Belinda Zangewa at the Alliance Française
by Robyn Sassen
Last year's winner of the Gerard Sekoto Award for the most promising young artist, which runs as an adjunct to the main Absa L'Atelier Award and is sponsored by Alliance Française, was Belinda - aka Billie - Zangewa. The award offers a shorter stay at the Cité Internationale des Arts and a smaller purse, but all the other privileges of living in the city of light. Zangewa's solo exhibition 'Hot in the City' marks her return to Johannesburg, and reflects on her stay in Paris.
A graduate of Rhodes University, Zangewa first earned the attention of L'Atelier's jury for the cheekiness of her work. Last year she was creating sewn visual images that doubled as nifty little postcard-sized clutch bags, straddling the art/craft debate with conviction. In 'Hot in the City' she is showing a series of embroidered art works, tight enough to convey message and meaning, but loose enough to sidestep the Victorian connotations of embroidery. Her work remains sensitively attuned to women's issues, but retains an element of playfulness alongside its edginess.
Constructed to hang on the wall, the works present text in cursive writing, sewn into the silk fabric of the support. They offer stream-of-consciousness, slice-of-life kind of images annotated with words, some crossed out. Borders are loose, indeed, some elements of the compositions look dangerously close to fraying themselves out of existence altogether. There is an interesting and sometimes precarious balance in the structure of these engaging works.
Fragility and vulnerability conflate with strong conceptual skills and drawing ability. Zangewa sews landscapes, cityscapes and figure compositions with finesse, evoking the multiple textures possible in a charcoal drawing, with wool and thread in Then and Now. In Freedom Road, the subtle nuances of a watercolour drawing are suggested.
Familiar urban icons like the little figure denoting a fire escape, or the little green man from traffic lights, are frequent motifs. These mundane images are set against the love tales around which Zangewa's work revolves. The idea of love is a constant underlying theme, and the little iconic man contributes to the notion of love in a city which moves and buzzes, a city which is hot.
While in some of the works, the text and the context feel forced, in others, there is a beauty and a poetry that is transcendental. La Danse tells the brief story of an encounter with a dance partner: the intimations of a passing relationship and the jagged and disjointed conversation of a couple engaged in dance. In Getting Happy, the viewer becomes privy to Frank Sinatra references and a lilt and sense of glamour to the composition evokes his crooning. Another offers a telling and subtle insight into a love letter. These works are charming forays into the heart of a cosmopolitan city.
Opened: April 9
Closed: July 8
Alliance Française
17 Lower Park Drive, corner Kerry Road, Parkview
Tel: (011) 646 1169
Fax: (011) 646 4521
Email: info@alliance.org.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 6pm
