Powerful exhibition at KZNSA Gallery explores love through races
This curatorial essay takes the late Lewis Nkosi's novel 'Mating Birds' as a starting point.
Start the year with a dose of powerful women-led art at the KZNSA Gallery’s first exhibition of 2019: Mating Birds Vol.2.
This curatorial essay takes the late Lewis Nkosi’s novel ‘Mating Birds’ as a starting point.
Published in 1983/86 Nkosi’s novel is set in Durban’s segregated beaches and narrated by a black man awaiting execution for allegedly raping a white woman.
The novel is used to visualize the troublesome histories associated with the Immorality Acts of the parliament of colonial and apartheid South Africa.
The effects of these Acts are shown through the staging of an exhibition that draws on original artwork as well as reference material from art, literature, philosophy, legal documents, letters, newspaper clippings and exhibition catalogues.
The essay exposes how contemporary perspectives on sex, sexuality and sexual relationships have been shaped, contested or maintained.
“Mating Birds” can be understood as a story about the distortion of intimate relationships in apartheid South Africa.
Curated by Gabi Ngcobo with Sumayya Menezes and Zinhle Khumalo, Mating Birds Vol.2 uses the exhibition floor to map how artists have intervened in the space of sexual politics and continue to reshape the visual vocabulary of sexuality and sexual freedoms while questioning the way bodies are still impacted by the residual nature of repressing colonial and apartheid policies.
The exhibition features artists Billie Zangewa, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Lady Skollie, Sabelo Mlangeni, Simnikiwe Buhlungu, Tracey Rose and Trevor Makhoba. Reference materials are drawn from literature, including Bessie Head, Lebo Mashile, Lewis Nkosi, Makhosazana Xaba and Zakes Mda, as well philosophical texts, historical archives and other sources.
The exhibition opens Thursday, January 17 at 6pm and is showing till February 10 in the main, mezzanine and media galleries. A walkabout with the curators and participating artists is on Friday January 18 at 10am.
Entry is free and all are welcome.
Mating Birds Vol. 2 is made possible with funding from the Department of Arts and Culture.
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