Current Review(s)
The Indecisiveness of Thought in 'Some Deleted Scenes Too'
Kemang Wa Luhelere at STEVENSON in JohannesburgWhat does it mean to erase or to be erased? Kemang Wa Lehulere’s ‘Some Deleted Scenes Too', a solo show of drawings at the Stevenson Gallery Johannesburg, seems intent on addressing this predicament. The adjective ‘deleted’ indexes the lack or absence of what presumably was a unity of scenes which yet we cannot name. Are these scenes of history, of being, of an imagination or drama? At the same time, Lehulere also signals by ‘some’ that though these ‘scenes’ are deleted, they leave residues behind. It is a condition of disjuncture, of what Jacques Derrida calls ‘a process of disappearing’ by disembodiment.
Lehulere’s exhibition is initially composed of ink drawings on paper, mounted in white frames. They are drawn with a sustained black and white palette (sometimes with intervening pen scribbles) and appear to be ripped from a sketchbook, as tattered edges run down their sides. Each depicts different types of functional objects in abstract scenes, indicative of an investigation. In these scenes appear anonymous, disembodied, headless or featureless figures. As the exhibition’s artist’s statement
08 August 2012 - 21 September 2012
Listings(s)
8th Berlin Biennale
Santu Mofokeng, Bianca Baldi, Center for Historical Reenactments and Kemang Wa Luhelere at KW Institute for Contemporary ArtThe 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art will bring together a range of local and international artistic positions that explore the intersection between larger historical narratives and individuals' lives. Thus, the 8th Berlin Biennale aims to counterpoise the empirical and the authoritative approaches to history and historical becoming. The research for the 8th Berlin Biennale is structured along three speculative approaches toward the city of Berlin: in its relationship to the built environment, in its relationship to citizenship, and in its relationship to labor. Another focus lies on ways in which the 18th and 19th century Berlin is contemplated within our current cultural landscape.
The majority of the participating artists have produced new works for the exhibition, which proposes new perspectives on the facets of and relations in history. It spans four distinct venues in south-western Berlin and Berlin-Mitte—Haus am Waldsee, Museen Dahlem – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, and Crash Pad c/o KW.
29 May 2014 - 03 August 2014
'Some Deleted Scenes Too'
Kemang Wa Luhelere at STEVENSON in JohannesburgWa Lehulere uses diverse media, including text, drawing and performance. His work engages with the spaces between personal narrative and collective history, between processes of amnesia and archive. Performative gestures of unearthing discovery, destruction and erasure are central to Wa Lehulere's work. The act of digging, for example, becomes a metaphor for the pathology of history. The site simultaneously conveys a scene of death and archaeological dig, with the artist performing the dual roles of forensic investigator and scientist. Bones become the motif for a violent confrontation between the myths of the past and the fictions of the present.
Wa Lehulere's latest work continues to explore these themes with a particular focus on the disintegration of the archive, both collective and individual. In the performance titled Some Deleted Scenes (2012), we enter a world where all pages are either blank or burning, and learn about a man who has the ability to restore images to blanked-out photographs. In this performance and the dark room installation 30 Minutes of Amnesia: Scene 2, Wa Lehulere's choreography of the invisible draws our attention to those things on the periphery of our vision.
As the artist explains:
'[This body of work] dances with the idea of uncovering, writing and erasing of narratives both factual and fictional. Because of the possibilities and yet limitations of this endeavour, I have chosen to treat the drawings, texts and performances as both deleted yet "working scenes". So that the work, though in progress and development, is treated as material to be discarded. This method and strategy ... allows for an open exploration of the body both as archive and as a site for choreographing future narratives. As such the drawings function as forms of sense making and "sketches" for other mediums including performance, installation, video, writing, and vice versa.'
08 August 2012 - 21 September 2012
'Public Intimacy'
Jo Ractliffe, Athi Patra Ruga, David Goldblatt, Donna Kukama, Penny Siopis, Santu Mofokeng, Kemang Wa Luhelere and Others at YBCADisrupting expected images of South Africa, the 25 contemporary artists and collectives featured in 'Public Intimacy' eloquently explore the poetics and politics of the everyday. This collaboration with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts presents pictures from SFMOMA’s collection of South African photography alongside works in a broad range of media, including video, painting, sculpture, performance, and publications — most made in the last five years, and many on view for the first time on the West Coast. Coinciding with the 20th anniversary of democracy in South Africa, 'Public Intimacy' reveals the nuances of human interaction in a country still undergoing significant change, vividly showing public life there in a more complex light.
'Public Intimacy' includes works by Ian Berry, Ernest Cole, David Goldblatt, Handspring Puppet Company, Nicholas Hlobo, ijusi (Garth Walker), Anton Kannemeyer, William Kentridge, Donna Kukama, Terry Kurgan, Sabelo Mlangeni, Santu Mofokeng, Billy Monk, Zanele Muholi, Sello Pesa and Vaughn Sadie with Ntsoana Contemporary Dance Theatre, Cameron Platter, Lindeka Qampi, Jo Ractliffe, Athi-Patra Ruga, Berni Searle, Penny Siopis, Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse, and Kemang Wa Lehulere.
21 February 2014 - 29 June 2014
'it began with a walk'
Dineo Seshee Bopape, Penny Siopis, Robin Rhode, Kemang Wa Luhelere, William Kentridge, Robert Hodgins and Deborah Bell and Moshekwa Langa at Ntsikana AnnexeCurated by Portia Malatjie
Lefu La Ntate (3 minutes 1 second) Kemang Wa Lehulere
Where Do I Begin? (4 minutes 20 seconds) Moshekwa Langa
is i am sky (17 minutes 48 seconds) Dineo Seshee Bopape
The Master Is Drowning (9 minutes) Penny Siopis
A Day in May (3 minutes 15 seconds) Robin Rhode
Bird’s Milk (5 minutes 44 seconds) Dineo Seshee Bopape
Memo (4 minutes) William Kentridge, Deborah Bell, Robert Hodgins
it began with a walk is an exhibition of video works from the Emile Stipp collection that was first screened at the Bioscope Theatre in Johannesburg in September 2013. The artworks have
been pulled together under the theme of ‘becoming’. The framework posits that nothing is ever static, that we are never as we were and that our presents are always fluid.
The exhibition aims to explore the curation of video works. Portia Malatjie examines how the medium is viewed in a gallery context, and how it can form part of a collection. This interrogation culminates in a cinema setting, where viewers are allowed the opportunity to see the time-based works from
beginning to end, an act that is often a challenge in a gallery setup.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue.
Presented by the National Arts Festival in association with the Emile Stipp Collection.
03 July 2014 - 13 July 2014
'Sleep is for the Gifted'
Kemang Wa Luhelere at Lombard Freid GalleryLombard Freid Gallery presents 'Sleep is for the Gifted', Kemang Wa Lehulere's debut solo exhibition in the United States. Known for his performances and curatorial interventions, Johannesburg-based artist Wa Lehulere presents an installation composed of recent drawings, photographs, sculptural works and video.
The exhibition's title - 'Sleep is for the Gifted' - hints at both the artist's chronic insomnia and his obsession with the resurfacing of buried memories of apartheid greatly felt by the younger generation of South African artists. This new series is inspired by a myriad of pre-existing sources: short stories, theater, the artist’s own writings, and fragments culled from newspaper articles. Wa Lehulere creates events and environments as an attempt to understand both South Africa’s past and present. The artist’s acts of extraction and translation form a personal and cultural palimpsest; the ongoing process of re-writing and re-authoring begins to constitute the texts themselves.
Wa Lehulere embraces the ambiguity of his practice, opening up a discursive space between past and present, art and literature, the self and the collective. His drawings exist within this psychological space, straddling symbolism and abstraction, drawing from both personal and collective iconographies. The artist’s ink drawings evidence his compulsive attempts at articulation, producing meaning in the physical act of production and reproduction. Wa Lehulere’s unique blend of formal and representational exploration gives his drawings a sense of mystery, leaving them open to each viewer’s interpretation. For Sleep is for the Gifted, he is also producing site-specific chalk drawings on the gallery’s walls, utilizing his own visual vocabulary, referencing long-standing traditions of wall painting and highlighting the ephemerality of the medium itself.
His Polaroid photographs read as quick glimpses into the artist’s archaeological methods: soap suds and a pair of hands outstretched could belong to the guilty Lady Macbeth or Winnie Mandela, accused of conspiracy in the murder of African National Congress activists. Another photograph shows the artist, his face obscured by a newspaper whose headline declares a woman’s failure as a Sangoma—a traditional healer who uses bones as a means of communication with the spiritual world. The fogged frames of these Polaroids emphasize their technical obsolescence, highlighting the aspects of South African past that resist accommodation to the structural tools of the present.
These performative gestures of unearthing and re-writing history flatten the distance between time, space, and media—suiting themselves to Wa Lehulere's interdisciplinary use of drawing, sculpture, photography, and video.
18 April 2013 - 01 June 2013
MTN New Contemporaries Award 2010
Donna Kukama, Mohau Modisakeng, Kemang Wa Luhelere and Stuart Bird at KZNSAThe fifth MTN New Contemporaries Award exhibition shows at the KZNSA Gallery, Durban, in 2010. Held every two years, this prestigious competition identifies, and provides excellent opportunities for, four emerging South African artists as the new stars of the South African art world. This is an important platform to identify and showcase the elected winner to the art scene. The artists nominated by the Guest curator for 2010, Nontobeko Ntombela, are Donna Kukama, Kemang Wa Luhelere, Mohau Modisakeng and Stuart Bird.
Opening 14 September 2010 at 6pm
15 September 2010 - 09 October 2010
'To Whom it May Concern'
Kemang Wa Luhelere at STEVENSON in Cape TownSTEVENSON is pleased to present Kemang Wa Lehulere's second solo exhibition with the gallery, his first in the Cape Town space. Wa Lehulere is the 2015 Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art.
Titled To whom it may concern, Wa Lehulere's exhibition is a direct and indirect response to a work by Chieko (Mieko) Shiomi (b 1938), a Japanese artist with links to the Fluxus movement, whose Spatial Poems comprised instructions for small interventions as well as reports on these actions by participants. Taking his cue from Spatial Poem No 3 (Falling Event), Wa Lehulere suggests forms of falling, both literally and metaphorically, and connects various real events/moments, time and distance in a non-linear manner. He will utilise sculpture, video and other mediums to excavate pasts, both static and malleable, existent and imaginative, instructive and fantastical in this new body of work.
22 January 2015 - 28 February 2015
