There is much debate on the nature of the exhibition structure. Tensions between various models of presentation – solo vs. group, retrospective vs. showcase, etc. – inform the reputations of the institutions that perform them. Directly, or indirectly. Consciously, or unconsciously. The size and duration of any given exhibition is indicative of who may see and be seen, and under which conditions.

The strange swaying of the pandemic’s pendulum between ‘yes’ and ‘no’, and ‘online’ and ‘outside’ has disrupted the rhythms of these models, and brought into question their future formations. Even so, the distinct pleasure of entering a gallery space – just being there – remains one of the gifts I treasure in this life. Alternating deftly between the scale and scope of their presentations, CIRCA’s ongoing ‘Cubicle’ series platforms site-specific installations and “smaller bodies of artworks” for two weeks at a time. 

Multiple disciplines merge between the six artists chosen for the gallery’s first presentation of 2022, including scanography, sculpture, painting, threadwork and claymaking. Ideas refract and react through proximity to the others. Each artist’s offering is held by its own adjacent space. The direction of each conversation evolves through the curation. Downstairs, Warren Maroon’s A Quiet Violence, which instantly made me want to reread the K Sello Duiker novel, sits opposite Yonela Doda’s mixed media-based Joy Sorrow. Maroon’s work challenges the mundane by holding the notion, and its everyday symbols, against the normalisation of racial profiling, violent policing and its cumulative effects on the brown and black communities of South Africa. 

Doda’s work is said to be premised on Josef Breuer’s Catharsis Theory, with the artist “[exploring] her deep connection with both the physical and emotional aspects of painful experiences by reflecting on them through the use of distortion, fragmentation, collage and stitching.” The Fragmented Bodies (2021) series, and Still Stuck on Roxanne (2022), call to me the most, through the stitched, contorting forms and the language of the shapes. There is always the question of what follows trauma,  how it deconstructs the ‘whole’ and distorts our efforts to remake, or return to, or even be free. Which shapes and ideas are made here, what stories do they tell, to whom do they belong? Trying to discern what defines those details is an idea that follows me upstairs.

Mark Rautenbach’s performance and installation, Ariadne’s Thread, which unfolds over the course of the exhibition, faces Elléna Lourens’ emotive contemplation of colour, To Be Loved, while Mishal Weston’s, Everyday Iridescence, and Githan Coopoo’s, The Luxury of Wearing Fakes, approach colour and texture beside one another. Coopoo’s clayworks are a fantastic amalgamation of their fashion origins and the stylings of their self-taught practice. Each ‘bag’ is vivid in both title and compound, placed on equally vibrant pillars: a very chic row. Weston’s work, from a different vantage point, celebrates tone in harmony with Coopoo’s clays. 

Inside of Everyday Iridescence, I find a translucent spider spectre, learn the word scanography, and appreciate the presence of the colour scheme against the hold of the black background. Weston’s vision presents itself here in scale, framing and selection. The use of light in their work strikes me conceptually as kind, a giving glance that honours the presence of all things in the present. As though each image holds each subject suspended, together, by a beauty that is knowable to those who take the time to know it. I have a great admiration for artists who are able to convey any kind of hope, and Weston’s work does so, symbolically, using these found objects.

Lourens’ use of colour expands the overall palette across the way. The muted heat of the acrylics simmers in the undertone of her figurative paintings. Each work is intimate to the next, even on her larger scale murals. 

As a collection, ‘Cubicle’ celebrates a multiformity that ripples outward from the intersections between the artists included. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about artists whose work I hadn’t yet discovered, such as Yonela Doda, alongside artists who I’ve admired for some time, such as Githan Coopoo, and am compelled by the two-week window to visit again as soon as I can. 

Read the full review here: https://artthrob.co.za/2022/01/18/many-threads-in-a-small-window-the-cubicle-series-at-circa/