Goethe-Institut
31.08 - 29.01.2024
SENSES, a group exhibition presented as part of the Young Curators Incubator programme (an initiative conceived by the Goethe-Institut in collaboration with UCT’s Michaelis School of Fine Art) calls in the sixth sense. In her process-led curatorial approach, Kamogelo Walaza integrated social practice by developing close relationships with the artists and served as a guide when they were making the works in response to the exhibition title. In her practice, Walaza centres on materiality, consistently using familiar objects and materials to create works that connect the past and present. She aims to awaken a sense of embodiment that stems from touching, looking or smelling the works, zooming-in on the underlying relationship between the material and metaphysical. The body of work presented by the artists poses the question of whether the sixth sense functions as an envelope for the five that dominate in the everyday. There is an invitation to interrogate whether recollections of the past stretch beyond physical embodiment.
Nkhensani Mkhari, Forever Deferred: (Legae) 9th attempt, 2023.
At the walkabout, Kamogelo made an uncanny request: “Feel free to touch this work.” The delight from the audience signalled the desire to experience artworks beyond sight, to touch, listen and interact with some of the works. Take, for instance, Nkhensani Mkhari’s installation Forever Deferred: (Legae) 9th attempt, which is a contemplation on memory and black futurism. They present a digital collage with a voodoo doll at the centre, surrounded by full moons, crystals and elements within the universe. A screen is accompanied by headphones concocted with soundscapes of a cinematic nature. Listening feels like digging through cassette tapes layered with chants, meditative music, skits and soundbites from talks that decode spirituality. The installation is grounded by elements of the earth, coal and sea salt which create a pathway to the altar in the centre, where they use imphepho, cowrie shells and other connectors to the divine. There is a renegotiation of what should or shouldn’t be touched (alters and artworks), and the physical manifestation of this boundary crossing is observed through the coal that stains one’s fingers.
Bulumko Mbete, Grid, 2023.
While some of the works could be touched, others called for the sole reliance of sight. With her sculptural works, Bulumko Mbete uses checked wool blanket cut outs to map out the geographic locations where her matrilineal and patrilineal lineages established homes. In this aerial mapped out view, the geographic areas of focus are: Bochum, Limpopo; Cape Town, Western Cape; Tsomo, Eastern Cape and Gauteng. She refers to the placements as “constellations, forming a new aerial mapping of disparate locations creating new histories which map the becoming of a contemporary black history.” In African Spirituality, quests for self knowledge are rooted in the past. The elders say that you can’t know who you are and where you’re going if you don’t know where you come from. The blankets used to map out the constellations are multifunctional in most African homes; they are used to observe grief, welcome birth and provide warmth when the cold or trauma sets in. Her choice to disperse the blankets places the wide spectrum of home on display and functions as a reminder that singular beings are a culmination of the multiple. This work is accompanied by one of her newer works, Grid (2023), a patchwork quilt made from found fabric, beads and acrylic wool. The fabric that anchors this work is denim, a material that connects us to childhood memories, while still maintaining a dominance in the present. It’s strategically placed in a way that doesn’t distract from the overarching pastel colour palette. This is a contemplation of home and the multisensory experiences that lie dormant in the memory, using familiarity to access joy, childlike wonder, rites of passage and grief of times passed. We see the old and the new sit comfortably next to each other, in the same way that nostalgia and dreams should.
The connection between the past and present threads itself in Brian Montshiwa’s sculptural work Ho kgaba ka masiba, where sensory memory is accessed through the haptic and tactile. The polypropylene, shredded, arch-like soft sculpture sits alone at the centre of four black walls, two of which host geometric patterns drawn with white chalk. The sculpture draws from the Litolobonya, a traditional sounding skirt of the Basotho. The skirt is made from shredded sack material and bottle tops. As someone who grew up in a township, where we upcycled discarded kitchen materials like a 10kg sack to make skirts and pom poms, it took some time to decipher why I was overcome by a feeling of familiarity. Montshiwa’s artistic process involves making use of repetition, and touching the sculpture’s rhythmic pattern in a repetitive motion creates a soft sharp like sound that’s both soothing and meditative. The more I touched, the closer I got to the memory of having made this on a smaller scale as a child and the process of making it. My mind’s capability to hold onto and release sonic memory was astounding, as I found myself hearing the laughter that permeated my childhood.
Brian Montshiwa, Ho kgaba ka masiba, 2023.
Whether intended or not, SENSES asks viewers to connect with memories and past selves. Pebofatso Mokoena’s Sketchbook installation is a series of ten sketchbooks documenting his intimate space over the past thirteen years. Picking up a book is the entryway to his dreams, nightmares, boredom, depressive episodes, small scale works and doodles that make up the multiple landscapes his life holds as a contemporary artist. Some of the sketch books are interactive, with instructions on how to unfold and experience the works. In the more personal ones, we see visual depictions of the seasons he’s faced; he paints eerie imagery in faded blue to represent winter, while colourful, childlike paintings reveal the playfulness of his summers. The library also holds process-centred books populated with sketches, journal entries, ideas and miniature worlds that outline how he wants to exist in the world. He questions almost everything, dives into the abyss of madness when it engulfs him, and illuminates that the light and darkness that engulfs humans is universal. Some of the entries feel like mirrors to the tiny madnesses we all face and can’t always articulate.
In this exhibition, the confluence of the aural, haptic and visual recalls feelings, memories, images and soundscapes attached to the past. There isn’t a bridging of what is seen and unseen, but a sense of perception and memory that stretches beyond embodiment.
Pebofatso Mokoena, Sketchbook installation, 2023.
