If The Land Was A Man - On The Art Of Thokozani Mthiyane

Spanning painting, sculpture, performance, and installation, Thokozani’s commitment to historically situated and locally sourced materials addresses the complexities of continuity of cultural heritage within the contested “South Africa” identity.

Mthiyane, whose work playfully subverts traditional art- and exhibition-making, is a Johannesburg based artist who is largely influenced by his time spent under the tutelage of artists Sfiso KaMkame and Thami Jali. 

And undeniably, his work’s evolution has brilliantly underscored the profound contributions of many other South African artists in the visual arts, and by fusing painting and poetry with artistic flare, his language has probed a variety of compelling social incompetencies.

And scanning through his profiles on social media one finds a kaleidoscope of works, once is confronted by a plethora or images of his artworks, making one yearn for an opportunity to visit the artists studio.

He once asserted that his works are only premeditated up to maybe the first gesture. This is a trait the lurks throughout his seeming unfinished and self-finishing works.

Taking a glance at his sculptures, some seem crude yet transcendent, intertwining material and immaterial elements, creating a space where the visible and the invisible collide, offering an encounter that is at once immediate, uncanny, are transcendent and mind-boggling.

A nuanced analysis is needed to provide further insights into his many reflections on social issues, and his disobedience to the status quo is an affective and ethical stance—an act of repair within the damaged self-reflective world of black artistic practice often strangled by economic expectations and philosophical crudity.

Works such IF THE LAND WAS A MAN, Umzabalazo Womphefumulo, Isiphambano nomqhele wameva, how they reimagine the crucifix,  invoke a spiritual contradiction as many associate the cross as an emblem of salvation not oppression subjugation.

We confront paintings documenting spiritual themes picturing worshippers and their revered holy figures juxtaposed with an alternative abstraction steeped in a multitude of historical references; works that unsettlingly interrogate the politics and power dynamics implied by the yoke, symbolic of how religion has become for black people. 

Among his haunting sculptures are two which I have titled The Bone Machine (reminiscent of Tom Waits and his work as both musician poet and artists dabbling in various expressive techniques.

There is another that resembles THE HEART and another sculpture he titled Portrait (v), and one wonders if these are self-portraits. One such portraits done the severed dreadlocks that were a feature of Thokozani’s inner persona.

Ukubika komphefumulo exhibits an impulsive spirit yet intensely edgy and drawing on threads of the unknowable designs of chance, and what emerges is a frames of sundered materials (pieces of stretched skin) turning turned blue by either the cold or decay.

Without taking the artistic process too lightly and detracting from its value in the context of deep exploration and self-expression, each piece a true expression of artistic individuality rooted in simplicity and spontaneity.

At his exhibitions, Mthiyane always causes a thrill among the audience, a performer and poet who is always keen on inferring textual and vocal anecdotes. 

Besides his basic ideas, selection of topics and motifs, Mthiyane continues choose specific elements of art in addition to techniques and ways of composing paintings, his studio has become a place for the formation of unique workshops where artists, poets and musicians exchange experiences and inspire each other.

Although his art might seem to have began due to pure idleness, his is a concerted method creating unique hybrids of self-reflection and observations of the world’s hidden character.

Over time, his canvases grew to possess a certain individual artistic maturity and a clearly unique formula which is easily perceived; from metaphors of grief, symbols of contrition on disproportional figures in a specific setting rather realistically.

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Images From The Artist's Profiles 

DADA or what???

Once asked about their artistic ethos, Cape Town based artist Dada Khanyisa emphasised that they are “interested in social dynamics, how people relate, how they engage, how they choose to present themselves, who they choose to have around them, and the places they choose to occupy. 

And when multi-disciplinary artist won THE 2022 FNB ART PRIZE, anyone who had been following their career with cynicism paid astute attention. 

After a walk through the exhibition held at The Johannesburg Art Gallery  in early 2024, the nuanced assemblages, collaged three-dimensional backdrops that incorporate found objects and architectural references, which are the signature of this renowned artist left an indelible mark on my psyche. 

Addressing minimal artistic gestures—there is  a selection of sculptures which I found intriguing, as they are at times rendered in the sleek three dimensions of a printed surfaces that only enhances the illusion of life with its sheen of escapist glamour.

Often taking their departure from from physical gestures of revolt to invisible architectures of codes of sexual identities, the work reflects on nostalgia and memories of bygone times in township love life, oscillating between revelation and erasure of those loved lives.

With titles like “iNkosi ibenathi in these polyamorous streets and between the sheets”, ‘eBree” and eBumnandini” and ‘uMpako” “aBomama bom’gidi”, Dada continually reflects on community and its varied members, the mothers, the lovers who meet a world in turmoil over sexual identity.

Depicting jovial scenes of friends pulled from street scenes, these artworks, each is a record of life in the hollow squaller of squatter camps or inner city slums.

The resolve to alcohol abuse that is characteristic of South African youth culture is also brought to the fore and questioned against other depredations of a hostile world where many reside.

Dada’s refusal to be boxed in by medium or artistic expectation, has liberated their creative practice from the stranglehold of consumer trends.

Their art might serves a social function by depicting events, situations and moments in which persecuted individuals can take refuge and form on their creative reconfiguration to serve the bodies that are bound by them.

The sculptural paintings that have become a signature style, have invoked mixed reaction from art community prone to market logic.

But can their practice become its own genre, and a creation of alternative forms of intimacy among people of diverse social origins?

Images from Artist Profiles.

New Imagineers or Naïve Art?

The consequences of internet proliferation of art has become a stark reality faced by artists working on the margins of the mainstream art market. 

These artists are often people of colour, working in improvisational media and multiple disciplines, renewed artists rekindling new flames of tradition rather than preserving tradition as static heritage.

Although the internet purports to be a global gallery where one can be introduced to diverse artists from vastly different scopes of artistic practice, but there are few of those who resonate with some inner chord for appreciating and seeing creativity for the messages it transmits.

 

 

And reading about the APY Art Centre Collective in recent article tackling a scandal about appropriation of indigenous art by white patrons, I was interested to acquaint myself with the work from the collective.

In the world of contemporary art with its endless variety of trends and movements, what I experienced was a kind of naive art that occupies a special place, a bridge connecting traditional art forms with modern movements.

 

Debates in the art historical community are heated about unschooled and self-taught artists and their practices, deeming their art as incapable of deep transformation of art. 

But this art movement often construed as Primitivism,  borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, and is recognized by the state of the spirit, a pure soul of the artist, reflection of his/her feelings. 

Before the 20th century, in its most basic sense, the so-called “naive art” was any form of visual art created by a person who lacked the formal education and training a professional artist undergoes. 

When a trained artists emulates this aesthetic, it is often referred to as primitivism, pseudo-naive art or faux naive art.

Now, seeing the works of indigenous Australian artists like Helen Curtis and Iluwanti Ken, one observes how their often “naive art” often ignores the rules of perspective. 

 

The act of “seeing” is transformed into “being within” that with is seen, and perchance “that which is seen” is transformed into the seer guiding and ever transforming view.

Often characterized by a lyrical treatment of their environments and the poetic rendering of mythological and historical subjects, their work touch on the spiritual without being escapist. 

Although their practices seemingly necessitate exclusion, where they gain power through their insularity and a cultivated need for protection from other ideas, these artists nevertheless create compositions based on their inner perceptions, not on academic norms and standards.

 

Their art could easily be dismissed as art that’s created by people who “don’t know what they’re doing”, but that undermines the raw creativity found within works of the movement and its uninhibited and instinctive approach to materials, composition and ideas. 

Theirs are reverent thoughts rooted in personal histories, language and storytelling, involved in contemplation of belonging, loss, memory, with consequent trauma experienced by those whose psyches have been re-arranged.

Their consequent images portray inherited memories to tell personal stories that have been long silenced, affirming continuity between sediments of memory and the present, redressing unresolved ideological conflicts that constantly recur.

 

Their radical ethos, political and aesthetic engagement emanating from their artistic practices in the face of constant erasure by the art community; mediates their practices and the participatory dimensions undertaken, revealing how their existence manifests a radical form of presence in which body, environment, and time enter into immediate relation.

Like some sensible apostles of “a new objectivity”, these artists continue to pave renewed paths for approaching art in ways that trends and proper form ignores, and while conventional success is desired, a less inhibited way of working is encouraged.

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Images by: APY Arts Center Collective (Adelaide, Australia)

Mysteries From Antiquity - On African Sacred Artefacts (Lydenburg Heads)

Collections are vital assets for museums, offering insight into the artistic and historical trends of a given era. They act not merely as historical artifacts but as living agents of yearning that bridge continuity and transformation. 

Making their collections seen and accessible is a crucial role of museums, one that is fundamentally bound up with their very function. The Cabinet of Curiosities in 16th-century Europe, regarded as the origin of the museum, displayed rare and exotic collections, providing audiences with novel experiences and opportunities for intellectual exploration. 

With the rise of the modern nation-state, the definition of “public” expanded, and works of art that had once been privately owned became accessible to wider audiences, ultimately evolving into the modern museum.

In Africa however, the rampant pillaging of cultural art and the theft of art meant a far more sinister project was unfolding; one that was characterised by erasure and displacement of an entire people from the annals of cultural history.

During colonial rule, African people lost thousands of cultural artefacts through the brutish plunder by colonists. These works addressed an entire psychological ecosystem of an oppressed people, in response to the censure experienced under guise of missions to “civilise the natives”.

Now that museums are calling for restitution and repatriation of stolen African artefacts, the overlooked question is that of a contemporary people who are grappling with the instability of meanings drawn from their vague past, when they have been denuded of any knowledge about these sacred objects and their worth.

When one observes what is often termed as macabre artefacts from arcane history, we come to question whether these artefacts are haunted objects as they’ve been known to cause all sorts of mayhem and social chaos.

These sacred objects found throughout the African continent for instance, are fundamentally associated with knowledge and are secretly preserved. Owning them or knowing about them commands attention and silence from those who cannot have access to them.

But I have often wondered what secrets lie behind the rarest and most treasured African artworks? The kind of pieces imbued with the weight of history, culture, and spirit all at once.

These creations weren't made just to be admired, they served purposes—spiritual, social, political—and each one has a unique tale to tell.

Sadly many of these rare artworks are hidden away in vaults, galleries, or private collections, far from their original homes. Some have been lost and found again, while others remain mysterious, sparking debates about ownership, legacy, and cultural pride.

A vigorous dialogue between heritage and contemporaneity is essential if the past is to preserved by contemporary generations for posterity. 

Only by revisiting sites of memory, can these reclamation expeditions infuse new modes of recollection and (post)memory, viewed through the lens of the contemporary social and cultural landscape.

And in light of this urgency, the post-1994 democratic government has made it a priority to restore dignity to those who were dehumanised by colonial and apartheid-era practices; a laudable effort in the face of rampant corruption within the art world in regards to illicit antiquities trade.

Recently, through the the Exile Repatriation Project and the Reburial of Khoi and San Ancestral Human Remains Initiatives, the government has spearheaded a revolutionary approach to reclaiming lost heritage by returning the remains of 58 ancestors.

There remains a vast array of misrepresentations and artefacts that remain to be repatriated, for instance the The Lydenburg Heads; a set of seven terracotta heads accidentally discovered by a ten-year-old boy in the South African town of Lydenburg. 

Should contemporary historians and artists reposition The Lydenburg Heads in their authentic African cultural  context, and repatriate from Iziko Museum in Cape Town to their communities whilst renaming them appropriately without disputes? 

Would this approach open old wounds or foster an inter-generational dialogue between those who shaped our cultural landscape and those addressing today’s urgency to redress falsifications and erasure thereof?

Excoriating The Wound and the World: On Khahliso’s ‘At Virtue’s Zone’

At Virtue's Zone

It is not helpless, it is not hopeless, it is just being portrayed that way. Without us paying attention, they will have nothing. Without us paying them for our attention, they will earn nothing. Without us bending over backwards to please them, they will break. Without us wanting to be just like them to be just like them to be just like them, their self image will shatter. Without us affording them the quality of anothers discomfort, there palaces will crumble. Without us conspiring and conforming with them, shelling out our cold finger cash to fund the completion of their high rise egos, there will be no more theaters of war no more cinemas of celluloid pain no more carbon copy shopping streets of fat ass consumers suffering from diminished muscle mass no more websites wiping clean our consciousness no more playgrounds for political savagery no more selling us choice when we realize that there is not much to actually choose from Without us being present they will be left to bite their fingernails down to the cuticles. Without us attending their feast they will still continue to be cannibals but will have less meat to pick off the bone. Without us they, the providers of helplessness and givers of hopelessness will be confronted by a new found silence one where the only sound to be heard will be that of their own heavy labored breathing alone and without us.

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Joshua Baumgarten 

Re(Thinking) Artistic Praxis - NEW Imagineers (Jalal Toufic)

 

Jalal Toufic in (Vampires), proposes that death is not a future event but a condition in which we already exist while physically alive. He also asserts that we constantly receive signals from versions of ourselves dwelling in the realm of the undead.

Politics, religion, social phenomena, colonialism and its irrevocable gestures, incisions that transform man without the possibility of reversal, and the instincts that arise from them, continue to inspire artistic practices of many artists of colour. 

This seems more attuned to what Jalal Toufic calls “the withdrawal of tradition past a surpassing disaster,” when grief and care of many beings who have crossed the boundary between life and death have taken a spiritual dynamic and reverence.

What then, is death when there are the un-dead?

Is death a state of continuous life at a level of decay, an inversion towards the negative, a way of undoing the orchestrated linearity of being?