Before we begin, here are a couple of fast facts; firstly, your height is continuously fluctuating over the course of 24 hours, no, caffeine is not responsible for your perpetual inability to grasp for the items out of your reach, and yes, you are doomed to shrink once you’ve passed 40. Thankfully, or rather, deliberately,…
Traces in the Still Air, an installation by Lerato Motaung transliterates the unseen space grief and loss occupy in the recesses of memory as a new identity is carooned. This is the first installation-based exhibition from the artist whose artistic practice continues to examine interplays between individual and collective stories and is centrally concerned with…
It’s important for Black creatives to stay connected, given the surprising similarities in experiences across different parts of the world. I had a candid conversation, with the prolific and accomplished author and artist Kayo Mpoyi, born in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and now a native of Sweden, based in Stockholm. Kayo Mpoyi’s work…
Reid starts by asking me – who is here to have a conversational interview with her – about myself. She asks about what I do, whether I enjoy it and how I came to do what I do. We laugh, observing the flipped dynamic of interviewer and interviewee. “I like to know who I’m talking…
The year is 2017, the building is August House. Here, established and baby artists gather ceremoniously to water their artistic gardens into bloom. I’ve been revisiting the day we met, after you ascended from the body on the 11th of August. On the afternoon our worlds first collided, I sat quietly at a tiny desk…
Established by the founders of Bubblegum Club, the Bubblegum Residency programme has been running with the aim to support, platform and develop the careers of emerging artists. Since the launch of both our artist residency program and gallery space with our first resident, Muofhe Manavhela and her show, 12 seconds, our commitment to supporting our…
There is ‘something’ liberating underscoring our relationship to, and fear of, time. Something co-curator Sumayya Vally describes as a part of the ‘inarticulable’ tether binding the collection that makes up Customs, the latest group exhibition at A4 Gallery, by A4 Arts Foundation. “Not because [the knowledge is] not being articulated,” Vally explains in the show’s…
As heavy rain swept across KwaZulu Natal in April 2022 — causing floods and landslides — homes, cars and businesses were destroyed leaving unimaginable damage across all fronts. The whole of KwaZulu Natal was left impacted. While some people were able to replace some lost or damaged items, artists could not do the same. As…
The first in a series of performances by artist and choreographer Clara Delorme is called L’albâtre (Alabaster). Alabaster is a mineral or rock that is soft, often used for carving and is processed for plaster powder. In L’albâtre, the choreographer explores monochrome and invites us to examine the nature of the strange being she embodies,…
Hearing the introductory lyrics to LUA‘s “Kiss Me” — “Never felt this emotion before / At this point I might lose it all / Your love feels like it’s always galore” — accompanied by a voice that sounds akin to velvet, it would be natural to assume that LUA is a veteran in the R&B game….
I have spent the past year complaining about the figure. Okay, perhaps complaining is not the right word — being critical about the figure. Thinking about figures of life, figures that bewitch and figures that enrage. I approach the figure with suspicion — questioning why it is that so many faces of so many Black…
“To be pierced is to be attached, serving a purpose that hurts but binds.” Reads the line accompanying Sahlah Davids’ body of work Pierced as it explores ideas of the artist’s cultural identity and the intersection between religion and politics. Pierced is a body of work distinct in many ways. To me, it stands as…
