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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.
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PIETER HUGO
Untitled, Los Angeles
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FRIDA ORUPABO
Going home
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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.
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PENNY SIOPIS
Material selves
Installation (46 works)
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PENNY SIOPIS
Transfiguration
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MOSHEKWA LANGA
Mogalakwena
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DADA KHANYISA
'not particularly looking for someone, I just go on dates for new conversations'
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DADA KHANYISA
'It was that night we ended up at Berea Court'
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'My work draws upon a lot of those folks who are really grappling with this thing called the erotic and pleasure and joy. I remember during the 90s, I got a lot of hassle from some of my fellow black queer folks because my work was not seen as positive representation, and my response was "positive to who?" In the conversation about what’s included when we talk about queerness I found that the erotic, pleasure and joy is the thing that gets excluded… I want my work to bring joy to people, but joy that doesn’t lose sight of the material body.'
– Ajamu X, 2021
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BELINDA BLIGNAUT
The call from things
Blignaut employs a distinct mindfulness in the making of her vessels. Her clay bodies comprise different soil types and mineral compounds taken from across the local terrain, each noted for its individual properties before they are fused together in an exploratory act of creation. The existential concept underpinning her works proposes interconnectedness as inherent in being, and that individual growth exists in tandem with a larger ecology of forms.
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Artworks here become a rudder. In their simplest form, these artworks present ideas in two and three dimensions. Mediated by media, notions are dressed in colour and become things that can be touched, smelled, measured, weighed. Imaginings and beliefs are given form and made manifest. Dreams develop nooks and crannies and take up space in the physical world. It is with this notion in view that the works in my whole body changed into something else were selected. Some wonder, argue or otherwise make statements that, in the negative space of their assertions, leave room for re-engagement with what we think we know to be true. New questions open old wounds. Placing asks on old tensions vivifies the ways in which we collaboratively constitute the present.
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STEVEN COHEN
DEFACE
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NATASJA KENSMIL
Johanna Le Maire
In 'The Golden Age', the Dutch were pioneers in science, art and trade, as well as human trafficking, exploitation and looting overseas. Johanna Le Maire was the daughter of Isaac Le Maire, one of the largest investors and administrators of the Dutch East India Trading Company. The work includes processed fragments from a script about the history of the trading post, and a drawing of the post, asking questions about how iconography moves through history and time.
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KAMYAR BINESHTARIGH
An Exhaustive Catalogue of Texts Dealing with the Orient
'It happened by accident. While I was experimenting with different materials I started writing on glass, and then it broke. I thought it was quite fitting to be able to rearrange the texts in the same way that I think of language and writing, to create something that can be arranged and rearranged, and distorted.’ – Kamyar Bineshtarigh, 2021
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ERKAN ÖZGEN
Wonderland
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RAHIMA GAMBO
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RAHIMA GAMBO
Instruments of Air
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'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
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LÉONARD PONGO
The Uncanny | Click for full presentation
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BEN ENWONWU
Dancing Girls Yoruba
This painting forms part of Enwonwu’s Africa Dances series, which he began in the 1940s while studying in London, and continued throughout his career. Africa Dances has a connotation that would have been absent if Enwonwu had titled the series African Dances. Africa is invoked here as an ideological concept and Enwonwu's myriad paintings of dance forms titled Africa Dances are thus distinguished from the representations of ethnic types of cultural practices that characterize canonical genre paintings of the same subject.
The characters in Dancing Girls Yoruba share gaiety and nourishment, highlighting how Enwonwu’s work navigates the balance between what is contemporary and what is perennial.
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KAYLIN MOONSAMY
Bhuvaneswari Kali
The Black Liberator
Matangi Kali
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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
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PAULO NAZARETH
Untitled
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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.
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WURA-NATASHA OGUNJI
Faster
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MONILOLA OLAYEMI ILUPEJU
Stampede of Champions
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SIMON GUSH
One by one all the shafts will be closed
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THANDIWE MSEBENZI
Ukuba noxolo / To have peace
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THANDIWE MSEBENZI
Chapter 2, Pieces of Radical Makazi: Gogo & Makazi
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PORTIA ZVAVAHERA
Ndibuditsei Ipapo (Take me out of there)
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MELEKO MOKGOSI
Objects of Desire, Addendum 9
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ERNEST MANCOBA
Untitled
Considered one of South Africa's first modern artists, Mancoba is known for his exploration of ideas around human transcendence, rendered through reduced marks that propose a complex 'whole' made up of simpler forms. His works, often featuring different reiterations of this recurring figure, act not only as interpretations of the source of his vision, but also as limbs and layers of a larger body that he was building one artwork at a time. Affirming his humanist approach, he said: 'The central idea, the most central force, is [art's] eternal stream of appeal to all human beings in a universal way, timelessly.'
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AZIZ HAZARA
Eyes in the Sky
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SERGE ALAIN NITEGEKA
Lost and Found VI
Lost and Found I
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Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi
Manhood
The spirit guides her towards marriage
Sebidi’s art grapples with the transpersonal realm, where the self encompasses wider aspects of humankind, animal-kind and the psyche. Drawing from ancestralism and dreams, her work combines figurative and surrealist elements to offer a multiverse and create a value system that helps her figures make sense of the world. Sebidi draws upon her Sotho heritage to illuminate how animals facilitate access to God, acting as necessary spiritual guides. In The spirit guides her towards marriage and Manhood, continuous spiritual immersion is centred in contemporary life, encouraging the viewer to see and move beyond the periphery and limitations of the physical world.
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SIMNIKIWE BUHLUNGU
There Are No Complete Knowledges
There Are No
The Case of the Agricultural Hyperpolyglot
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Esteemed, 2021
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.’
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THAMI KITI
Untitled staffs | Click for full presentation
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JANE ALEXander
Infirmary 2014, 2019
Palm with putti and nests 2014, 2019; Server with alms bag and broom 2014, 2019 - broom carved by Thami Kiti; Server with alms bag and bell 2014, 2019; Lamb 2016; Server with wheat and sickle 2014, 2019; Virtue 2014, 2019; Chorus 2014, 2019; Bird posing as a Cormorant 2014, 2019; Maladies 2014, 2019; Many limbs make light labour 2014, 2019; It is far preferable to fly when your knees and elbows ache, 2011.
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SIMNIKIWE BUHLUNGU
Audio installation
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'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.
my whole body changed into something else
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