Over a
period of some ten years while making his living through curios the sale of
wire candleholders and wooden ashtrays, the young activist artist was simultaneously
creating imaginative sculptures of reinforced concrete and wire that imitated
natural forms and textures of humans, animals, trees and rocks. Strong,
versatile, and amazingly easy to work with, wire and concrete were his ideal
media for what can be termed his ‘yard art’, and the flexible firmness of wire once
bent into shape and the stone-like coldness of plastered concrete, allowed for an
‘Additive Sculpturing’ technique that analysed the human form as the artist
perceived it.
A number of pieces
of sculpture with which he adorned his homestead appeared vigorously energetic
and often crude in terms of aesthetic composition and form. Yet they demonstrated
voluminous idioms that address social and political conditions in
South Africa. Even though bothering on being classified as ‘kitch’, these are sculptures
that I felt were singing forth the collective lament by black artists against
being turned into automatons and serfs to ideals of normalcy as prescribed by
society. Perhaps their forms of retaliation against assimilation into the
commercial art-world as it were, with the aim that their protests could rematerialize
as sculptural monuments, will signify their varied roles in the collective
struggle of a people.
Following
certain elements of the African Sculptural Aesthetic, The Queen of the Homestead resembles and personifies a symbolic
antipathy towards the idea of nurturer as one to be turned and subjugated into
a fetishist ornament. The tattered figure, though gestural of concern for the
well-being of a tree (symbolic of life), is herself a statute of exploitation,
degradation and neglect, which could be said to signify the plight of womanhood
within the African socio-political context.
Allusions to
current problems and realities for the black womanhood, manhood and childhood
are transmitted through a surprising variety of picked-up objects and
industrial materials, used to transmit these messages of how any process of
remodelling African identities is in itself a project at dehumanisation. A fact
that cannot be overlooked is that such pieces are found in numerous homesteads
of Black South Africans, from rusted car bodies utilised by children as
play-stations near a chop-shop mechanic’s house, to double-storey shack
architecture. So, it could well be safe to assume that a rebellion from debris
is looming, artistic and social, at all levels of Black Life in the country.
The Wired
Man
I should suppose
that the appeal of the directness of working with wire and the rapidity with
which he could manipulate it to create expressive gestures was the primary reason
behind this obscure piece. Instead of this creation being a process of
liberating the human form, the figure becomes more of a captive, strung
together, bound – a symbol of freedom constrained. The skin being composed of
burned plastic rags, could imply a variety of processes of denuding identity… subtracting
and burning away any form of concealments and integrity. And the combustive
force of fire, leaving skin in a leprous texture, could not be mere coincidence;
but a remark on the decomposition black skin is assailed by in the face
technocratic forces and social catastrophes.
Tsholofelo Kgwanyape is currently producing more uncommissioned sculptures,
and I intend visiting his yard for more experience into his creative process
and to conduct a formal interview with the artist
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