CUBICLE Series January 2024

Cubicle is an ongoing platform at CIRCA Cape Town, giving artists scope to exhibit smaller bodies of artworks and site-specific installations for a two week period.

Featuring:

MPUMELELO BUTHELEZI | UKUZIHLUKANISA//ISOLATION

LUCA EVANS | CRASH BANG PFFFFT

INKA KENDZIA | (embrace)

TUSEVO LANDU | CHILL BRO, IT’S NOT THAT DEEP

CHRISTOPHER PETER | PORTRAYING MY LIFE (CELEBRATING IN THE DEEP RAVINE OF EVERLASTING LONGING...)

ERIKA SUTER | MAYBE TOMORROW

Artist walkabout & finissage: 10:30 Saturday 27^th January  

Installation images by Mia Thom

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MPUMELELO BUTHELEZI (Shenge, Sokwalisa, Mnyamana kaNgqengelele, Phungashe, Sondiya) |  UKUZIHLUKANISA

In Ukuzihlukanisa (Isolation), Mpumelelo Buthelezi explores self-reflection, identity and spirituality through black and white digital photographs. Through a series of self-portraits and portraits, he has produced a new body of work that takes inspiration from the isolation experienced during the national lockdown. In the initial stages of development, Buthelezi used his bedroom as a studio to make the self-portraits, seen in the choice of props used by the artist: bubble wrap, tin foil, lace fabric, bed sheets and other ordinary materials found in a home.

This body of work asks us to consider a time when humankind as described in the bible was holy and without sin. Could this be Buthelezi’s way of coping with the isolation and the global pandemic that exposed the true nature of man? In essence, this work is about what it means to be human; an existential question that most people grapple with, even more so during the isolation of quarantine implemented during the first national lockdown. Buthelezi came face-to-face with the precariousness of (Black) life and in turn sought aid from what he perceived as an entity beyond the self.

LUCA EVANS | CRASH BANG PFFFFT

Sound is crunchy and glitchy and stretchy. It fills space.

How do you write sound? How do you signify it? Text and sound bump into each other and spill out.

Words work hard. They signify meanings and ideas and actions all at once. Sound words work hard too; it’s not easy signifying sound. Our lexicons are filled with onomatopoeia. Chomp, hiccough, beep, fizz, splash, pop, honk, crack, thud, oomph.  

I used to work in linguistics. We transcribed sound, rendering it legible. They made an international alphabet of sounds. kɹæʃ bæŋ pft.

Comic book writers signify sound too. They spell out sounds that kids can read. Crash bang pfffft. They splice pictures and text to make the sounds boom off the pages. Comic book writers make great linguists.

If you think about language too much your head starts fizzing. 

Signification is crunchy and glitchy and stretchy. Words and objects and ideas bump into each other.

Sometimes objects can work like words; they can be interchangeable. Sometimes they fail. There’s so much energy in falling.

So I started wondering if maybe objects can be sounds. See a mousetrap and hear a snap. This room is filled with sounds. It’s a cacophony, but your head has to fill in the sounds.

INKA KENDZIA | (embrace)

In this installation I use salt crystals from Namibia – my place of birth. In many religious practices and cultures, salt signifies preservation and the binding of a spiritual covenant. The use of salt in rituals – like sprinkling during ceremonies or forming protective barriers – showcases its significance in warding off negative energies. In Buddhist tradition, salt repels evil spirits.

I wish to speak of those broken places inside us all which break things outside of us. The need to embrace these, to listen, to hold and hug, go into, deeper and deeper, to find the roots… all of this, to let go…

May all beings be safe and protected.

May all beings be free.

TUSEVO LANDU | CHILL BRO, IT’S NOT THAT DEEP

Chill bro, it’s not that deep takes viewers on an introspective journey, with the intention of challenging social norms by sparking meaningful discussions on capitalism, identity, façade, reality and mental health.

The title of the body of work reveals how often in life we swiftly choose to shut our own mouths or inhibit the responses of others in order to avoid accountability. Rather than taking responsibility for our words, narcissism in the name of self-preservation is revealed through our actions.

For the artist, this series of paintings and found-object sculptures illustrates the hopes, fears, struggles, beauty and aspiration of the marginalized people in the world marred by racism and other forms inequality.

CHRISTOPHER PETER | PORTRAYING MY LIFE (CELEBRATING IN THE DEEP RAVINE OF EVERLASTING LONGING...)

Christopher Peter was born on a sheep farm in the Stutterheim district, formerly the Border, now the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Attended various boarding schools meant periods away from home. The school holidays, and the joy of these times with his parents and brother and sisters (as opposed to the relative austerity of a boys’ boarding school) were the well spring of Peter’s creative imagination. This was underpinned by the close community of the farm and its surroundings: the river, the veld, the beloved kloofs and valleys and the garden, which was a fantasy playland.

Peter attended the Port Elizabeth Technikon Art School, graduating with a Diploma in Fine Art and Design in 1976. The foundation year in 1974, with a strong emphasis on drawing, led to him using pencil crayons as paint – a method of picture making which inspires the artist still.

ERIKA SUTER | MAYBE TOMORROW

Ideologies that perpetuate power imbalances direct our world. Woven into the fabric of society, they are invisible, seemingly natural. This phenomenon is exacerbated by our subjectivity – the inability to see anything but our own perspective. The result is a perpetual hierarchy of winners and losers, with patent consequences.

The work in this exhibition repeats the image of the horse and rider to metaphorically signify the uneven power relationships that are rife everywhere – in politics, economics and our anthropocentric relationship with the environment and non-human animals. Additionally, the image has messianic connotations, religion being a fourth variable that is referred to in the work.

The work expresses a longing for the transcendence of humanity beyond where we find ourselves now. This is echoed in the exhibition's title, MAYBE TOMORROW. With members of the audience bringing diverse beliefs, perspectives and experiences to the work, it stimulates awareness of subjectivity as these multiple readings emerge. Each response, located in ideology, represents a 'small framework of thinking'. The range of responses, however, merely represents a collection of small frameworks, and does not equate the achievement of a larger, unifying one. Whether humanity can move beyond narrow ideology, and even the acknowledgement of subjectivity, is the question.