(Above: Work by Clive Sithole. Pic supplied)
Opening at the KZNSA Main and Mezzanine Galleries on October 20, 2023, from 17h30 for 18h00 is Kumnyama Kubomvu: The Land Is Ours, a solo exhibition by Clive Sithole.
Sithole, now a mid-career artist, draws on Zulu cultural and ritual experience as they relate to the land, and expertly weaves them into his ceramic work, offering a profound exploration of themes that resonate with complexities of land and displacement, connection and belonging, as well as humanity.
The title of the exhibition is derived in part from an isiZulu idiom that conjures a spirit of "in spite of everything”, and is also drawn from Tembeka Ngcokaitobi’s book, The Land is Ours; it speaks to the call to address the displacement of Black South Africans. Through his work, Sithole offers an emotional dive into the complexities of connecting with the land and by implication what is lost through denial of access to land.
(Right: Clive Sithole Photograph by Paulo Menezes)
Clive Sithole’s vision as an artist explores landscapes and vessels of containment, expanding our notions of inclusion, belonging and exile. The work is rooted in a deep physicality that emerges from nature; supportive and powerful. Born in Soweto in 1971, Sithole has honed his career though a life-long practice of extending traditional notions of form and function through his dedication to ceramics, making and clay.
Sithole draws his inspiration from people who make, and the routines and repetitive movement of people’s hands in the process of creation, from hair-plaiting to basket weaving. Sithole’s vision looks away from machines, screens and contemporary technology to a more fundamental and emotionally-rooted question. From a landscape of texture and shadow, layers are peeled away by Sithole’s work. Kumnyama Kubomvu: This Land is Ours calls us to attention and asks what it is that our hands have made of the land we inhabit. Sithole is currently based at his studio at the Phansi Museum in Durban, where he works and mentors younger creatives.
The exhibition closes on November 12, 2023. The KZNSA Gallery is situated at 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood, Durban. For more information contact 031 277 1705
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