Buhlebezwe Siwani, Ziyayokozela, 2017, 10’45’’
Sammy Baloji, Aequare: the Future that Never Was, 2023, 21’04’’
video loop
22 September 2024, 4 pm – 10.30 pm, auditorium
#Sonata #Supplement
Buhlebezwe Siwani, Ziyayokozela, 2017, 10’45’’
Courtesy the artist and Madragoa, Lisbon
Ziyayokozela is the record of a ritual of remembering and healing. The video focuses on a historical moment: the shipwreck of SS Mendi in February 1917 on the coast of the Isle of Wigh, when the cargo ship Darro accidentally rammed Mendi’s starboard quarter. Siwani focused on the returning of the troubled spirits of those who perished in this accident, which resulted in the deaths of 646 people, the majority of whom were black South African men from The South African Native Labour Corps.
Sammy Baloji, Aequare: the Future that Never Was, 2023, 21’04’’
The artist mixes commercials from the colonial era about agriculture and mining in Congo with contemporary film material. With Aequare: the Future that Never Was Baloji addresses the legacy of colonialism and the ecological destruction it has caused: the second largest rainforest in the world—surrounding Yangambi and also the Yangambi Science Centre—bear witness to a dissonance resulting from “acclimatisation, scientific control and territorial appropriation of Africa by Western colonists“.
BUHLEBEZWE SIWANI (Johannesburg, 1987) works with performance, photography, sculpture and installation questioning the patriarchal framing of the black female body and experience rooted the South African context. As a Sangoma, a spiritual healer that works within the space of the death and the living, Siwani focuses her artistic practice into rituality and the relationship between Christianity and African spirituality, between ancestral rituals and modern life, touching social and political topics such as the female body, black communities, histories of colonization and the paradoxes of our contemporary society, all seen through the filter of the her own biography and experience. Siwani completed her BFA at the Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg in 2011 and her MFA at the Michealis School of Fine Arts in 2015. She has exhibited at the Michaelis Galleries in Cape Town, a site-specific exhibition in collaboration with APEX Art, New York City, in 13th Avenue, Alexandra township, Commune 1, and Stevenson in Cape Town. She lives and works between Amsterdam and Cape Town.
SAMMY BALOJI (Lubumbashi, DR Congo, 1978) lives and works between Lubumbashi and Brussels. Sammy Baloji received a degree in Information and Communication Sciences from the University of Lubumbashi and a degree from the Haute Ecole des Arts du Rhin. In September 2019 he started his PhD artistic research project Contemporary Kasala and Lukasa: towards a Reconfiguration of Identity and Geopolitics at Sint Lucas Antwerpen. Since 2005, Sammy Baloji has been exploring the memory and history of the Democratic Republic of Congo. His work is an ongoing research on the cultural, architectural and industrial heritage of the Katanga region, as well as a questioning of the impact of Belgian colonization. His use of photographic archives allows him to manipulate time and space, comparing ancient colonial narratives with contemporary economic imperialism. His video works, installations and photographic series highlight how identities are shaped, transformed, perverted and reinvented.
Free admission untill capacity is reached
Via Nizza 138
Media partner: Zero