David Krut Projects
03.08 - 28.09.2024

This article is part of The Visual Art of Creating Beyond the Apartheid Imagination program, funded by the National Arts Council in 2024 and implemented by Lukho Witbooi and Zimkitha Xwashu for Gallery Chosi. The program is a developmental initiative that reimagines art and identity by transcending the divisions and constraints of apartheid, embracing freedom, complexity, and new possibilities.

“I don’t think what I do is influenced by suffering. I come from talented people who are prolific in music and dance.” Hugh Masekela

From Jazz Queen Miriam Makeba performing Pata Pata in a floor-grazing leopard-print gown in Stockholm, Sweden, in the 60s or Hugh Masekela tooting his trumpet in his signature flat cap, jazz music and fashion have always coexisted. They form an inseparable bond that is woven into the South African Township landscape to this day. Stephen Langa’s ‘Inceptions of Black Serenity’, staged at David Krut Projects in Johannesburg late last year,  introduced a balance between the two. Through his vivid portraitures, he created a multisensory experience of celebration in the Black community.

From its title, ‘Inceptions of Black Serenity’ sat between apertures of ease and regality, communicating a space of release where Black people can unapologetically be themselves in their language, music, and fashion. Langa’s work created a podium to engage with this. Like social realist painter Gerard Sekoto, Langa’s work looks into urban Black life, depicting Black people in their most natural state, as seen in the works In a Place of Cool Reason and A Mirror That Doesn’t Reflect. The powerful works reflect women in a state of comfort and peace, lost in their own thoughts and worlds. From the title, Langa framed a tone on how to unpack his work.

Mapantsula, an oil-based monotype depicted a fragment of three men dressed to the nines. With a formal fedora hat placed at their feet, the men are wearing ‘Crockett & Jones’ loafers paired with exposed socks and perfectly seamed trousers. From the shoes alone, Langa allowed the viewer to visualize the full outfit—a crisp buttoned-down shirt with cufflinks, a tailored summer blazer carefully hanging on his chair, and a matching fedora. Mapantsula is a collective term used to describe a fashionable Black man, originating from the South African township culture. Though the term constantly evolves through context, historically, ‘le pantsula’ is more than just style; it is a way of life embodied through luxurious clothes and fine living. The makings of a fashionable man start with his shoes, a recurring theme throughout the exhibition, as seen in works such as The Words That Dripped from Your Sip, Mr. Crockett and Jane and The Inside of a Modern Man. Referring to the legendary shoe brand ‘Crockett and Jones’ which symbolized class and elegance among South African men, Langa created a discourse of fashion as a language of identity, self-pride, and status.

Langa’s work subliminally touches on the effects of Apartheid South Africa, where many Black citizens were dehumanized and overlooked, their identities reduced to servitude, often wearing uniforms for five days a week or even longer. Hence the emergence of terms like ‘Sunday Best’ or ‘Church Clothes.’ His work accentuates Black people as pioneers of style and fashion. In Inceptions of Black Serenity, through detailed imagery of the cotton thick socks and tailored hemlines with polished shoes, Langa portrayed the pride and style of a Black man, inviting the viewer to appreciate and bask in the small details that make an outfit.

Most of the action in Langa’s work occurs in a shebeen or tavern—illegal bars that emerged after the Liquor Act of 1927, barring Black people from selling liquor. He vividly painted pool tables and half-drunk whiskey glasses with low dim lighting. Using warm hues of orange and browns with strong green and yellow tones, he teleports his viewer into a setting of live music, with underground political meetings and unplanned hookups taking place in the background. It was at these ‘illegal’ spaces where many Black artists, musicians, and journalists launched their careers while having a safe space to build relationships and community.

Born in Pretoria, raised in Limpopo, and currently living in Johannesburg, Langa has a personal understanding of migration and displacement and constantly highlights the significance of community and togetherness through his work. For instance, The Family Gatherings is a triptych oil-based monotypes portraying Black joy—chic Black people, some in fedoras and turbans, others in their natural hair—laughing and dancing. Using only brown oil paint in two of the artworks, he eloquently captured the movement, organized chaos, and high spirits found at Black gatherings. You can’t help but hear the fine-tuning of trumpets and trombones, the stickiness of alcohol on the dance floor, and the laughter and chatter of people having a good time. This is an interpretation of communion as a structure of Black joy.

Stylistically, Langa is inspired by many artists, moving between the past and the present, for instance, he drew inspiration from Gerard Sekoto’s interpretation of urban Black South African life. In his striking oil painting The Life Chosen for Me, he gives a modern take to Edward Monet’s Young Woman Reclining in Spanish Costume. However, it’s Ernie Barnes’ famous painting The Sugar Shack where Langa drew inspiration for his exhibition. The Sugar Shack gained popularity after it was used as Marvin Gaye’s album cover for “I Want You.” It was Barnes’ effortless portrayal of music and dance as a cornerstone for Black joy that created waves in the art scene. ‘Inceptions of Black Serenity’ continued this conversation through colour and bold technique. Like Barnes, Langa used deep and rich colours moving between different hues of brown and orange to portray the complexity and depth of Black life. At its core, ‘Inceptions of Black Serenity’ was an exhibition on love. Printing the artworks on different scales, like moving through a life-sized family album, the exhibition was a poem on the different facets of the Black experience, done with flair and overflowing swag.