During this lockdown, the KZNSA Gallery in Durban would like to introduce artists it has worked and collaborated with, in its new series: Meet the Artist. Have some fun with them, collect their art, and watch their Q&A videos on the Instagram and Facebook pages.
Meet Kundai Moyo, who will be mounting her first solo exhibition as part of the KZNSA Young Artist’s Project later this year. Watch her beautifully crafted and insightful Meet the Artist Q&A on our Instagram or Facebook.
Johannesburg-based artist Kundai Moyo has a BA in Fine Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand. Moyo’s practice imagines how the personal and communal business of love might enable the theoretical reframing of our socio-cultural particularities, erotics, feminisms. She considers questions around love, and its conduits: care, recognition, respect and intimacy. This line of exploration manifests itself in many ways, namely through social experiments conducted with the use of photography and text as well as a shared google drive folder which houses her ongoing research on love, and the nature of research as an extension of practice.
How do you know the KZNSA?
I haven't been to the KZNSA yet, but I'm hoping to go soon. I’ve heard a lot about it through friends and mentors who have either exhibited there in the past or grew up in Durban. I also know about it through Instagram and VANSA.
What is essential?
I think faith is essential, compassion, which I believe is rooted in the capacity to make room for understanding our own suffering, while holding and carving space for learning to understand the suffering of others. I think that’s incredibly essential.
I’d say work and rest, in equal measure, are tremendously essential, and this is something that I keep learning more, and more about, as I slowly stumble towards effectiveness.
I’d say love is essential, not only to my practice, but my livelihood as an individual. I think giving love words and being incredibly clear about what we mean when we talk about love is essential. I think that as an artist, creating a visual language around love that is inclusive, realistic and holistic is also vital. I think that love and affect are incredible positions from which we can begin to unravel and share lived experiences. I think the sharing of lived experiences is another thing that's incredibly vital.
Humans are essential. Connecting is essential, and making work that foregrounds that, either by highlighting the gaps in human relations or bringing people closer together. I have also been thinking a lot about something that Audre Lorde says in her paper on uses of the erotic, something along the lines of the erotic not being a question of what we do, but rather that it is a question of how acutely we feel in the doing, and that line has become increasingly essential to my practice. She is forcing us to consider how intentional we are in meaning-making when we make work. As an artist, I think we have a tremendous responsibility to ensure that the work we make engages people in meaningful ways.
3 albums you would never burn
Anything that Nina Simone has ever, ever, ever made. I especially love watching some of her live performances on YouTube. It’s just the amount of emotion and sincerity and intention that’s packed into each performance is so mind blowing and breathtaking. I particularly love this clip. It’s also featured in Ja'tovia Gary’s The Giverny Document. Ja'tovia Gary is a brilliant American artist and film director, and I really love her work.
The second I would pick, Max Roach’s Members, Don’t Git Weary. His drumming is spectacular, the composition, everything packed into that album is so beautiful.
Last, but definitely not least, is Biggie’s Ready to Die. It’s a classic. That’s all I have to say.
What is the best part about being an artist?
The best part about being an artist, for me, is often also quite easily the worst part about being an artist, which is realising how incredibly porous the arts are. That’s a realisation that often comes in waves of excitement, dread, fear. There is a lot of room for imposter syndrome, there’s a lot of space to feel like a con, when you don't really know what you're doing, but once you get a handle on it, I think it becomes incredibly exciting. I love that there is always room to play. I love that there’s always room and freedom to merge together ideas from multiple schools of thought, to tear things apart and to reassemble them. I love that it makes us quite adaptable to change, it teaches us to think on our feet, keeps things interesting.
What's the point of it all?
I think the point of it all might be a lot simpler than we think. I think it has a lot to do with finding small moments of joy, wherever we can, and being in communion whenever we can, finding ways of rejoicing together, mourning together, delighting in each other, and making others’ conditions our own. I think that’s what the point is.
For more information visit https://kznsagallery.co.za
The KZNSA Gallery is situated at 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood in Durban and can be contacted on 031 277 1705 or email: gallery@kznsagallery.co.za
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