Don’t Miss: Nandipha Mntambo – Umphatsi Wempi
Nandipha Mntambo was blessed to be born in the mountain kingdom of Swaziland – anyone familiar with the magnificent mountain monarchy will know how ubiquitous cattle are, one has to wonder if growing up surrounded by the gentle beasts has anything to do with the makings of the first solo exhibition of Nandipha Mntambo taking place at the Brodie/Stevenson gallery in Craighall in September. Nandipha says her upcoming body of work was in part inspired by some bullfighting she came across in Mozambique; we’re wondering if it was at that bullring just outside Maputo – intrigued, we once stopped and checked it out – it’s really eery, reminiscent of the bygone era of Portuguese occupation of Mozi… Anyway, we’re rambling – go and check out the exhibition for yourself and ponder on this brilliant young artists talent… Titled Umphatsi Wempi – loosely translated as ‘the general charged with overseeing a battle’ – the exhibition comprises several new sculptural works as well as video, photography and drawing. Central to this body of work is the concept of the boundary, particularly as something that constantly shifts and mutates, that is never fixed or static. The boundary between corporeal awareness and revulsion is explored through the artist’s use of raw cowhides, tails and ears, which are cured and sculpted. In Penis Vagina – One-Man Capsule (2009), the boundary between the need to fight and the need for protection is also apparent. Like Mntambo’s earlier piece uMcedo (2009), this work offers a space that one may enter for protection and perhaps preparation, only to emerge when one is ready. The sculpture is both penetrative and encapsulating, an evocative hermaphroditic form that speaks of pure potential. The artist’s interest in the dynamic tension that exists within the self, the push-pull between libido and mortido, life instinct and death drive, also appears in her photographic images. In The Rape of Europa, a reinterpretation of a Picasso sketch of the Minotaur caressing a girl, the artist occupies both roles, and in her recreation of Caravaggio’s painting of Narcissus gazing at his own reflection in a pond, she replaces Narcissus with herself as Zeus in bull form. In the bronze head-and-shoulders bust in the Renaissance tradition, she combines her own feminine features with those of Zeus disguised as a bull. In another new sculpture, Waiting (2009), a cowhide figure disappears into a wall. It is unclear whether the figure is waiting for salvation, or seeking a hiding place from an unknown terror. While the exposed rear of the prostrate form is undoubtedly a gesture of submission, there is also a sensuality and beauty to the figure, imbuing...
South African Artists exhibit in New York
Big Ups to the organisers behind this group exhibition of hot and happening South African artists, curated by Lucy Rayner that is traveling to New York in June 2008 taking place at the David Krut gallery in New York. The exhibition serves as a critical consideration of some of the most exciting emerging talent in South Africa. SPREAD the word to everyone you know in New York to… Represent! Opens: Thursday June 5, 2008 18:00 – 20:00 Closes: July 30, 2008 The participating artists include Themba Shibase, Michael MacGarry, Nandipha Mntambo, Maja Maljevic, Nina Barnett and Robyn Nesbitt. With a certain shift in tone, an equivocal and satirical vocabulary has developed within the language of recent South African art. Artists are teasingly subverting contemporary politics and societal norms with a liberated sense of detachment and satiric self-reflexivity. Works are consciously current, sometimes self-consciously hip, and self-consciously oppositional. Bringing together the work of six artists who share an affinity for a particularly vulgar aesthetic, The New Spell aims to consider one of the many enlivening tendencies within this socially aware and outspoken approach. The exhibition explores how the grotesque is exercised through works of art to reveal the fetish in African social and political relations of power. The term ‘fetish’ has become somewhat voguish and hackneyed of late. Essentially, it is the attribution of value or power to an object or way of thinking, but it is used here as an ironic comment on the ‘rational’ mindset of state-sanctioned culture in Africa. By contemplating the grotesque in works by Shibase, MacGarry, Mntambo, Maljevic, Barnett and Nesbitt, The New Spell hopes to invite viewers to consider such relations of power with a greater sense of intimacy – and perhaps even humor – by moving beyond the binary categories of autonomy versus subjection or resistance versus passivity. The works kidnap instances of the fetish and force them to examine their own vulgarity, exposing ways in which official culture in South Africa is characterized by a distinctive style of improvisation, by a tendency to excess and lack of proportion. Curator Lucy Rayner and two of the artists, Michael MacGarry and Robyn Nesbitt, will be present at the opening. DAVID KRUT PROJECTS 526 West 26th Street, #816 New York, NY 10001 212 255 3094 www.davidkrut.com Tue – Fri 09h00 – 17h00 Sat 09h00 – 16h00 Image credit: Silent Embrace (2) – Nandipha Mntambo Digital print on cotton rag paper . 1730 x 910 mm . 2007 . Edition: 5 +...
We will be back!
