The COMEBACK with Guest of Honour ZANELE MUHOLI



THE SORCERY OF IMAGINATION TOHEAL THE NATION

3 Years later to the day of our last journey together to Ventersdorp, where we commiserated and archived the brutal killing of another young lesbian sister Disebo Gift Makau; Zanele Muholi phones...
All the time she is speaking my mind thinks is:

"Welcome home Qawe lama Qawekazi (Hero of Heroines)".
In the three years since we last connected working together our lives have experienced exhilerating highs and life threatening lows.
In the face of so much death, destruction and civil upheaval in the world over the last 3 years, we cannot think our strife is significant.
 If anything we as human beings should be embracing our kinship.

 All made more palpable by the universality of the diabolical twists and turns of film noir unravelling with ever accelerating years 2014...2015...2016...2017…
Odidi Mfenyana and Zanele Muholi en route to Venterdorp, North West Province, STEVENSON gallery Braamfontein, Joburg 21 August 2014

In  the previous century the world was at war, but something tells me we are 
deep in a war of worlds, so unconventional it beguile old methods of perception and requires us to reach for reinvention.
For one to turn the corner on one's doldrums one must believe in the faith of  life. The blessings of abundance include the good and the bad. For if life is for the living when it is painted in the light and shade of contrast; the juxtaposition of contradiction  of the human condition.
"We have Faith in Poison. We Will Live Our Lives Completely EVERYDAY…"
In eye of the cyclone one sees with that the ferocity of the tempest will temper how we distinguish ourselves.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ZANELE MUHOLI , ODIDIVA AS MC OF MISS CAPE TOWN PRIDE 2010, BMW PAVILION, V&A WATERFRONT CAPE TOWN

ALL ORIGINALS  STOLEN IN A ROBBERY OF PHOTOGRAPHIC AND AUDIO VISUAL EQUIPMENT with over twenty primary and back-up external hard drives containing five years' OF WORK AT HER CAPE TOWN HOME IN 2012

Yonke into enesiqalo kufanelekile ukuba ibe nesiphelo njengokuba
nento ephilayo kufuneka emva kwexesha elithile iphelelwe bobo bom
ibuphilayo.KwaXhosa kuthiwa into engapheliyo iyahlola.Kuzo zonkeizinto ezinesiqalo neziphilayo akukho nanye kuzo eya kusiphephasiphepheke ngokupheleleyo isiphelo. Zonke ke izinto ezikhoyozithambekela esiphelweni zithanda zingathandi" 
All things that have a beginning must appropriately have an end, like every that lives over time will lose the life it lives.
Where the people of Xhosa are; it is said that:
"What does not end becomes grotesque"


Sadly, the hegemony of power in the previous century, is still in denial; convulsed in the most grotesque death throes.
Reinvention requires ones ability to dig deep into the mines of one's body and soul.  This is by no means a frivolous task but industrious action meant to reinforce one's "gees".
That "joie d' vivre" needs to be buttressed by emotional titanium. The ability to invest in introspection, meditation and intellectual jousting for emotional intelligence strengthens one's ductility.
Hence the universal rituals of spiritual sabbatical, fasting for feeding the soul, meditation through incantation,  until body, mind and soul is imbibing divinity.
The creative arts play a significant role in igniting moments of pause in one's life that lead us to question more.
The creative arts gifted in the imaginary are the orifice to explore life's lavish contradictions.”

Therefore the undeniable imperative of creativity as a catalyst for socialinnovation is required in the same way gold is considered a safe asset in times of crisis. For too long contemporary artists have been overexposed to being commoditized;  that this essence is endangered.
It then makes it logical to understand my need to celebrate an African artist, a contemporary, a mentor, patron and friend who has recaptured and rejuvenated this zeal to the world's attention, respect  and acclaim.
AFRICAN EXCELLENCE BANNED IN APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA UNTIL 1994 
EXILED MAMA AFRICA, MIRIAM MAKEBA GREETING NINA SIMONE BACKSTAGE, AFRICAN AMERICAN ICONS OF CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT NINA SIMONE AND JAMES BALDWIN
Many of us in South Africa still do not realise the psychological trauma in the blackout of African excellence from our lives.
 As an African Gay man of 23, I discovered that the writer I'd often  heard named amongst America's  top 10 literary  authors, James Baldwin was not only not a white man, but  African-American and gay too! 
I promptly picked up "Giovanni's Room" and in the forward discovered a revolutionanary social catalyst for societal transformation. How radical? No life changing. Giovanni's Room is a story of two Caucasian gay men falling in love in and out of love in Paris was published in 1956. James Baldwin along with another revolutionary artist, Nina Simone  best friend of exiled Miriam Makeba were banned in South Africa until repeal of the laws were repealed in mid to late 90's . Meaning accessing the work from their glory days trickled in around  2001 and  due mostly to internet access.

South Africans watch with hostile envy  and bewilderment as six decades long emancipated Africans enjoying cultural bonds,  win Big Brother Africa.  
Even with knowledge of Aparheid's deliberate seperation of us from our brethren , we have internalised the narrative propagated by our White Supremecist oppressors. 
Forgetting the very media company broadcasting from our Johannesburg was the propaganda arm of  the Afrikaner Nationalists that oppressed us.
So we carry on listening to mostly American and British as cleverly prescribed by  the Apartheid regime. SAMRO (South African Music Rights Organisation) pays out  almost  80 percent to its Western counterparts.  
While we are impervious imperious in our  superiority  floundering  believing and behaving wrongly. Xenophobia flags our debilitating symptoms from of  what I will call Post Apartheid Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
"Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. 
The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but the sense of their inadequacy and impotence. They hate not wickedness but weakness.
When it is in their power to do so, the weak destroy weakness where ever they see it."

BANNED PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT ON HATE CRIMES AND GENDER VIOLENCE BY JACK LEWIS FEATURING ODIDIVA 

This is evidenced in the proliferation of the serial pathology of violence against women and children in this nation of ours eMzantsi Afrika.
We have opportunity to embrace ourselves this women's month. The opportunity to grab, hug and kiss our self-esteem. The Guest of Honour works tirelessly as a catalyst for social innovation.
Receive the inspiration.
The COMEBACK - Guest of Honour Zanele Muholi is a timely, consciously deliberate expression of love, pride, and activism.
A rebuttal of all afro-pessimism wracking our society's inferiority complex, lashing out, self-mutilating with homicidal brutality.

We close this Women's Month with a graceful "klapback" at the ideologies that favour dominance and oppression, vanity and grandiosity.
This on the eve of Zanele Muholi's first exhibition in Cape Town since 2012. 
A fitting vernissage to Heritage Month and the opening of
Zanele Muholi work will be part of the collection at ZeitzMOCAA including this image
ZANELE MUHOLI, ODIDIVA I, DISTRICT SIX, CAPE TOWN 2010
Another icon to African excellence, a crucial salve inthe sorcery of imagination that will one day help heal the nation.


 
 
Dimpho Tsotetsi, Pretoria, 2017
 
 

ZANELE MUHOLI

On Thursday 31 August, 6-8pm
Click here for more information

The exhibition is on view until 7 October 2017.





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