Nicholas Hlobo: Kwatsityw'iziko

NICHOLAS HLOBO K WAT S I T Y W’I Z I KO

MICHAEL STEVENSON Hill House De Smidt Street Green Point 8005 PO Box 616 Green Point 8051 Cape Town T +27 (0)21 421 2575 F +27 (0)21 421 2578 FROM MAY 2008 Ground floor Buchanan Building 160 Sir Lowry Road Woodstock 7925 Cape Town T +27 (0)21 462 1500 F +27 (0)21 462 1501 info@michaelstevenson.com www.michaelstevenson.com

Cover Phulaphulani (detail), 2008, ribbon, rubber, thread, fabric, iPod earphones on Fabriano paper

NICHOLAS HLOBO K WAT S I T Y W’I Z I KO 6

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‘Kwatsityw’iziko means “crossing the hearth” and refers, most literally, to sex. In Xhosa culture, as in many European traditions, married couples sleep in separate beds. To initiate intimacy, one has to cross the centre of the room, where one would traditionally find the hearth. If Izele spoke of birth, this show speaks of what happens before the birth, what causes the birth.’ – Nicholas Hlobo

Phulaphulani Phulaphulani (detail) (detail) 2008 2008 Ribbon, thread,fabric, fabric,iPod iPodearphones earphones Fabriano paper Ribbon, rubber, rubber, thread, onon Fabriano paper 150 150 x 250cm

Phulaphulani 2008 Ribbon, rubber, thread, fabric, iPod earphones on Fabriano paper 150 x 250cm

Umphokoqo 2008 Ribbon, rubber on Fabriano paper 71 x 99cm

Injeke 2008 Ribbon, rubber on Fabriano paper 71 x 99cm

Igaz’lam 2008 Ribbon, rubber on Fabriano paper 71 x 99cm

Okweengxangxasi 2008 Ribbon, rubber on Fabriano paper 150 x 250cm

Undwendwe 2008 Leather, rubber, ribbon 20 x 800 x 55cm (dimensions variable)

Izinqanda mathe 2008 Saddle, ribbon, rubber, chains 130 x 138 x 105cm Left: Installation view with Visual diary

Visual diary 2008 Pencil, pen, markers, ribbon, rubber, leather, paper on fabric 235 x 1240cm

Ungamqhawuli 2008 Vinyl, ribbon, fabric, wood, synthetic ropes, pulley, hooks 155 x 125 x 64cm (excluding ropes)

Ungamqhawuli 2008 Performance at Michael Stevenson Gallery, 6 March 2008 Vinyl, ribbon, fabric, wood, synthetic ropes, pulley, hooks 155 x 125 x 64cm (excluding ropes)

Ndimnandi ndindodwa 2008 Chair, vinyl, rubber, ribbon, organza, silicone 115 x 270 x 155cm (dimensions variable)

Ndimnandi ndindodwa 2008 Chair, vinyl, rubber, ribbon, organza, silicone 115 x 270 x 155cm (dimensions variable) Installation view with Phulaphulani

This page and overleaf Chumisa 2008 Gauze, organza, polyester, ribbon, batting, steel cable 3 x 7 x 10m (dimensions variable)

Nicholas Hlobo in conversation with Joost Bosland

Your first exhibition was called Izele, ‘birth’. In a later performance, Amaqanda’am, you responded to those who said you’d never have children because you are gay that you are now surrounded by your children, namely your sculptures. How does Kwatsityw’iziko fit in to this narrative?

Kwatsityw’iziko means ‘crossing the hearth’ and refers, most literally, to sex. In Xhosa culture, as in many European traditions, married couples sleep in separate beds. To initiate intimacy, one has to cross the centre of the room, where one would traditionally find the hearth. If Izele spoke of birth, this show speaks of what happens before the birth, what causes the birth.

You have said before that being a child was the best time you ever had. Does that relate to the liberty of being in your studio?

When you are a child, your mother is there, your father, grandmother, your aunts are there, and most things that you ask for, you are given. You do not know what it takes to put food on the table; it is not your concern. You have responsibilities that are very serious to you, but it is not like being an adult where you have to pay the bills, and where you get to understand how hard it is to be a human being and to exist among other people. If you are a child, even if you’re heartbroken, it will pass.

In my studio, I go around singing, making noise. If people looked through the window they would think I was going mad. Being able to enjoy the freedoms you create for yourself is childlike. Children tend to fantasise and they make things that do not exist exist, and believe in them.

The performance sculpture, Ungamqhawuli, recalls a baby’s cot or perhaps a straitjacket. During the performance, where you were strapped into the cot and used the pulley to lift yourself off the floor, there was a loud click as you approached the ceiling. For a split second, it seemed as if the contraption was about to snap.

I heard it, hence I stopped. The sculpture was being picky about how it was used. The title means ‘to cut off’ or ‘to interrupt’. But it is used in an expression, ‘the kids were playing and the swing snapped’, when all hell breaks loose.

This was probably your most simple, distilled performance to date. You have previously worked with musicians, and you have paraded around the gallery. Why did you make this choice?

I watch recordings of my previous performances. Some of them might have been too entertaining. For this show, I felt it had to be quiet. Imagine a couple crossing the hearth, they would be very quiet to make sure the people in the next room can’t hear them. This sculpture looks at a child, a grown-up child who is deformed, or perhaps an adult longing to be a child. When they take you out for the first time you have to be a good child, stay quiet and behave well, so that they take you out again, and then you have grown a little.

You say that you don’t really see a difference between your sculptures and your paper works. I disagree.

The sculptures are usually strongly narrative, while the ‘drawings’ are often more abstract, associative or dreamlike.

They bear similar qualities because of the stitching and the rubber. They are part of the same family. My drawings may be my gay children. In all seriousness, the surface of the drawings is a lot more controlled. The rectangular shape and limited size restrict you in how far you can go.

The title of the paper work Igaz’lam means ‘my blood’, as in ‘my people’. For some strange reason I drew the DNA structure. In Xhosa, we don’t call it ‘DNA’, we use ‘igazi’. You can also use ‘igaz’lam’ to refer to a close friend, like a blood brother. Injeke is offal, but it also refers to badly maintained feet. The title refers to the last intervention I made on the work, which formally resembles injeke. Umphokoqo is a form of dry mieliepap (maize meal), but it also can mean smegma. It was funny paper, very porous and soft.

New in this show are large paper works. The title of one of them, Phulaphulani, means ‘listen’?

That’s right. But ‘phula’ is to break. So listening is breaking down information from the source. You pick what you want, take it apart.

Could one say this reflects your approach to art-making?

Perhaps. I break stuff down from the source. In many instances I become the source myself and generate information for others. But I also take it from somewhere, break it down, to create my own understanding and meaning and pass it on to the next person. The title of this piece was directly inspired by the iPod earphones, a very foreign material in my work; these were the earphones I used until they were eaten by a field mouse that I sort of adopted. I tried to poison it but those creatures don’t die. You can look at the drawing without knowing any of this, but in my head I know what those shapes resemble. There are a lot of very sexualised references …

But it is also sensuous, beautiful. It is about form, and what ribbon can achieve on paper.

Even though I talk about these larger issues around identity, I have started looking at materials and building relationships between very different materials. Or, if it is the same material, I really shape it or mould it to create a particular shape I want to achieve. I could be painting my stories but I am not, I am choosing these materials.

There is also a strong dialogue between my drawings and sculptures, especially where there are these sinuous or meandering lines. The technique and patterns are very similar to the ones I would use on rubber.

The title of the large chair, Ndimnandi ndindodwa, literally translates as ‘to get excited all alone’, which presumably refers to masturbation.

My work is always quite sexually charged. I see it as the well I draw water from. When I first heard the term I thought it was quite humorous. It was used to refer to that moment in a large family when someone is trying to get in to the bedroom at the wrong time, when it is already being used by someone getting excited all alone. But the chair refers to other, darker things. It relates to power – look at Bill Clinton or Nicolas Sarkozy. Power and sexual prowess are closely linked. The wars we have all relate to sex. I use it as a metaphor for self-gratification, selfishness. One may be surrounded by people, but one does not relate to them. When one is selfish one becomes very arrogant. For some strange reason, the piece was very stubborn and arrogant – I really had to strangle it to get it to sing the song it is singing now. The organza, in turn, suggests it might also be a female ruler, a queen.

When you use Xhosa to construct your mythology, are you simply using it because it is a language available to you, or does it inform the mythology in some deeper sense?

I look at the formal qualities of the grammar, the words, and take my meaning from there. I’ll pronounce it, listen to its sounds. But also it helps me with my larger project, to explore my identity. To me it is a good point to start from, or to dwell on. It is a very rich language, it has many proverbs, metaphors. Within the language, you have specific languages for subsets of society, like married women or initiates. For example, if a woman is married into a family, she is not allowed to mention its father’s name for the rest of her life. If she finds herself in a situation where she needs a word resembling that name, she’ll have to find a synonym or some other way of describing it. There is also a register specifically used for gossip. You could be sitting in the midst of a gossip circle, joining in, laughing, but because of the use of fictional names, associative language and subtle innuendo you might not realise you are the subject of the story. The Xhosa like playing mind games.

As do you. Thinking about your relationship to language, the band Sigur Ros comes to mind. They sing in old Icelandic, using a language inaccessible and unknown to most of their audience, yet it is not an invented language.

Yes, I quite like their music. I think we are both quite elitist. There is a similarity in some of Willem Boshoff’s work, where he uses existing English words that are beyond the grasp of most native English speakers. My visual diary, for example, reveals quite a bit about this show, but many people won’t be able to decipher it.

It is easy to forget that what you’re doing is radical: consistently using Xhosa titles, and interweaving the language with your art. There are, for example, few novels or plays written in Xhosa.

I suppose, though I am happy to see that a number of younger artists have started using languages other than English and Afrikaans in their titles. Maybe I am having an impact. But what you say about novels is true, because I think we have embraced English, despite our colonial past. Perhaps because many, many years ago the missionaries arrived …

It can’t just be that. You have a strong affinity for colonial architecture and furniture. Ndimnandi ndindodwa, for example, is built around a colonial-style chair. Where does this affinity come from?

Growing up in the Transkei, I saw all these traces of another culture that is part of our culture. Because of our location we have been meeting people, traders, settlers, for a long time. I have been born into this country, where it is difficult to separate influences. Many Xhosa rituals have absorbed certain English customs, like drinking brandy among men, or dressing up in a checkered jacket and a cap. The Xhosa have never really rejected foreign influences.

If you can’t beat them, join them, right? Personally, I love those influences, colonial and traditional.

You’re making it sound like you are a typical Xhosa.

I think I’m very traditional.

February/March 2008, Johannesburg and Cape Town

Nicholas Hlobo Born Cape Town, 1975. Lives and works in Johannesburg Graduated from Technikon Witwatersrand with B Tech degree, 2002

Solo exhibitions 2008 #11 in Momentum series, ICA Boston, Massachusetts (upcoming) Kwatsityw’iziko, Michael Stevenson, Cape Town 2007 Umdudo, Aardklop National Arts Festival, Potchefstroom

Klein Karoo National Arts Festival, Oudtshoorn, South Africa 10 Years 100 Artists, Bell-Roberts Gallery, Cape Town 2004 Negotiate: Intercession, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg Mine(d) Fields, Stadtgalerie, Bern, Switzerland

Umakadenethwa engenadyasi, Extraspazio, Rome

A Decade of Democracy: Witnessing South Africa, Museum of the

Idiom[s], Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, Georgia

National Center of Afro-American Artists, Boston, Massachusetts,

2006 Izele, Michael Stevenson, Cape Town

USA (travelling to Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA; KZNSA Gallery, Durban, 2005)

Selected group exhibitions 2008 Flow, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York .ZA: Giovane arte dal Sudafrica, Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena, Italy 2007 BoysCraft, Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel

Show Us What You’re Made Of II, The Premises, Johannesburg 2003 Makeshift, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg 18th Absa L’Atelier Exhibition, Absa Gallery, Johannesburg 2002 Technikon Witwatersrand Fine Art exhibition, MuseumAfrica,

Legacy of Men, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg

Johannesburg

Impossible Monsters, Art Extra, Johannesburg

Jo’burg Art City, The Fort, Constitution Hill, Johannesburg

Turbulence: Art from South Africa, Hangar-7, Salzburg, Austria Summer 2007/8, Michael Stevenson , Cape Town 2006 Second to None, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town Olvida quien soy – Erase me from who I am, Centro Atlantico de

17th Absa L’Atelier Exhibition, Absa Gallery, Johannesburg 2001 Technikon Witwatersrand Fine Art exhibition, MuseumAfrica, Johannesburg 1998 Artist Proof Studio Exhibition, Cape Town

Arte Moderno, Las Palmas, Canary Islands 2005 Synergy, Iziko Old Town House Museum, Cape Town

Awards and residencies

Inventors, Makers and Movers, Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam

2006 Ampersand Foundation Fellowship for 2007

In the Making: Materials and process, Michael Stevenson, Cape Town

2006 Tollman Award for Visual Art 2006

Take Me to the River, Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria

2005 Three-month residency at Thami Mnyele Foundation,

Subject to Change, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Artist’s acknowledgements I thank my parents (uNondzaba noMamTolo), my grandmother Victoria Gabela (intombi ka Morrison), James Cathels, Linda Gabela, Ayanda Ndwangu, Kamogelo Mokhonki and Musa Pienaar. I also thank Michael and the team at Michael Stevenson – nangamso, ize lembewu niyityalayo ichume yondle izizwe zonke.

Catalogue no 34 April 2008 Editor Sophie Perryer Design Gabrielle Guy Photography Mario Todeschini Image repro Ray du Toit Printing Hansa Print, Cape Town