An exhibition to break your heart
JOHANNESBURG – A young artist takes art lovers back in time.
The Standard Bank Arts Competition winner will break your heart with a look into South Africa’s sad, but rich history.
Kemang Wa Lehulere, the winner of the competition and Standard Bank’s young artist for last year, has officially opened his newest exhibition at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg CBD.
Titled History will break your heart, this particular exhibition has emerged out of the tension created by the relationship between the individual and the forces of history, as well as from the ways that South Africans make sense of these relationships and the narratives of national or global politics.
The exhibition was opened to a crowd, on 16 April, who were nothing less than excited to delve into the mind of the young, developing artist.
The centrepiece of the exhibition is made up of upturned school desks footed with gumboots with gold-painted soles and ceramic dogs. He describes these ‘guard dogs’ as ‘silent witnesses to history’, believing that if you took the sleep from a dog’s eye and put it into his own, you would be able to see into the spiritual realm.
Also in the exhibition are a number of chalk drawings, co-created by the artist and his aunt, a form of familial tribute that is a common feature in the exhibition.
The drawings pay homage to the ‘people who were written out of history’, according to his aunt, Sophia Lehulere, and including them into the exhibition is the artist’s act of love.
The exhibition also features a digital video being screened at two points in the gallery where Wa Lehulere speaks to the people who contributed to the exhibition, as well as to a number of people who influenced his works.
Sticking true to his motto, ‘the foot has no nose’, an idiom meaning that no one knows where their journey will take them, the artist knows not where he will go next or what his next big project will be, but as co-founder of the arts collective, the Gugulective, which helps initiate dialogue in the arts, he has his hands full for the time being.
Details: 011 631 4467; www.standardbank.com
