The Bag Factory
07.06 - 25.07.2025

In Hindu spirituality, Brahmacarya refers to the first stage in one’s spiritual life. It is a time of reflection, learning, and self-control. In Daneel Thumbiran’s exhibition of the same name, the works speak to this period in one’s life, while also confronting and wrestling with what it means to be Hindu in an African city. The exhibition forms part of the ‘Bag Factory 2025 Young/Unframed’ programme, which was designed to provide young creatives with a space for experimentation and exploration. Thumbiran’s work engages with liminality in many ways – the liminality of identity, of faith, and of the city where Thumbiran grew up, Johannesburg.

Some of the works included in ‘Brahmacarya’ have the appearance of being scanned from the artist’s sketchbook. This gives the sense of peeking into something private, where artistic ideas are not fully formed. The artist’s book is rarely a curated site – rather, one experiences through it, the progression of a concept, idea, or story through the physical act of turning the pages. A blank page becomes a buffer, a moment of pause. In the case of artworks like Rameshwar or Ganapati, the pages seem to be photographed or scanned, then scaled up or down and wheat-pasted together, creating an augmented version of the original object. 

In Almost, the multi-faceted Brahmaputra looms in the centre of the work, flanked on each side by two smaller figures. They are arranged in a triangular composition, drawing the eyes to each point, and back to the centre. This work stood out to me because of the sentiment etched below its central figure: a handwritten note which reads, “I am almost”. This phrase is the conceptual crux of Thumbiran’s show. The half-thought encourages the viewer to go deeper, to imagine those unfinished phrases that can never truly encapsulate a person’s whole identity; as if we are constantly saying, “I am almost someone.” Indian, South African, Hindu. Yet never fully. It is the liminality of identity and spirituality that grounds the viewer’s experience of Thumbiran’s work. 

The works in the show are palimpsests of spiritual iconography and other identity markers – images of the Johannesburg CBD are layered alongside representations of Hindu gods, showcasing the artist’s own layered and complex identity as a South African of Indian descent. Taking images of Hindu gods and transforming them using layered collages transforms their meaning. What once symbolised a version of the spiritual being, in all their holiness, has now become part of the patchwork of Thumbiran’s artistic practice. 

In Raas Leela, electrical wiring, telephone poles, and high-rise apartment blocks nestle amongst collaged images of Garuda, a Hindu deity who carries the god Vishnu on his shoulders. These seemingly incongruous images are forced to exist together, assembled in a new process of meaning-making. Perhaps this is a reminder of how real people exist across seemingly incongruent spectrums of identity and being. 

Similarly, Thumbiran’s preferred medium of wheat pasting speaks to this complex, layered identity. Traditionally associated with graffiti and street art – posters, prints, and murals – wheat pasting is often associated with acts of vandalism and illegal advertising, while also having a long and layered history of being used in political movements in the early twentieth century. However, the process has held its place as an art form across generations of artists, both locally and globally. In making use of a medium such as wheat pasting, the artist deliberately merges public and private spaces. 

Graffiti and other forms of public art are often concerned with access. Thumbiran’s practice, which merges public and fine art, encourages the viewer to consider this difference in accessibility: his works were once public murals, but they have now been transmuted to fit into the traditional gallery space. 

In some ways, the collaged works that make up Thumbiran’s ‘Brahmacarya’ resemble the concrete walls of Johannesburg’s inner city, which have been painted and re-painted, used over decades as canvases for public expression. The walls of the inner city are pasted over, with peeling paint and half-stuck posters clinging to their surface, creating a similar palimpsestic effect to that seen in Thumbiran’s work. 

For me, the journey through/into the city centre was a critical part of my experience of the exhibition. I have always known Johannesburg to be a liminal space. Bank headquarters are bordered by student housing, surrounded by taxi ranks, markets, and vacant lots. The city itself is layered, and its true identity is concealed behind its many faces. As such, the inner city plays an important role in this exhibition. Bag Factory is located in Newtown, near Fordsburg and the Oriental Plaza, both places that have long been associated with the South African Indian community in Johannesburg. They are spaces, much like Thumbiran’s works, where cultures and identities interact and transform.  

That said, Thumbiran’s ‘Brahmacarya’ leaves certain questions unanswered. For instance, what actually happens to a person’s internal world when they exist across multiple, seemingly incongruent spectrums of identity? What happens when one’s personhood is fractured in this way? How do we find new ways to define ourselves? Perhaps the point is not to have these answered; rather, the point might well be to step into liminality and stay there for a moment.