Posthumbleness

"Divide and Conquer: the unfinished business"

2011-10-14T07:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oXHVXpy8e4&feature=related

Interview between Mawande Ka Zenzile (artist) and Sean O'Toole (Journalist, art critic)... first published on artthrob

2011-09-11T19:05:00.000-07:00

Copy and paste the following address on a new window to view the link:
http://www.artthrob.co.za/Reviews/Maybe-if-you-made-this-video-it-would-be-more-technically-resolved.aspx

“The autobiography of Mawande Zenzile: Iingcuka ezombethe iifele zegusha"

2011-08-18T14:19:00.000-07:00

(Video Still) Imbongi yomthonyama 2011,

video loop

Head of an anonymous moor 2011,

cow dung, and oil on canvas, 86cm x 86cm

WE GIVE THEM CLOTHES, 2010,

cow dung, earth, and oil on canvas, 86 cm x 86 cm

Untitled: Reason over passion 2010,

oil on linen 86cm x 86cm

Impuku efileyo: Letter for Willy Lynch, 2011,

cow dung, oil on canvas, 80cm x 60cm

Letter for Christopher Columbus 2010,

cow dung, oil on canvas,

120cm x 60cm

Bad Artitude Boyz: a diary of a grumpy young black man 2010,
cow dung, oil on linen,
150cm x 90.5cm

Ingcuka eyambethe ifele legusha: umnyamana okhanya ngezinyo 2010, cow dung, oil on canvas,
150cm x 92.5cm

Hand: 1835 2011, Cow dung, earth, gold on wood,

30.5cm x 30.5cm

Skull: 1835 2011, Oil on canvas

28cm x 28cm

Letter for Sarah batman to Josephine Baker, 2011,
earth, cow dung, oil paint on canvas,
180 x 119cm

Mawande Zenzile’s Artistic statement

2010-10-23T01:22:00.000-07:00

In previous works, I have experimented with the revival of Xhosa ‘art’ (the use of cow-dung in my work/ Xhosa decor materials) making, in
relation to myself, and examining this culture in contemporary ways of art production inside Africa. I try to use my materials not just to define myself, but to challenge ideologies, stereotypes associated with my identity, representation, and perceptions of African ‘art’ and Africans in the West.

My work is often combination of different materials, from ‘traditional’ and conventional such like hessian, oil on canvas, cow dung, earth, assemblages and collages, images from own memory; historic text books, internet, news papers, magazines and other resources. In my work I challenge ethics, politics and politics of representation.

But I remain true to who I am… and I don’t define myself from my beliefs, I seek for more, I become my own philosopher… I question life!

However in my work I deal with history similar to how I deal with historical visual images, because I believe that images just like words or written history is not used only to document historical events but also to maintain, propagate, and or to problematize history. I have used ‘Blackface’ aesthetics in my work as a contestation or subversion to historical impediments or branding of demeaning images as well as to interrogate representational, racial, ethics, political and religious issues today.

Though don’t centralize my art works or myself on my political aspirations. I use my art to navigate and contemplate between fiction and or truth, working with both vice versa.

The Death and rebirth of an exotic artist:
Letter for Da Vince
Cow-dung, earth and oil on canvas
2011

Black-like-you
Charcoal and oil paint on cape-lino Paper
2009

Hamba Vangeli
Oil on linen
2011

Desegregation
Cow-dung, earth, oil paint on canvas
2009

Three hooded man sitting on a horizon waiting for departure: homage to Jane Alexander
Oil, cow-dung on canvas
2009

"Antagonised by his Projection"

2009-01-23T05:12:00.000-08:00

I was born in the world that is full of hate…If I could,
I would relocate myself, but it appears that I’m obliged to live in this hostility.
My freedom; I owe it to the confinement of a contented history.
I’m born in the world that is not mine,
Perhaps I have landed on an iceberg filled with snow and polar bears,
Born to straggle; to be a stranger to my own land,
To be a vindicator in the eyes of the other,
And to be born to forfeit for scenes that my father have not committed…
The verdict is of being brown skinned.
Perhaps I am not privileged enough
To be a beneficiary of history.
Maybe I’m neither an academic nor a theorist
Maybe I don’t belong in the B.E.E or that black-intellectual category …
They have taken over my corporeal world
And I believe they were all taught about the white god.
Oh excuse my sentiments!

I’m haunted by the gaze of being the other.
My consciousness, my intelligence, my being, my beauty… Culture!
Crawling Nation!, Harshness of the corporeality of my everyday life is being romanticized and to some now it is like comic strips.

The lady with the spectacles’ was looking at him and he was looking back.
She was worried-hesitant of her own presence and representation… antagonized by his projection.
A very provocative controversy that of mistrial; of roots traced down to US archives’.
Perhaps she couldn’t wait. Oh the feeling of inferiority!?
She was assuming his representation outside his culture and outside his consciousness and intelligence.
Perhaps he/she has withdrawn and became a chameleon.
Oh! "Izinja zabelungu! Zamthatha umntwano’mntu."

I finally heard a voice saying you are not alone!
Maybe I was neither an artist nor a thinker
A very Taboo intellectual arena had kicked me out in the streets.
Oh! Imagine the tired look in the clown’s face after a drizzling performance,
Like they say "kwaNtu oovuka kuvuthiwe bathanda ukuyophula xa beqikelela ivuthiwe."
A spectator is watching a game of that tennis, sharking heads impishly with confusion.
The eyes were swinging up, down, left, right waiting for that moment.

She took me or she took him to a corner,
But there was nothing much different even the complexion was alike.
She was no longer talking to me now she was talking to an invisible man
She was a doctor from out of space, I guessed!?
She didn’t forget to bring her expertise to hound the unknown artist!
I give it to her/him they’re today’s’ average thinkers.

Maybe I wasn’t easily intimidated by it but I was bored by her misconceptions that made her to become visible to me. I started remembering those pigments that I have once used before but now they were already dry and rotten and so I couldn’t use them anymore because they stink.
As she perceived him, she turned her tongue in her advantage to rebel against this young renaissance.
Oh! the mimicry of the resemblance of a white world that I kind of feel difficult to live in, I gave myself time to think about it!!!
Iingcuka ezombathe ifele legusha.
I’m rethinking again maybe in this context,
Maybe she was not talking to me anymore but to an invisible man.
Maybe he reminded her of blockbuster films,
Maybe darkie; picaninny or coon icons?
Maybe that’s why she thought of it when she saw him, or the way around!

A painting on the wall a title next to it, a spectator next to it sifting wine,
I was amazed by her psychoanalysis!
"Kuthiwa noseleyi 'bethile zange ayoje, noseleyojile zange ayitye".
Maybe I should have gave them the brushes… and rethinking, Maybe not!
Maybe a spectator under that speckle only thought of biblical illustrations and that was it!

art work by Mawande Zenzile

2008-08-28T04:11:00.000-07:00

Detail of the work...

Ikhaya, oil, cow dung on canvas, 2008

Indela ibuzwa kwabadala, mixed media on canvas, 138x133cm, 2007-08

Untitled, oil, cow dung, 85x85cm, 2008

Mawande Zenzile artistic statement

2008-08-28T04:08:00.000-07:00

Mawande Zenzile’s artistic statement

“I have experimented with the revival of Xhosa ‘art’ production, positioning myself and examining this culture in contemporary ways of art production inside Africa.
In my work I challenge expectations, perception and misconception behind blackness and consciousness; through this I interrogate, history itself, subcultures, space, and time.
I remain true to who I am… but I don’t define myself from my beliefs, I seek for more, I become my own philosopher… I question life!

2008-08-28T03:46:00.000-07:00

Artist’s biography

Mawande Bethwell Zenzile
Born 1986, Nyanga east, Cape Town.