Artists from KZN come into conversation with fellow South Africans, together with artists from Gabon, Zimbabwe, the DR Congo, Mozambique and Namibia in Beyond Binaries, an exhibition curated by the Qala! collective. Beyond Binaries began at the ICC as part of Articulate Africa, journeyed through the Durban Art Gallery and now comes to the KZNSA, with each manifestation taking a different shape, and tone.
Beyond Binaries aims to open up discussion on the current climate of polarization and intolerance, and the increasing trend towards fixed, essentialised identities. Several exhibits address critical questions concerning race, gender, national identity and heritage.
What does the Pan-African look like, what is its language?
Beyond Binaries features works by twenty-three artists, emerging and established, with video, photography, paintings, drawings, sculpture, ceramics, wire and mixed media works on show. The Qala! curatorial collective consists of Russel Hlongwane, Robin Moodley and Mario Pissarra.
The Artists & Artworks
Cedric Nunn
Cedric Nunn is an acclaimed photographer born in Nongoma, KZN. In his Blood Relatives series he documents his own extended family as a way of questioning the racial classification systems developed under apartheid, and upheld today.
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Cedric Nunn Farmer Mowbray Dunn and farm manager
Ghandi Gielink. Mangete 1986.
From Blood Relatives series. Archival
digital print, 63 x 45 cm
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Thania Petersen
Born in Cape Town, Thania Petersen combines photography and performance to stage images that question established notions of identity. In her I AM ROYAL series, Petersen boldly reclaims a specific configuration of coloured identity that has its roots in exiled Malaysian royalty.
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Thania Petersen Location
3: Earlier District 6. From I
AM ROYAL series
Inkjet print on
Epson Hotpress, 89 x 61 cm, 2015
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Julia Hango
Julia Nakashwa Hango is a young Namibian artist exploring the intersection between photography and performance. With her Inter-Race Binary series, Hango provocatively inverts the historical power relations between white/ black and male/ female.
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Julia Nakashwa Hango Queen Fifi/
Annunciation.
From Inter-race binary
series. Photography, 56,5 x 45,0cm, 2016
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Kristin Yang
Kristin NG Yang is a
Chinese artist who lives in Pietermaritzburg. With her Bird with Fish series she draws on a Chinese folk song where a bird
and fish fall in love but cannot be together. Through this allegory, Yang gives
poetic form to binaries between China and Africa, and male and female.
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Kristin NG-Yang Bird with Fish Series No. 2.
Photographic print on vinyl on mirror,
with found object
55 x 60 cm (excl. frame), 2016
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Nomusa Makhabu
Born in the Eastern Cape
but now based in Cape Town, Nomusa Makhubu’s In Living Colour series uses hand-woven
photographs to remind us that the camera is a tool, and that images and the
identities they capture are the mediated products of encounters between
photographer and photographed.
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Nomusa Makhubu In Living Colour: Okada
Hand woven photographs, 63 x 92 cm, 2015
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Donovan Ward
Cape Town born artist
Donovan Ward tackles coloured identity with his unofficial portrait of Mzwanele
(Jimmy) Manyi, a spokesperson for black business who once remarked that
coloureds were over-represented in the western Cape and should be moved across
the country. Ward recreates Manyi as a Cape Minstrel.
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Donovan Ward Coloured by the Other (unofficial portrait
of Jimmy Manyi)
Mixed-media
installation, 1.5 m 1.9 m,
2012
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Zemba Luzamba
Zemba Luzamba is a
Congolese artist living in Cape Town. His images of illegal border crossings
capture the dangers experienced by desperate people seeking better lives.
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| Zemba Luzamba Jumper |
Lizette Chirrime
Lizette Chirrime is a
Mozambican artist living in Cape Town. Chirrime combines textile and paint to
produce ambiguous images that assert their presence.
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Lizette Chirrime The water in blood. Fabric collage & stitched leather
rope on canvas, 140 x 106 cm, 2016
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Sfiso Ka-Mkame
Sfiso Ka-Mkame is a KZN
born artist. In The soul lost to
tradition he addresses the reality of botched circumcisions, an all too
frequent occurrence in traditional rites for male initiation ceremonies.
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Sfiso Ka-Mkame The soul lost for tradition
Oil pastels on paper, 60 x 40cm, 2016
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Sfiso Ka-Mkame Lament for our mothers and sisters who are
victims of Africa's never ending wars
Oil pastels on paper, 70 x 100cm, 2016
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Jill Joubert
Limpopo born Cape Town
based artist Jill Joubert reworks fairytales of captive princesses, rescued by
handsome princes, by imagining scenarios where it is wise, elderly women who
liberate these princesses.
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Jill Joubert Four Impenetrable Towers (detail)
Wood, metal and found objects, 57 x 193 x
57 cm, 2013-16
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Nonhlanhla Mathe
Wholeness, balance and
social equilibrium are themes evident in Zimbabwean artist Nonhlanhla
Mathe’s United we stand. Mathe uses
her art to reflect on unity, which she portrays as both necessary and fragile.
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Nonhlanhla Mathe Together we celebrate
Inks and acrylic on canvas, 60
x 70 cm, 2016
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Robert Machiri
Robert Machiri is a
Zimbabwean artist based in Johannesburg. In his Mbiraphonics, Machiri manipulates film footage and sound to create
an otherworldly presence.
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Robert Machiri Mbiraphonics
Single channel video installation, with coal, pre-digital
tape recorder and chalk on blackboard panels, 2016
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Thembi Nala
Thembi Nala is well known
potter from KZN. She produces works that draw in tradition, but which are
produced for new contexts, reminding us that traditions are alive and evolving.
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Thembi Nala African Mermaid Pot (Unomkhubulwane Zulu
Rain Queen)
Ceramics, 20
(w) x 13 cm (h), 2016
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Hlengiwe Dube
Hlengiwe Dube is a well
known bead and wire artist from KZN. By producing baskets that refer to the
practice of painted earplugs, historically worn by elderly Zulu men, Dube
highlights the innovation that underpins so-called traditional practices.
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| Hlengiwe Dube Amashazi earplug no.1 (Ilanga)Galvanised wire and plastic coded wire, 40 cm (diameter), 2016 |
Jeanette Unite
Jeannette Unite is a Cape
Town based artist. In her Resource Curse
series she considers the consequences of mining in damaging the natural
environment as well as the impact of the mining industry on creating different
social classes.
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Jeannette Unite Penetrating
the Deep. From Resource Curse series
Photo-stitched
collage drawing, 55 x 110cm, 2015
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Mthobisi Maphumulo
Mthobisi Maphumulo is a
young artist from KZN’s South Coast. His Clothes
of Deaths 1 brings into focus the
toxic chemicals used for industrial agriculture, introducing questions about
the consequences of such practices for the health of the workers.
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Mthobisi Maphumulo The Clothes of the Deaths I
Oil pastel on Fabriano paper, 95.5 x
150.5 cm, 2016
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Manfred Zylla
Manfred Zylla is an
acclaimed German born artist who lives in Cape Town. In Riel Dans he contrasts the wastage associated with consumerist
society with earlier hunter-gatherer societies such as the Khoi-San.
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Manfred Zylla Who are you? Mixed media on paper, 200 x 150 cm, 2013
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Garth Erasmus
Garth Erasmus is a PE born
artist who lives in Cape Town. In his Gentrified
series Erasmus highlights the lines that divide cities.
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| Garth Erasmus Gentrified. Ink on paper, c. 30 x 42cm, 2015 |
Paul Sibisi
Paul Sibisi is a veteran
KZN artist. In his painting We keep the
crowds moving he provides a satirical depiction of a system of mass exploitation
where the daily bustle experienced by working class commuters is likened to the
act of being swallowed by a monster.
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Paul Sibisi We keep the crowds moving. Acrylic on canvas, 2016
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Eugene Hlophe
Eugene Hlophe is a young
artist from KZN. His sculpture Resting Place
sculpture reminds us that no matter how high we may climb in life, ultimately
we return to the earth.
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Eugene Hlophe Resting place
Oil chair, spades and plaster of Paris, 132
x 90 x 90 cm, 2016
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Ayesha Price
Cape Town artist Ayesha
Price uses digital animation to restore the visibility of black non-combatants,
women and children into the Delville Wood war memorial in France.
Nathalie Bikoro
Born in Gabon and based in
Berlin Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro uses video montage to introduce questions
of colonial power, nature, and genocide.
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Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro Assise de
pouvoir or Die siel van die mier {Seat of power or The soul of the white ant). Video montage with archival material and texts, 2011
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To see these works and more by these artists, visit Beyond Binaries, on show at the KZNSA
Gallery till 19 March
