Johannesburg Art Gallery
24.08 - 23.03.2025
A map (of sorts) greets the viewer as they walk into the Johannesburg Art Gallery, punctuated in places by small, framed photographs. Tracks resembling railway lines have been drawn over the collaged background in black, white, red and blue. Events, family names and dates indicate that the piece is part map, part timeline, part family tree. This centrepiece creates the thematic framework for Lindokuhle Sobekwa’s solo exhibition, ‘Umkhondo: Going Deeper’, following his award of the 2023 FNB Art Prize.
The exhibition is a combination of two bodies of work – I carry Her photo with Me and Ezilalini (The Country) – both of which wrestle with themes of history, belonging and loss. The word ‘umkhondo’ can be roughly translated to ‘tracing’. In Sobekwa’s treatment of the photographic medium, he demonstrates its potential for storytelling, but also for a kind of ethnographic tracing. In Ezilalini (The Country), Sobekwa documents the journey he took from Katlehong, the place of his birth, to his ancestral home where his grandmother still resides in Tsomo, Eastern Cape. In this way, a kind of mapping takes place in Sobekwa’s work and the viewer is brought along the same paths that the artist once travelled. Tracing, or mapping, is used as an artistic and curatorial device in the whole exhibition as a way to take the viewer along a predetermined route.
Installation View, Lindokuhle Sobekwa, Umkhondo: Going Deeper, Johannesburg Art Gallery
I found myself lingering in front of certain photographs – a yawning trench created by soil erosion; the late afternoon sun blinding weary passengers sitting on a bus; the artist’s mother pictured visiting the family’s ancestral gravesite while fog settles on the grassland. While many of Sobekwa’s works are not portraits in the traditional sense, all of his photographs are portrait-like in their meditativeness. He manages to depict the stark beauty and melancholy that exist alongside each other.
A part of the exhibition transitions into addressing a crucial event in Sobekwa’s personal story – the disappearance of his sister, Ziyanda. In Khumalo street where the accident happened, Sobekwa has photographed the site of the car accident which first led to his sister’s disappearance. The image has been drawn over in black and red marker, intensifying its meaning and demonstrating Sobekwa’s process of preserving memory. Red lines erratically mark the intersection, and an arrow points out the site of the accident. The medium of photography thus becomes expanded beyond its original form. In this case, Sobekwa seems to be retracing events, preserving and revisiting memories in order to make sense of his loss and grief.
Behind the suspended photograph of Khumalo Street lies a darkened room where the short film based on Sobekwa’s project, I carry Her photo with Me, is shown. The project began in 2017 when Sobekwa found a family portrait where Ziyanda’s face had been cut out. This photographic series, presented as an artist’s book, saw Sobekwa documenting his search for Ziyanda. A pink dress hangs in front of a dark green wall; a woman sits smoking a cigarette in a living room; a single bed stands empty. The notebook is filled with pasted-in photographs of the places Sobekwa visited while looking for Ziyanda, as well as portraits of her friends, some of whom were uncomfortable with having their picture taken, much like Ziyanda was. Through his search, Sobekwa finds small pieces of his sister.
Installation View, Lindokuhle Sobekwa, Umkhondo: Going Deeper, Johannesburg Art Gallery
The short film is a series of stills of the notebook’s pages, overlayed with a composition by South African jazz musician Nduduzo Makhathini. Sobekwa writes: ‘I have searched the streets, I have searched in my family, trying to find Ziyanda. I realized that the search was not only about her but it was about finding myself.’ The short film solemnly pays tribute to Ziyanda and demonstrates the complexities of loss. The original project, which initially took the form of a scrapbook, takes a different form in this exhibition, emphasising the ever-changing nature of Sobekwa’s work and his constant transformative engagement with his medium.
The two bodies of work that makeup ‘Umkhondo: Going Deeper’ are both quiet and meditative. Sobekwa’s stylistic choices are similar across both projects, making for a thematically coherent and aesthetically fulfilling exhibition. His treatment of colour in most of his photographs creates the sense that one is looking at faded memories – the images are slightly muted, with cool undertones that contribute to his melancholic style. The blue-greens of rural Eastern Cape are contrasted with the bustle lying just outside the gallery’s perimeter. This dichotomy was interesting for me – the city centre surges around the Johannesburg Art Gallery, while inside, the viewer is presented with solemn portraits of a mostly natural landscape. The two worlds seem lightyears apart, emphasising the silence and care that Sobekwa’s work demands.
Lindokuhle Sobekwa, Amakrwala Black Hill, 2021
‘Umkhondo: Going Deeper’ is intimate and explorative, wrestling not only with Sobekwa’s documentation of the search for his missing sister, Ziyanda, but also his own search for belonging. In each photograph, there is a sense of absence and nostalgia, where Sobekwa manages to explore the ethnographic and narrative potential of his medium – tracing one story through various South African landscapes, culminating in Tsomo. The act of bringing together two separate but unavoidably intertwined projects enables us to cultivate a different engagement with the works. The exhibition is at once a reflection on loss and grief, as well as a portrait of Sobekwa’s self-discovery.
