Beyond Binaries: An exhibition of Pan-African work, curated by the Qala! Collective

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.

Cedric Nunn Farmer Mowbray Dunn and farm manager Ghandi Gielink. Mangete 1986. 

From Blood Relatives series. Archival digital print, 63 x 45 cm

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. 

Thania Petersen Location 3: Earlier District 6. From I AM ROYAL series

Inkjet print on Epson Hotpress, 89 x 61 cm, 2015

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.

Julia Nakashwa Hango Queen Fifi/ Annunciation. 

From Inter-race binary series. Photography, 56,5 x 45,0cm, 2016

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. 

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

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. 

Nomusa Makhubu In Living Colour: Okada

Hand woven photographs, 63 x 92 cm, 2015

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. 

Donovan Ward Coloured by the Other (unofficial portrait of Jimmy Manyi)

Mixed-media installation, 1.5 m 1.9 m, 2012

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. 

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. 

Lizette Chirrime The water in blood. Fabric collage & stitched leather rope on canvas, 140 x 106 cm, 2016

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. 

Sfiso Ka-Mkame The soul lost for tradition

Oil pastels on paper, 60 x 40cm, 2016

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

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. 

Jill Joubert Four Impenetrable Towers (detail)

Wood, metal and found objects, 57 x 193 x 57 cm, 2013-16

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. 

Nonhlanhla Mathe Together we celebrate

Inks and acrylic on canvas, 60 x 70 cm, 2016

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. 

Robert Machiri Mbiraphonics

Single channel video installation, with coal, pre-digital tape recorder and chalk on blackboard panels, 2016

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. 

Thembi Nala African Mermaid Pot (Unomkhubulwane Zulu Rain Queen)

Ceramics, 20 (w) x 13 cm (h), 2016

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. 

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. 

Jeannette Unite Penetrating the Deep. From Resource Curse series

Photo-stitched collage drawing, 55 x 110cm, 2015

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. 

Mthobisi Maphumulo The Clothes of the Deaths I

Oil pastel on Fabriano paper, 95.5 x 150.5 cm, 2016

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. 

Manfred Zylla Who are you? Mixed media on paper, 200 x 150 cm, 2013

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. 

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. 

Paul Sibisi We keep the crowds moving. Acrylic on canvas, 2016

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. 

Eugene Hlophe Resting place

Oil chair, spades and plaster of Paris, 132 x 90 x 90 cm, 2016

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. 

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

To see these works and more by these artists, visit Beyond Binaries, on show at the KZNSA Gallery till 19 March