Zul’bambe Linga’shoni

Sisonke Papu

We have been meditating on the power of breath and how it transforms into the human voice and sound. Following the prompt of igwijo which privileges the voice as the main instrument, as well as the energetic frequency of the number 9 as a site of completion and expansion, we sought to create a sound that cycles/regenerates itself and reaches new sonic possibilities as it travels in an infinite loop. Following the blueprint of African sonic cosmology of call and response as collective participation, we invited a friend, Adriana Jamisse, to transmit the sounds with us – creating a harmony and balance of both masculine and feminine principles.

The transmission reached us first as a single phrase/sequence of a chant. The whole score is then a build up of the chant as it moves and spirals through breath. The chant holds the vibration and intention of the work and exhibition “Zul’bamb’ ilanga lingashoni” without relying on “language” to communicate the message. That is, chanting as a vibrational language allows the listener to enter the sonic space without the phonetic imbuing it with meaning, therefore limiting the experience of the transmission. How the voices are layered and looped together creates other voices that generate a new language and sonic codes. Our curiosity is that of a space beyond language that returns to vibration as the primary language.

Sisonke Papu, a.k.a. KHNYSA, meaning “the one who brings light”, is a name given to him by his ancestors when he accepted his spiritual calling to become an igqirha (the isiXhosa designation for someone who has been called by their ancestors to heal). Papu is a storyteller and multidisciplinary artist from New Payne location in Mthatha, Eastern Cape. His work explores spatial, emotional and spiritual temporalities by engaging ideas of everydayness, the real and imaginary, dreams and memory, the unseen as well as the mythical, ritual, sonic and cosmic. Papu is the founder and director of ISPILI Network, which fosters dialogue, collaboration, innovation and entrepreneurship among young creatives in the Eastern Cape.

Papu’s recent exhibitions include BODYLAND: a site for contemplation, AVA & University of Johannesburg Gallery, Johannesburg and Spring Awakening, Southern Guild Gallery, Cape Town (both 2022). He was also presented at Investec Cape Town International Art Fair by Southern Guild Gallery in 2022. He currently works as a guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town, teaching African Cosmologies and Approaches to Sound and Singing Together (Chorus).

Omba Arts Trust

Much has been written about the contemporary art of the San in South Africa and Botswana and academic interpretations of the art from Namibia are bound to follow. While the subject matter will inevitably be similar, given their shared hunter-gatherer culture, the circumstances of art-making differ considerably, impacting not only technique but also output. What unites the work of contemporary San art in the southern African region is, in my opinion, best described by a quotation I jotted down in my notes (regrettably I did not record the author): “Art needs wisdom and playfulness, not intelligence and cleverness.” The knowledge gained and passed down from thousands of years of foraging and hunting, a sure eye capturing the essence of the subject matter and a celebration of colour defines contemporary San art for me.

– Karin Le Roux, Director, Omba Arts Trust

Omba Arts Trust is a non-profit that supports the sustainable livelihoods of hundreds of artisans and artists living in remote rural communities in Namibia. For the past twenty years, Omba has worked closely with local San communities to foster a sustainable development model and to integrate their arts and handicrafts into the mainstream economy. Omba artisans are passionate about the preservation of their cultural heritage and being part of the Trust gives them the opportunity to utilise traditional skills while adapting them to contemporary innovations.

Ozhopé Collective

Cikhara n’nali n’ndalama / If I had money engages issues of labour, displacement, migration, memory and home through Gule Wamkulu masquerade and the Malawian fishing tradition. The mask, which is stuck on a boat on the shores of Lake Geneva, desperately paddles/dances to the Gule song whose lyrics translate to “If I had money, I would return home”. The boat, which was found on Lake Geneva, is patched using the Malawian fishers’ method of repairing their dugout canoes using metal, tar, plastic and blankets. The fishers’ method of patching turns the dugout canoe into a beautifully textured and textual surface, carrying multiple stories of communities on the shores of Lake Malawi and of the larger Malawian society. The boat, therefore, brings into conversation Malawian stories and those of Lake Geneva and Europe to highlight the ecological, social and political linkages between these two vastly distanced geographical locations.

Ozhopé Collective, founded in 2017, is a group comprised of visual artists Ella Banda and Massa Lemu, photo/videographer Tavwana Chirwa and writer Emmanuel Ngwira. The collective’s main concern is to collaboratively produce art that inspires conversations and invites people to think critically around the social, economic and political issues of everyday life. Their name derives from the word “wosopé”, a Yao term which translates to “all of them/all of us”. This term was subsequently adapted to “ozhopé”, the root of which speaks to the collective ethos that propels Ozhopé’s collaborative practice. 

Ozhopé Collective’s recent exhibitions include Row: a waterlogged anti-patois-bourgeois epic in five parts, Ivy House, London (2023); and Subaltern Speakers, The Culture Lab, Lilongwe, Malawi (2022). Ozhopé’s work Catch 2 has featured in Lovers in a dangerous space time by Christian Nyampeta, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig (2021); Sometimes it was beautiful by Christian Nyampeta, Guggenheim Museum, New York (2021); and Now bite the hand that feeds you, Boda Boda Lounge Video Art Festival, SALTS Art Space, Basel (2021).

Nothando Chiwanga

My work reflects on the issues of self-discovery and reinvention, as well as the rapid metamorphosis of ideas about womanhood in post-colonial society, particularly in Harare. Photography and performance have a great role in everyone’s life. They connect us to our past, places, feelings so that we can understand our identities. I use myself as a medium of art by performing in actions or photographic series. Through photography and performance, I am free to express my emotions – whether good or bad. It also allows me to expand my imagination and confidence. These mediums have enabled me to establish a relationship between the artist and audience.

Nothando Chiwanga (b. 1997) is a Zimbabwean artist who works primarily in performance, photography and collage. Her work is deeply influenced by personal experiences, reinvention and the everyday. She addressed themes such as education, food, bereavement, home tools and traditions in relation to womanhood. Chiwanga uses her body as a medium of memory and fiction to reveal the complex world of young womanhood in a changing society where traditional values are evolving rapidly. Her portraiture displays a skilful use of light and form to create expressionist images.

Chiwanga’s recent exhibitions include Speak, Mnemosyne, curated by Lifang Zhang for National Arts Merit Awards, Zimbabwe (2022); Notes For Tomorrow, curated by Fadzai V. Muchemwa and Independent Curators International, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare (2022); and Young Contemporaries, National Museum, Onikan, Lagos (2022).

Thandolwethu Mamba

During a recent interview it became clear to me that sometimes the dreams that come true are the ones we weren’t even capable of having. But what is also clear to me now is that the tools to achieve those dreams have always been there, passed on to us by our forebears, having been forged by their own capacity and audacity to dare to dream.

Thandolwethu Mamba is a baritone singing actor of outstanding vocal and stagecraft ability who regularly features music from diverse cultures and languages, including music from Sub-Saharan Africa and his homeland. Growing up in the tiny kingdom of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), he had dreams of becoming a medical doctor but discovering his passion for music during his freshman year at Duke University set him on a path to finally embracing his purpose to heal the world from the stage. He is committed to developing the growth of opera as a celebrated and sustainable art form in his home country and the African continent. Currently based in New York, Mamba recently made his Metropolitan Opera debut in X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. 

Recent roles from Mamba’s 2023 season have included title roles in Le Nozze di Figaro and Gianni Schicchi, Baron Duophol in La Traviata, Dancaïro in Carmen, Don Calogero Sedàra in the world premiere of The Leopard, Town Magistrate in Signor Deluso, and Max in Stone Soup with Opera Wilmington, Frost Opera Theater, Si parla, si canta, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and Florida Grand Opera. At the conclusion of his undergraduate career at Duke University, he was awarded the prestigious Louis Sudler Prize as well as the Benenson Award for the Arts.

Breeze Yoko

My work becomes an act of participating in the resuscitation of a communal culture of archiving and collaborative knowledge production, which is not institutionally based but rather holds the artistic imagination of the community from which it comes. The culture of memorialising and remembering within our communities is one that far precedes the contemporary trend of instruction that has replaced it. My works become less of an intervention and more of a contribution to the rejuvenation of an already robust and existing culture of discussion, creation, and production of knowledge in African communities and the diaspora. My work also aims to incorporate time as well as space in a fictional and experiential universe, by merging several seemingly incompatible worlds into a new universe, looking at major points of impact and disruption in history and drawing from personal and shared experiences. The work proposes to possibly initiate further discussions that prioritise histories that exist in said spaces, and begin to imagine the future with past in mind, whilst being soberly located in the present.

Breeze Yoko is a South African multidisciplinary artist and curator specialising in video/film and graffiti/street art. Yoko is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Ubuhle Bendalo urban contemporary art residency programme that champions and promotes the movement, creating new opportunities for the presentation of urban artists and their works. His whimsical yet powerful murals embody a sense of humanity and beauty that reconfigures their surrounding environments. 

Yoko has participated in the Berlinale Talent Campus and in urban art projects in South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Senegal, Germany, France and Sweden, among others. His films have won awards at the Tricontinental Film Festival in South Africa and a special mention at the Siena Film Festival in Italy and Dak’Art in Senegal. Recent exhibitions include Lumka Bhoki ! Ziyaluma ezozinja, 196 Victoria, Cape Town (2023); 1Mixed Media, Uncles Art Dealers, Cape Town (2021); and Motion Bandits, Gallery One11, Cape Town (2021).

Matty Monethi

My work is informed by my own life experiences in relation to the people close to me and the spaces I/we occupy. I started exploring memories because I wanted to make sense of my place in life, in the world and in my family. I was interested in the passage of time and how it affects me, my close relationships and the spaces that we inhabit. My artistic practice is concerned with revisiting these chapters in my life, recalling, reconstructing and retelling experiences. It’s a nostalgic process. There are details I am confident in; there are blank spaces, falsehoods and imaginings that come with memory because it’s always shifting. I paint with the intention of presenting these findings. In my work, there is space for fact and fiction, for presences and absences.

Matty Monethi (b. 1996) was born in Maseru, Lesotho and grew up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Monethi uses painting, printmaking and text to explore the personal dimensions of migration and memory. Drawing on her family and personal photographic archives, she scrutinises her connections with her adopted countries, cultures and close relationships. Monethi completed her Diploma in Fine Art at the Ruth Prowse School of Art in Cape Town in 2016, and specialised in printmaking during her semester abroad at the University of Hertfordshire in 2017. In 2020 Monethi completed a BA Fine Arts at the Wits School of Arts, Johannesburg.

Her recent exhibitions include Hiatus, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town (2023); Women in the Workshop, David Krut Projects, Johannesburg (2023); ART&ANTIQUE Residenz Salzburg, DomQuartier, Salzburg, (2023); 16th ART AUSTRIA Art Fair, Schutz Art Museum, Vienna (2022); and StART Art Fair London, Saatchi Gallery, London (2022).

Indira Mateta

Kisakidilu is about travelling back in time and giving thanks to the ancestors and the deities. It is about returning to the present time with the same spirit of gratitude and being grateful for the continuity. Like buried seeds that sprout, transformed and influenced by their environment, impacted positively or negatively according to the mental state of those who observe and classify them; all this while maintaining the same roots. Memories, igwijo, marimba, sansa, rattles, offerings, nature, introspection, reflection, native languages, various rituals, meanings, struggle, resistance, love, birth, death, beginning, middle and end, number 9: these are some of the keywords at the basis of this work presented here in the form of a DJ set and video artwork.

Indira Mateta (b. 1985) is a multidisciplinary artist who was born and raised in Luanda, Angola. She focuses on the visual and multimedia arts and, most recently, on music in her role as a DJ. Her practice not only spurs her personal discovery as an individual, a woman and a Black African, but also aims to facilitate the same process in others. Topics such as identity, ancestry, spirituality and social activism have been her main driving forces as an artist, always sharing her African heritage and Blackness.

Mateta’s recent group exhibitions include The Power of My Hands, National History Museum, Luanda (2023); Commemoration of World Portuguese Language Day, CPLP Headquarters, Lisbon (2022); and Fala Só (Just Talk), Angolan Artist’s Gallery, Lisbon (2022), where she exhibited her work In(visible).

Euridice Zaituna Kala

The Sea(E)scapes project began in 2015, motivated by the discovery of the wreck of the slave ship São José Paquete África off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. Kala began to retrace the route taken by the ship: leaving Ilha de Mozambique, a historic crossroads in the Indian Ocean, from where Portuguese and French administered their colonies, it disappeared in 1794 with more than 400 slaves on board; 210 children, women and men perished. Others were re-captured, and taken to the initial destination: São Luis do Maranhão in Brazil. The story of this ship escape(s)d Mozambicans. Frustrated at only having access to archives delivered through the Portuguese prism, it became urgent for the artist to reinvest this story. Started in Lisbon, Kala’s research work took her to Ilha de Mozambique and then to Cape Town. This deployment in space became an act of resistance: by surveying a strip of this coastline, she revived this hitherto anecdotal memory. Without wanting to focus solely on a history of slavery, Sea(E)scapes also questions the mechanics of contemporary memory.

Euridice Zaituna Kala (b. 1987) is from Maputo, Mozambique and now lives and works in Paris, France. Kala’s practice is research-led, with a focus on multidisciplinary art forms. Her work questions the appropriation of Black “bodies” through their representation within and outside western archives but, rather than seizing their history, attempts to reaffirm their existence. Kala is a teacher-artist on the Building Worlds course at the Nantes School of Fine Arts and is also the founder and co-organiser of e.a.s.t. (Ephemeral Archival Station), a laboratory and platform for artistic research projects established in 2017.

Kala’s recent solo exhibitions include Sea(E)scapes DNA: Don’t (N)ever Ask, Salon H gallery, Paris (2022); Je suis l’archive, I the archive, Villa Vassilieff, Paris (2020). Selected group exhibitions include Premio Paulo Cunha e Silva , Municipal Gallery, Porto, Portugal (2023); Indigo Waves and Other Stories, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin (2023); and Fata Morgana, Jeu de Paume, Paris (2022).

Manyaku Mashilo

The scene portrayed is a memory that often comes to me in dreams, where my matriarchal figures are wearing white ritual garments like armour and moving through vast cosmological landscapes, journeying towards unknown destinations, and accompanied by prayers, code and symbols. They dance in circles to call upon our ancestors for healing and revelations. The resilience and repetition of movement, dance, song and prayer, are all key in reaching one’s higher spiritual self. We move through space and time with resilience and a shared spiritual knowledge as a tool of healing. The Celestial Cartographies series serves as a visual reminder of journeys past and journeys to come. It is a reminder of Home and our mothers who make Home, despite the systemic challenges they are facing.

Manyaku Mashilo (b. 1991, Limpopo) is an artist based in Cape Town whose multidimensional practice encompasses mixed-media painting, drawing and collage. Mashilo takes inspiration from photographic archives to build expansive scenes where imagined representatives of Blackness migrate through abstract liminal spaces. These scenes act as celestial cartographies, connecting the depicted Black figures through a felt mutuality of heritage, spirituality, shared ritual and intent. 

Mashilo’s recent solo exhibitions include An Order of Being, Southern Guild Gallery, Cape Town (2023); There are other worlds they have not told you of, 99 Loop, Cape Town (2020); and The Possibility of a Journey, Klein Karoo National Arts Festival, Oudtshoorn, South Africa (2020). Her recent group exhibitions include Spectrum: On Color and Contemporary Art, Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; Africa Supernova, Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort, Netherlands; and Rites of Passage, Gagosian, London (all 2023).