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Cover Silent Embrace, 2007 (detail)
INGABISA 16 AUGUST - 15 SEPTEMBER 2007
ThE FRAGIlE PERSISTENcE oF MEMoRy by Bettina Malcomess
‘… what do we learn about memory itself by looking at the way in which artists struggle and dialogue with it, in full knowledge of its unreliability and treacherousness, its vulnerability to power, its frailty?’ Olu Oguibe, ‘Medium, Memory, Image’, The Culture Game
Nandipha Mntambo works in a medium whose very substance as sculptural
In retaining the ‘animal’ traces of the material, Mntambo’s work explores
material depends on the fragility of memory. To reduce her work to the particular
the limits of what is assumed to be attractive or repulsive. Expectations of
cultural and historical significance of cowhide in a South African context is to
ideal feminine beauty are disrupted by the hide’s strong animal smell, mixed
misinterpret the delicate line between culture, history and memory that her
with the chemical smell of resin, and the texture of hair, which varies from
work traverses. Her ‘figures’ are the result of a process of casting the hide over
smooth and svelte to coarse and thick. For the artist, working with cowhide is
moulds of her own body and that of her mother. They carry visible traces of
both punishment and reward. In a gruelling process she herself grinds away
the artist’s process: of nicks and marks made by the strings that attached them
the salted layers of fat on the inside of the hide. Once it is clean she applies
to moulds, of the time taken to dry. It is the material itself that remembers the
tanning chemicals. The hide is then stretched over a cast of her own body. As
shape of a body that remains necessarily absent.
the material is sensitive to humidity, rain, warmth and cold, Mntambo cannot
The Nguni cultural practices associated with Mntambo’s chosen medium
predict how it will dry. What remains is a kind of residue of this process, sealed
are less inherent than inherited, and are often imposed on her along with
with resin and polyester mesh. Suspending the work by wax cord adds to the
assumptions about what it means to be a black woman artist working in
viewer’s sense of both the presence and absence of a physical body.
contemporary South Africa. Mntambo defines herself as existing between
Indlovukati, cast from a strikingly lighter-coloured hide, reads as both
several worlds, and refuses to be located in one particular identity. Her initial
figure and dress, sensual yet elusive. On the reverse side it becomes a hollow,
choice to use only her own body as subject is an important strategy for taking
a negative of the cast, a skin that one could almost step into. Viewers are
control of the representation of the female body, outside of the expectations
similarly invited to explore the negative space between figures in a work
of feminine beauty, both Western and African. She aligns herself with many
such as The Fighters. Cast respectively from brown and black hides, these
contemporary South African artists who explore the limits of the representation
two figures are hung as if about to bump chests. They are far enough apart
of female form outside of simply objectifying it. Yet it is Mntambo’s interest in the
to give the impression that the viewer could carefully edge into the space
control, or more often lack of control, over the particular medium she has chosen
between the figures, literally intervening in what could be a conflict but also
to work in that makes for her unusual sculptural language.
a choreographed embrace. The tension between the figures is ambiguous,
implying movement both towards and away from each other. Several
a document of apartheid history and her own personal history, articulated
possibilities of interpretation between dance and fight are kept in play.
both as memory and physical, genetic trace. Each figure is distinguished
In the complementary sculptures, Lelive Lami and Iqaba Lami, a fragment
by the texture and colour of the hide, as well as the way the material was
of a figure is extended to become a dress. The bustle of Iqaba Lami is formed
cut, shaped and dried. Photographed against a white background, with no
out of cascading layers of the faces of cows, arranged so that hollows of eyes
shadow, the negative spaces between the prints assume a sculptural quality.
and lips are visible. This work makes reference to a 19th-century practice of
They must be read in relation to one another, a kind of frieze of fragments.
the women of the Herero tribe in Namibia who fashioned traditional dress
Arms held upward, just above eye level, their gestures are simultaneously
that incorporated the bustle. As such the work ‘looks back’ at a tradition
protective, submissive and threatening. It is up to the viewer to trace out a
somewhere between European and African, yet with an acute sense of loss.
form, now in terms particular to the photographic medium and its exacting
The title means ‘traditionalist’, but also carries the negative connotations of
capacity to remember. In a reverse process, sculptural fragment here
‘primitive’. Its melancholia is perhaps lightened by the forward movement
becomes the photographic negative from which figures are reconstituted
of Lelive Lami, the only work standing as opposed to suspended. While the
by relationships between light and dark, flatness and depth, focuses soft and
figure almost metamorphoses out of the beautiful trail of tails, one also gets
hard. This embrace is visual, silent.
a sense of the past as inescapable, a set of ‘tales’ roughly sutured onto an emerging self. Mntambo’s Silent Embrace, a series of 11 photographic prints, is the
The title of Mntambo’s first solo show, Ingabisa, is a Swazi word referring to a young girl’s coming of age. It is not marked by any ceremony equivalent to circumcision, but best describes a moment of transition from youth and
work that places itself most poetically between the past and the present.
privacy, a readiness for entry into a more public sphere of eligibility and
Each is a photographic translation of one of the 11 figures that make up
independence. Once again, however, the work resists such simple translation.
the sculptural installation, Beginning of the Empire. The sculpture was in fact
Mntambo essentially engages transition with sensitivity to the fragility and
inspired by a photograph of mineworkers taken in 1968 by Peter Magubane.
resilience of medium and memory as those things that constitute the self in
Here Mntambo chose her mother’s body to explore the relationship between
the very moment it emerges from them.
Balandzeli 2004 Cowhide, resin, waxed cord 137 x 360 x 70cm Collection of Johannesburg Art Gallery
Deity 2004 Cowhide, resin, waxed cord, bone, bronze 60 x 114 x 74cm
Idle 2004 Cowhide, resin, polyester mesh, steel, plastic 3 figures, 90 x 47 x 59cm each
Purge and Stepping into Self 2005 Cowhide, resin, polyester mesh, waxed cord, bones, glass beads Purge: 154 x 116 x 94cm; Stepping into Self: 74 x 115 x 92cm Collection of Iziko South African National Gallery
Purge (detail)
Iqaba Lami 2007 Cowhide, cows’ faces, resin, polyester mesh, waxed cord 150 x 115 x 75cm
Lelive Lami 2007 Cowhide, cows’ tails, resin, polyester mesh 180 x 290 x 200cm
Lelive Lami (detail)
The Fighters 2006 Cowhide, resin, polyester mesh, waxed cord Height 126cm; installation dimensions variable
Indlovukati 2007 Cowhide, resin, polyester mesh, waxed cord 153 x 89 x 70cm
Silent Embrace 2007 11 digital prints on cotton rag paper 173 x 91cm each Edition of 5 + 2AP
Beginning of the Empire 2007 Cowhide, resin, polyester mesh, waxed cord 100 x 1000 x 60cm Installation view, Michaelis Gallery, Cape Town, June 2007
NANDIPHA MNTAMBO Born 1982 in Swaziland. Lives and works in Cape Town Graduated with a Master’s degree in Fine Arts with distinction, Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, 2007 SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2007 Ingabisa, Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 Apartheid: The South African Mirror, Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona, travelling to Fundacion Bancaja, Valencia, in 2008 Afterlife, Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town 2006 Olvida quien soy – Erase me from who I am, Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas, Gran Canaria MTN New Contemporaries 2006, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg Second to None, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town 2005 In the Making: Materials and Process, Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town AWARDS 2005 Curatorial Fellowship, Brett Kebble Art Awards
ARTIST’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Jane Alexander, Associate Professor, Michaelis School of Fine Art; my family for all the love and support; my friends for their encouragement and love; the Michael Stevenson gallery staff; and my guardian angels. PHOTO CREDITS Balandzeli, Deity, Idle: Kerry-Mae Joshua; Purge and Stepping into Self: Kathy Skead; Iqaba Lami: Mario Todeschini; Lelive Lami, The Fighters, Indlovukati, Beginning of the Empire: Vanessa Cowling; Silent Embrace: Tony Meintjes.
Catalogue no 29 August 2007 Editor Sophie Perryer Design Gabrielle Guy Image repro Ray du Toit Printing Hansa Print, Cape Town
MICHAEL STEVENSON www.michaelstevenson.com