my whole body changed into something else

Stevenson is pleased to present 

my whole body changed into something else,

a group exhibition taking place across the

galleries in Cape Town and Johannesburg, 

curated by Sisipho Ngodwana and Sinazo Chiya

The title of this exhibition is drawn from a quote by Sun Ra, in which the artist, thinker and composer describes a moment of abduction and renewal. Ra states that, in a pivotal journey between Earth and Saturn, his tangible form and personal history were metamorphosed, allowing him to continue existence in a truer mode: as an alien brought to preach peace.

In pursuing the questions raised by his assertion, this exhibition probes individual and collective ideas of bodily existence and processes of transformation, using works from 1950 to the present day. The participating artists attend to the challenges presented by history, the dictates of commerce, the sensory borders between how matter is experienced, and the perceptions of binaries and opposition – ranging from geopolitical conflicts to the tensions between humanity and the natural world in which we live.

To a large degree, my whole body changed into something else is about memory. To many, memory is recognition of something that no longer is, an awareness of an altered state. To others, memory is thought, an intervention, a personalised addition to what we call the present. It then becomes evident that there is a timeline, a period through which things ‘change’ form from one thing to another. This inquiry, then, is on our perception of this timeline, and how we make sense of it.

PENNY SIOPIS

CELLULOID BODY

There’s something in this tension between reference and materiality that hooks what can’t be spoken in language into painted form, which we might be able to apprehend, without being sure of what we read. Those slippages intrigue me.’ – Penny Siopis, 2021

Rather than imposing mastery, Siopis responds to the visual incidents emerging from the material process of painting in glue, ink and oil, in which transformation, flux, chance and relationality are symbiotic. Her treatment of interconnection and interdependence unsettles conventional dualisms and engages questions of non-human agency. 

ERKAN ÖZGEN

The Memory of Time presents a different view of how the aftermath of conflict is experienced. Using complete silence, Özgen invites the viewer to pay close attention to what is communicated by the physicality of the video’s subjects; the playful poses and recreational activities recorded by the artist foreground the banality of erasure and the customs put in place when interacting with recorded history and its violence.

'I think we are oversaturated, filled to the brim with images in our inner subconscious eye. Towards the end of 2020, I was feeling very much that I couldn't take in any more information visually. That was when I made Instruments of Air. Especially after watching the video of George Floyd’s killing online, and the feeling of constriction and breathlessness it evoked, I was thinking a lot about air, and what it means to inhale bad air, and for it to get lodged in you and weaken or sicken you, and how that air can be cleared. And, I wonder what happens to all of those images that we see, where do they go inside us and what happens when there’s too many “bad” images, too much bad air?' – Rahima Gambo, 2021

Not Yet Titled (Blood memory) (2021) and Not Yet Titled (light) (2021), fabricated out of raw wool, sheep’s blood, dirt and yarn, shaped into humanoid forms, spotlight the balance between human and non-human materiality. Equally alluding to votive objects and political discussions about bodily autonomy, the works speak to nature at its most untamed, vulnerable, sustaining and powerful, questioning human supremacy in contemporary social ecology.

‘I think my work is on a quest to be post-world, which is also post-desire, post-race, post-void, post-ontological lack, post-destruction, and so on.’ – Precious Okoyomon, 2021

PAULO NAZARETH

MAZE

Nazareth’s large-scale installation, MAZE, addresses the fissures between nourishment and destruction using black and white species of corn. The origin of the former is traced back to the Aztecs and is widely used across South America from its origin in Mexico, spreading globally through trade and colonialism. The crop was also favoured for its ability to sustain enslaved people as they were being transported between continents. The use of sunflower oil buckets further alludes to this movement of histories; the product also originated in Mexico, where it was used by indigenous populations and was brought to Europe by the Spanish in the 15th century. Nazareth continues to centre histories of violence and indigenous practice in his series of charcoal drawings of masks from across Africa, stolen during colonial pillages. The masks, removed from their original context, have lost their ritual element; however, Nazareth attempts to figuratively rescue these objects from the archive and imbue them with new life and practice.

For Ige, hands, shoulders and faces emerge from a watery facture. While some of her works resemble traditional portraiture, others consist of colour fields that evoke mystery and the ethereal. She considers her unique figuration, which renders her subjects featureless and inscrutable, to be a form of ‘veiling’, creating an enigmatic Blackness in which her subjects are empowered by their act of refusal. The artist has said, ‘I am interested in creating images that are not easily understood.’

'An exhibition is something that happens in the world, and carries with it the noise, pollution, dust and decay. Like the growing mass of debris, it is part of the messy world it inhabits. An exhibition as a space of public discourse, as a stage of anticipatory practices, and a statement of intent, can no more assert a distance from its cultural context than it can repress the very social conditions that bring it into dialogue with its diverse publics.' – Okwui Enwezor

It is with this notion in view that my whole body changed into something else is described as inquiry rather than an exhibition. The term exhibition suggests there is something finished to display, that the audience is invited to witness something resolved. This too is not that. This is a tool for emphatic questioning.