ART CITIES:Berlin-Kemang Wa Lehulere

Kemang Wa Lehulere, Does this Mirror Have a Memory 7, 2015, Left: Drawing in collaboration with Sophia Lehulere, 2015, Chalk on blackboard, 70 x 100 cm, Right: Untitled painting by Gladys Mgudlandlu, undated, Gouache on paper, 51 x 70 cm, © Kemang Wa Lehulere, Sophia Lehulere, Gladys Mgudlandlu, Courtesy STEVENSON Cape Town, Johannesburg, Deutsche Bank KunstHalle ArchiveKemang Wa Lehulere was born Cape Town, he is perceived as one of the important representatives of a new generation of South African artists who work in all different kinds of genres and media in order to develop new artistic perspectives and narrative modes, as well as new forms of political action.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Deutsche Bank KunstHalle Archive

Kemang Wa Lehulere presents “Bird Song”, his first solo exhibition on Germany at Deutsche Bank KunstHalle in Berlin. After studying performing and visual arts at a local community center, and working for a television production company, Kemang Wa Lehulere helped found Gugulective, an arts collective in Gugulethu in 2006. He created videos and performance work.  He was a founder of another collective, the Center for Historical Reenactments, while earning a fine-arts degree at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. It was only in 2015 that Wa Lehulere first worked individually. “It was a turning point,” he says. His work, which now includes installations in addition to painting, theatre, performance, and actions, focuses on the repressed history of his home country South Africa. At the beginning of the exhibition a bird is freed symbolically. Wa Lehulere’s photograph shows a seemingly archeological situation. Peeping out of a rectangular field chiseled out of reddish plaster is a segment of a mural picturing a colorful bird. It was painted by Gladys Mgudlandlu one of the first black artists to exhibit work in a South African gallery, in the ‘60s, who adorned her house in Gugulethu, with the wall painting.  Wa Lehulere’s research led to a new reception of Mgudlandlu’s oeuvre. Yet he is concerned with much more than the rehabilitation and rediscovery of an artist. The installation in the first section of the exhibition “My Apologies to Time” (2017), consists of old school desks. After dismantling them, Wa Lehulere made birdhouses out of the desktops and used the steel legs as connecting elements. Birdhouses are both protected breeding sites and instruments of domestication. The only bird on view is stuffed. Schools can be breeding grounds for thought, but also ideological instruments of control and conditioning. The same section includes Gladys Mgudlandlu’s paper works painted on both sides. In the exhibition, they correspond in pairs with Wa Lehulere’s own works – as a kind of dialogue between South Africa’s present and past. During apartheid, it was an act of resistance when a black woman painted a bird or a tree. That alone was deemed a political action. But a closer look reveals that Gladys Mgudlandlu’s birds and landscapes might not only be about freedom, but also about black people being driven out of their homes. This issue is investigated in the video “Homeless Song 5” (2017), investigates the hypothesis that Mgudlandlu’s landscapes might be depictions of the rocky hills and huts of Luyolo. The black inhabitants of this township were forced to resettle to Gugulethu in the 1960s after it was declared a white residential area. The installation “Broken Wing” (2016), is also made from old school desks. In a wing formation, crutch-like structures hang from the ceiling. Extending between the crutches are sets of teeth. These teeth are pressed like screw clamps in Bibles in the language of the Xhosa tribe. With this installation, Wa Lehulere is reacting to the former colonial conditions.

Info: Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, Unter den Linden 13-15, Berlin, Duration: 24/3-18/6/17, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-20:00, www.deutsche-bank-kunsthalle.de

Kemang Wa Lehulere, My Apologies to Time, 2017, Installation, mixed media, Variable dimentions, © Kemang Wa Lehulere, Courtesy STEVENSON Cape Town/ Johannesburg, Deutsche Bank KunstHalle Archive
Kemang Wa Lehulere, My Apologies to Time, 2017, Installation, mixed media, Variable dimensions, © Kemang Wa Lehulere, Courtesy STEVENSON Cape Town/ Johannesburg

 

 

Kemang Wa Lehulere, The Bird Lady in Nine Layers of Time (Video still), 2015, Documentation (restoration of the mural at Gladys Mgudlandlu’s former home in Gugulethu), Digital video, 9 Min 57 Sec, © Kemang Wa Lehulere, Courtesy STEVENSON Cape Town/ Johannesburg, Deutsche Bank KunstHalle Archive
Kemang Wa Lehulere, The Bird Lady in Nine Layers of Time (Video still), 2015, Documentation (restoration of the mural at Gladys Mgudlandlu’s former home in Gugulethu), Digital video, 9 Min 57 Sec, © Kemang Wa Lehulere, Courtesy STEVENSON Cape Town/ Johannesburg

 

 

Kemang Wa Lehulere, Lefu la ntate, 2016, Hair, glue on stretched canvas, 131 x 180 x 5.5 cm, © bpk/The Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource NY, Deutsche Bank KunstHalle Archive
Kemang Wa Lehulere, Lefu la ntate, 2016, Hair, glue on stretched canvas, 131 x 180 x 5.5 cm, © bpk/The Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource NY

 

 

Kemang Wa Lehulere, Broken Wing, 2016, Wood from salvaged school desks, dentures, Xhosa bibles, 135 x 26 x 14 cm, © Kemang Wa Lehulere, Courtesy STEVENSON Cape Town/ Johannesburg, Deutsche Bank KunstHalle Archive
Kemang Wa Lehulere, Broken Wing, 2016, Wood from salvaged school desks, dentures, Xhosa bibles, 135 x 26 x 14 cm, © Kemang Wa Lehulere, Courtesy STEVENSON Cape Town/ Johannesburg