Kemang Wa Lehulere's Apartheid Era School Desks

Black to the wall, 2018
Reconfigured wood from salvaged school desks, glass bottles with cork tops, sand, paper, ribbon and porcelain dog
Dimensions variable

not even the departed stay grounded, Kemang Wa Lehulere’s first solo exhibition at the Marian Goodman Gallery, has the air full and heavy with knowing. The room is quiet and serene, save for the sound of ceremonial chanting trickling down from upstairs. The shattered fragments of plaster dogs next to the residual dust of freshly used chalk on the floor hint to a recent action, movement without account. The works have been made just this year, but they seem to whisper endless histories, narratives forgotten or ignored, desperate to be released, heard and known. In this exhibition, Lehulere has collapsed time by juxtaposing past lives and untold narratives with the tangible post apartheid unrest still prevalent in his current social, political, and familial relationships.

Lehulere reiterates themes of South Africa’s dark and haunting past and its still present and tense social climate. In when the walls fall, so do the writings on them 2018, he stages an ominous time of a nation divided, schools segregated, and when language is a tool of oppression. Using salvaged school desks, the scene alludes to the Soweto Uprising of 1976. Resin hands hidden amongst the desks are cast of Lehulere’s aunt, a participant in uprising who was shot by police. Though she survived, the trauma proved so effective, she has refused to speak on the incident ever since, inspiring Lehulere’s use of sign language as metaphoric of expression in silence. The worn desks are covered in graffiti, scribbles that Lehulere considers messages to the future. Graffiti is a major form of public art in South Africa, allowing Lehulere to bridge messages from a haunting past seeking brighter future, to the current state of South Africa. A nation still seeking, yet also finding, a voice through mediums not so easily controlled as language.

Lehulere continually links his family's history to the political state of art in South Africa. His use of birdhouses are in part inspired by Gladys Mgudlandlu. Mgudlandlu used motifs of birds to represent freedom, and in using birdhouses Lehulere symbolizes the caging of this freedom, through the discrimination during the apartheid that forced many communities out of their homes and into townships, including Mgudlandlu. In the work Black to the wall 2018, messages in bottles hang, representing the lives and stories of people that are sealed, unheard, and suspended in uncertainty. An uncertainty seemingly orchestrated by acts of white supremacy, represented by the stark white shoelaces that suspend the bottles. Lehulere refers to the importance of remembering when reconciling with the current state of South Africa, which had only found its own form of democratic normalcy through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 1996. Lehulere reiterates the connection of historical legacies and arts agency in revealing lost narratives to heal those still traumatized and affected by post-apartheid unrest.

Building on I cut my skin to liberate the splinter 2017, Lehulere continues to explore his inspiration of Cosmic Africa, in the all encompassing work of Dead Eye 2018. Using the wooden circles left from the birdhouse entrances, Lehulere creates a large circular hanging structure lit from within to illuminate a constellation of shadow patterns surrounding a center or “eye” directly above. Lehulere brings attention to tribal wisdom and indigenous astrology to tease out narratives lost in history, narratives that are controversially argued as unbelieved to many historians in the west. Lehulere is fascinated by the Dogon people of Mali, whose use of indigenous astrological techniques allowed them awareness of a dwarf moon, invisible to the naked eye, that orbits the “Dog Star” called Sirius. European historians have argued the inability of the Dogon people’s capacity to obtain this type of knowledge. Lehulere aims to reveal the racist repuditions of assuming this inability of knowledge and its reflection in the current state of denial in opportunities for young Black South Africans. This untold narrative demonstrates that the absence of these narratives in historical legacies, and how the affect of this absence still flows to oppressive social climates today.

Drawing on years of social activism, Lehulere confronts themes of post apartheid unrest through the juxtaposition and recounting of past narratives untold. In this way he collapses time and brings attention to residual trauma that remains. His use of themes of suspension, falling, and the disloyalty of language, are expressive of arts agency to heal, to share, and to revise oppressive social perceptions still residual today.