I’m eating sushi in paradise with whoever (whoever)
And loaded cause it don’t last forever
The chivalry of whisky on her lips (it’s on her lips, it’s on her lips)
She’s lost in the cars it’s the sound of her hips
Brown people a night in Diepkloof Mansions
You’re hanging with him cause he’s in fashion (fashion)
Brown people happy pink things do happen
Believe in this evolution and not this party
The Brother Moves On, ‘Party @ Parktown Mansions’
Yesterday afternoon — 18th August 20222 — FNB Art Joburg announced the winner of their 2022 prize. The stage for the function and announcement was Zioux in Sandton, and its backdrop of “big fences, the black moguls with the big Benz’s, the currency that cleansed this”.
“Thank you to everyone who is in this space. I’ve thought about various ways to kinda present this speech, and I think I’ll start by pulling out my phone.” Says this year’s winner Dada Khanyisa with calm and charm to the room.
And just like that — something about what is unfolding in that space, taking shape in that moment — begins to feel to me like one of Khanyisa’s own works coming to life; being animated into existence through spontaneous meta-performance.
Emoyeni Lounge Hun, 2022.
Born in Umzimkhulu and currently living in Cape Town, Dada’s multidisciplinary practice finds home in paint, sculpture and installation, with a focus on contemporary Black experiences, and comments on the textures of our lived and affective conditions as they play out in the socio-economic and spatial contexts of metropolises like Joburg and Cape Town.
These “Cities of Lights, where’s life’s miniaturised where the truths sit in disguise. So what you willing to eye fit in or die.”
Taking place from September 2 – 4 at the Sandton Convention Centre again this year, FNB Art Joburg is Africa’s leading and longest running contemporary art fair, with a mandate to sustainably support and grow the continent’s contemporary art market — while exploring and experimenting with new modes of art curation, dissemination, engagement and participation.
Sharp edges of a soft man, 2020.
Gallery LAB started in 2019 by FNB Art Joburg is an apt expression of this intention to critically to playfully buck the old white cube ways and systems of being in relationship with art production and consumption. Speaking to ArtThrob about Gallery Lab, Co-Curator Kim Kandan shares that:
It was a way of including galleries that didn’t form part of the mainstream gallery system. The fair, as I said, is focused on the best of African art. So, it was a way to encourage and support the alternative exhibition models that exist in Africa. It is a place for these alternative models, galleries and collectives to play and experiment. The more galleries we have, the healthier the ecosystem
“Receiving this prize is affirming, especially at this point in my career. Looking back at what has been five years of building a practice, developing a style and coming into my own as a maker of things, this prize is an unexpected but welcome conclusion to the introductory era,” says Khanyisa in an interview with Wanted Online.
Bambi’phone, was Khanyisa’s first solo exhibition and took place at Stevenson, Cape Town, in 2018. This was followed by Good Feelings in Joburg in 2020. They have participated in many a group show including SKIN+MASKS at Kavi Gupta in Chicago (2022); 021 – 2021 at Stevenson, Amsterdam (2021); My whole body changed into something else also at Stevenson, Cape Town (2021); HI-STORYTELLING at Sfeir-Semler in Hamburg (2021); Mixed Company at Norval Foundation in Cape Town (2021); and Heroes: Principles of African Greatness at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington (2019), to name a few.
Tjomi please call and say you are waiting for me outside my house, this anti vaxxer is going on about elevating the mind, 2021.
Sad in Summer; 2019.
Savouring and thinking through Dada’s work after the opening of Good Feelings in 2020 I wrote:
With this solo exhibition – the first for them in the city and their second solo after Bambi’phone (2018) – Khanyisa wears the hat, or rather, dons i’spottie of both visual memoir writer and poet; re-creating with a sharp and special attention to detail snapshots of social spaces – both virtual and real, while simultaneously giving us a gallery full not of ghosts shaken by the fire and darkness of their time, but of characters in moments of collective good feelings despite the darkness of their times.
This resistive joy; singular and communal, the shape of our lives as lived in the now now time and as curated on social media, the contradictions of the Black middle class aka amaBlack Diamond Butterfly, hoteps, slay queens, abo’sisi amatownhouse, South African art historical references and re-contextualised global art historical references – all come together in a Jabba like summertime jam with Dada Khanyisa.
There is something about the Dada’s work that has always been seriously serious while never taking itself too seriously; that reminds us that there is magic in our mundane, that it has so much to offer us. Even as a student at Michaelis School of Fine Art — and in conversations we’d have then — there was never a sense of intellectual postering or performance, of feeling discoursed at.
Contemplation Chair, 2020.
What Dada’s practice offers us is not only a tasty material terrain to see ourselves reflected back at us, but as you stand in witness of their work you can almost hear the voices, stories, and chaos of life and life in motion visualised in the mise-en-scenes they construct. A feeling I dare say is echoed in the words of storyteller Julie Nxadi in conversation with uDada, when she says:
In terms of the trajectory of your work, the lineage, this particular cluster of work feels as though it’s familiar subject matter – a cultural temperature more than a specific instruction or idea. When I am with your work, I don’t get a sense that this is supposed to be telling me. It’s more like this is a reflection of a time that I can relate to, an energy that I can relate to – and I don’t feel alone.
It’s kind of awe-inspiring and staggering to see how intimate you get – even in these big animated gestures. The lens is very close and it’s very intimate because you are a Black person and you are chatting with Black people. That’s the difference, I think, between your work and some other works: it’s a chat.
Congratulations Dada — these flowers have been a long time coming.
Fourth House in Scorpio; 2021.
Portrait of Dada Khanyisa
Group Chat; 2019.
Philani; 2022.
