August. Curated by Thembinkosi Goniwe and Nkuli Nhleko, it assembles a complex of paintings, sculptures, installations, video animations and archives. The title, Ntsumi Ya Vutomi, drawing from Tsonga folk story, can be loosely translated into The Messenger of Experience.
Ngobeni is known for his painting featuring distinctive characters that are hybridised, fragmented and distorted, stretching their jagged fingers and striding in disoriented gestures. From afar, one could appreciate the joyful colours, the exaggerated movements and the comical postures of the figures. Moving closer, compositional complexity and emotional dynamics appear. Reading attentively, one would notice the details, such as, in In Masterbators Come# break-chain-chains (2022), shackled half-naked labourers, the demonstration of the spiked gag mask that covered the mouths of black female slaves, a man encountering the brutal police force and a woman holding both a baby and a gun. Genocide Brutality (2023) depicts the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the skulls of the Namibian Genocide, imprisoned women, frightened birds and many “fuck time” watches. The artists’ use of the materials is audacious, but executed with care. Some images of traumatic events are intentionally covered with a thin layer of white or black paint, yet they are still identifiable. He is also not afraid of voicing himself with his handwritten inscriptions.
Installation view: Blessing Ngobeni, Ntsumi Ya Vutomi, 2023. Courtesy of Everard Read.
The bodies in Ngobeni’s work are composed of past and present events. Black experiences are embodied with the burden of history, the hybridised species and the entanglement of time. The recurring iron chain is a symbol of the haunting past and the perpetuation of enslavement in the present. So too is the title Recycled History (2018), a video animation that depicts the interminable procession of three shackled figures against the backdrop of a township, driven by two masters brandishing firearms and whips. This endless marching as the beings struggle has become the standard movement of Ngobeni’s characters, whether in his paintings, animations or sculptures.
In a broader context, Ngobeni’s work such as Genocide Brutality, contributes to the dialogue on the depth of human suffering and political turmoil in global history, along the lines of Francisco Goya’s The Third of May 1808 (1814), Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937) or Massacre in Korea (1951), Dia Al-Azzawl’s We Are Not Seen, but, Corpses (The Massacre of Sabra and Shatila) (1983), among others. While a degree of visual affinity could be observed among these monumental pieces from various eras, Ngobeni’s work broadens the artistic conversation on topics such as genocide to the underrepresented or concealed context of Africa. However, his work is not solely about pain.
Paradoxical phrases have been adopted by writers and the artist himself to discourse his work, such as “chaotic pleasure,” “beautiful nightmare,” or “familiarities and peculiarities of being black in an anti-black world.” Ngobeni’s accomplishment is to materialise the effect of this contradictory synthesis through his visual languages, a process which I would call “visual dialectics.” In the sense of classical philosophy, a dialectic is a form of reasoning that arrives at truth through dialogues of contrasting points of view, arguments and counterarguments, thesis and anti-thesis. On a visual level, the dialectics are embodied with brightness and darkness, entanglement and simplicity, fracture and connection, skeleton and flesh, archival and fictional, printed texts and doodling inscriptions. Through these dialectics, Ngobeni’s works present a visual form of debating and reasoning, in order to make sense of one’s complex and contradictory conditions of being in the plagued time.
Installation view: Blessing Ngobeni, Ntsumi Ya Vutomi, 2023. Courtesy of Everard Read.
The bright hues of aqua blue, yellow and red in In Masterbators Come# break-chain could be deceiving at a distance, as they appear to depict a carnival scene of cross-species creatures. The bold lines that structure the figures also evoke a sense of innocence and simplicity. Conversely, the detailed historical archives, as mentioned, intensify the weighty subject matter, which is accentuated by the darker tones. This visual contrast generates tension in the image. Not that pleasure and lightness are supplanted by solemnity and heaviness. Rather, both remain. For example, the greyed photo of chained slaves in lines is surrounded by arrayed colourful circles, and the scene of police brutality is juxtaposed with a painted image of an innocent smiling boy. Thus, although Ngobeni’s work often grapples with weighty issues, one could still detect the traces of life’s libido, political desire and glinting specks of hope.
The visual dialectics extend beyond the canvas to incorporate the audience’s dissonant responses to Ngobeni’s art. Take Mirrored Soft Life (2023), for instance, Ngobeni’s newest body of work mocks the bourgeois and luxury lifestyle driven by consumerism. Cotton, fur and fabric with leopard prints are blended into the image as part of its colour palette. In the room paved with thick black fur, the antique furniture reupholstered with canvas prints of Ngobeni’s paintings is set silently by the collage series hanging on the wall. At the eventful opening night, it became a spot of selfies for those who could mirror their outfits in this space. Ironically, but not surprisingly, audience participation completes this piece and reaffirms art as part of soft life, the very subject matter of Ngobeni’s visual commentary. That is, until the artist revealed his reference to the disturbing history of how slave masters used the hair of black female slaves to comfort their seats. One could no longer view the furniture pieces in the same way, as merely beautiful art objects. From there, one would also have to take time attending other pieces, enjoying their beauty while listening to the yelling past.
The exhibition space continually evokes this sense of audience’s complicity in the visual dialectics. A central installation depicts dozens of black figurines carrying the flags of African nations and marching toward the unanswered Blunt Question. While these dolls seem soft and skeleton-less, the metal sculptures on the first floor are merely disarticulated bones. Based on the figures of his paintings, these minimalist sculptures are results of the artist “skeletonising the work.” Their soft tissues, historical memories and vibrant colours are eliminated, leaving only structural lines and marching gestures, with a few splashes of redness. Entering the room piled with gravel, one would hear their own steps and watch as their shadows overlapped the skeletons’ silhouettes. A reminder of one’s invasion into a frozen moment of the non-existing spirits. We are all shadows on the wall of time.
Installation view: Blessing Ngobeni, Ntsumi Ya Vutomi, 2023. Courtesy of Everard Read.
Lifang Zhang is a PhD candidate in Art History at Rhodes University and a member of the Arts of Africa and Global Souths research programme.
