3 JUNE TO 30 JUNE 2010

Is it our goal …?

and other related issues

Mthethwa

Photographs and pastel works by

Zwelethu

Page 1 MaDlamini out bound to the Meat Market (detail) 2010 pastel on cotton paper 107 x 150 cm

4 5

Selected Group Exhibitions since 2000

2010Africa. Objects and Subject, Palacio de Revillagigedo,

Gijón, SpainAfrica. Objects and Subjects, Canal de Isabel II, Madrid,

SpainA Collective Diary, An African Contemporary Journey

Herzliya Museum for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel, curated by Simon Njami

Always Moving Forward: Contemporary African Photography from the Wedge Collection, Gallery 44, Houston, TX

The Walther Collection, curated by Okwui Enwezor Burlafingen, Germany

2009Prospect 1 New Orleans, New Orleans, LASordid and Sacred: The Beggars in Rembrandt’s Etchings,

Reynolds Gallery, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, CA

Beyond The Familiar: Photography and the Construction of Community, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA

Cross-Currents in Recent Video Installation: Water as Metaphor for Identity, Tufts University Art Gallery, Medford, MA travelling to:

Williams College Museum of Art, MAHarn Museum of Art, University of Florida, GainesvilleUniversity of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann ArborRethinking Landscape: Photography from the Collection

of Allen Thomas Jr, Roanoke Museum, VASharing Territories, 5th Soa Tome Biennale, curated by

Adelaide Ginga, Soa Tome and Principe

2008People, Jim Kempner Fine Art, New YorkScratches on the Face, National Gallery of Modern Art,

New Delhi, travelling to:National Gallery of Modern Art, MumbaiBrave New Worlds, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MNBetween Us – Entre Nous – Phakathi Kwethu, Iart Gallery,

Cape TownNew Orleans BiennaleWorld Receiver: 10 Years Galerie der Gegenwart,

Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany

2007Existencias, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y

León, MUSAC, León, SpainApartheid: El Mirall Sud-Africà, Centre de Cultura

Contemporània de BarcelonaSouth African Art: Modern Art and Cultural Development

in a Changing Society, Danubiana, Meulensteen Art Museum, Bratislava, Slovakia

So Close So Far Away, Crac Alsace, FranceDefining Moments in Photograph from the MCA

Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, ChicagoPlanet Afrika: Carte Blanche, curated by Thomas Mank,

Kultursysteme, Berlin

2006The Living is Easy, Flowers East, Hoxton, LondonBlack Panther Rank and File, Yerba Buena Center for the

Arts, San FranciscoBlack, Brown & White, Kunsthalle Vienna, AustriaSnap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African

Photography, International Center of Photography, New York

The Whole World is Rotten, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH

Why Pictures Now, MUMOK Lounge, Museum Moderner Kunst, Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna

Cross-Currents in Recent Video Installation: Water as a Metaphor for Identity, Tisch Gallery, Boston

Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts, Artists’ Week 2006, curated by Julianne Pierce, Adelaide, Australia

2005Emergencies, at the Museo de Arte Contemporeneo de

Castilla y Leon, MUSAC, SpainTicket to the Other Side, Hengevoss-Duerkop Gallery,

HamburgThe Forest: Politics, Poetics, and Practice, The Nasher

Museum at Duke University, NCThe Venice Biennial, The Experience of Art, curated by

Maria de CorralNew Work/New Acquisitions, Museum of Modern Art,

New YorkGreen to Green and Beyond, Gallery W 52, New YorkA Passion for Pictures, North Carolina Museum of ArtImprints: Works on paper, Axis Gallery, New YorkThe Whole World is Rotten: Free Radicals and the Gold

Coast Slave Castles of Paa Joe, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Earth and Memory: African and African-American Photograph, Elizabeth Stone Harper Gallery, Presbyterian College, Clinton, SC

2004–5The Prague BiennaleAfrican Art, African Voices, Philadelphia Museum of ArtCommon Ground, Discovering Community in 150 Years

of Art, Selections from the Collection of Julia J Norrell, Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, DC

Sao Paulo Biennial, curated by Simon Njami, BrazilTama University Art Gallery, TokyoAfrica Remix, Zeitgenossische Kunst eines Kontinents,

travelling to:Museum Kunst Palast, DusseldorfHayward Gallery, LondonPompidou Centre, ParisMori Art Museum, TokyoGwangju Biennale, South KoreaWhere?, Clifford Chance Projects, New York

2004Passaporto, Le Meridien Lingotto Art & Tech, Torino, ItalyIpermercati dell’Arte, Palazzo delle Papesse, Sienna, ItalyMade in Africa Fotografia, Musei di Porta Romana, MilanFestival della Fotografia, British Academy, RomeFestival Couleur Café, curated by Hernau Bertiau, Tour et

Taxis, BrusselsNew Identities: Contemporary South Africa Art, Bochum

Museum, GermanyPostcards from Cuba, a selection from the 8th Havana

Biennale, Henie Onstad Kunstenter, OsloVth Bamako Encounters, Afritudine, Musei di Porta

Romama/Galleria Arteutopia, ItalyGrenier a sel, in Honfleur, FranceKornhausforum, Berne, Switzerland

2003–4Body and the Archive, Artists’ Space, New YorkThe Gift: Generous Offerings, Threatening Hospitality,

organised by Independent Curators International and travelling to:

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZBronx Museum of the Arts, NYGovett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, NZArt Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario

20038th Havana Biennial, CubaIstanbul Biennial, curated by Dan CameronStrangers: The First ICP Triennial of Photography and

Video, International Center of Photography, curated by Brian Wallis, New York

Prague Biennial, Czech RepublicPortraiture (Every Picture Tells A Story), Solomon Projects,

AtlantaSharjah International Biennale, curated by Hoor Al-

Qasimi and Peter Lewis

2002New Acquisitions/ New Works/ New Directions 3:

Contemporary Selections, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Staging, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MOUntitled, Jack Shainman Gallery, New YorkIn Situ – Portraits of People at Home, Hand Workshop

Art Center, Richmond, VACultural Crossing, Numark Gallery, Washington, DCFuoriuso, curated by Teresa Macri, Ferrotel, Pescara, ItalyShopping: Art and Consumer Culture, travelling

exhibition to:Schrin Kunsthalle Frankfurt, GermanyTate Liverpool, Liverpool, UKTracing the Rainbow, travelling exhibition to:Kunst Raum Sylt-Quelle, GermanyKulturverein Zehntscheuer, Rottenburg/Nechtar, GermanyGroup Exhibition, Marco Noire Contemporary Art, San

Sebastiano, ItalyOvernight to Many Cities: Tourism and Travel at Home

and Away, The Photographers’ Gallery, LondonDis/location, Sala Rekalde, Bilbao, SpainCentro Cultural de Maia, O’Porto, PortugalSudafrica: la pittura, la fotographia, il cinema, Centro

Trevi, Bolzano, ItalyVideoarte Africana, 25° Bienal de Sao Paulo, Brazil

2001I Love NY, benefit exhibition, Jack Shainman Gallery, New

YorkMuseum of Contemporary Photography, ChicagoThe Short Century: Independence and Liberation

Movements in Africa 1945-1994, curated by Okwui Enwezor, travelling to:

Museum Villa Stuck, MunichHaus der Kulturen der Welt in Martin-Gropius-Bau,

BelgiumMuseum of Contemporary Art, ChicagoP.S. 1 Museum for Contemporary Art, New YorkA Passion for Art: The Disaronno Originale Photography

Collection, travelling to:Miami Art Museum, FLNew Museum of Contemporary Art, New YorkMuseum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

University of California, Berkeley, Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA

Africa Today, curated by Pep Subiros, Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona, Spain

Boomerang: Collector’s Choice, Exit Art, New York

2000Africa 2000: The Artist and the City, Barcelona Center for

Contemporary Culture, SpainOvernight to Many Cities: Travel and Tourism at Home

and Away, 303 Gallery, New YorkParis pour escale, Musee d’Art Moderna de la Ville de

ParisThe Gift, Generous Offerings, Threatening Hospitality,

Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena travelling to:Palazzo Candiolo, VeniceSan Francisco, CAScottsdale Museum of Art, AZTRADE – Wares, ways and values in world trade today,

Fotomuseum Wintherthur, GermanyNederlands Foto Institut, RotterdamCentro de Belles Artes, MadridStorie Contemporanee, curated by Paola Tognon, Museo

Civico di Bergamo, ItalyFrankfurtkunstverein, FrankfurtSimultaneous, Jack Shainman Gallery, New YorkA3HB, Hans Bogatske Collection of Contemporary

African Art, Camouflage, BrusselsFive Artists Having Fun, Art Gallery of New South Wales,

AustraliaMuseum of Contemporary Art, SydneyA.R.E.A. 2000, curated by Gavin Younge, Kjarvaisstadir,

Reykjavik, IcelandSouth Meets West, Kunsthalle Bern, curated by Bernard

Fibicher, SwitzerlandMirades Impudiques, curated by Rosa Olivares and Marta

Gili, Fundacio La Caixa BarcelonaDire Aids – Say Aids, Promotrice delle Belle Arti, Torino,

ItalyBiennale Dakar, curated by Hans Bogatzke, SenegalArts and Human Rights, Kwangju International Biennale,

curated by Ichiro Hariu, Seoul, KoreaHome, Perth International Arts Festival, Art Gallery of

Perth Cultural Centre, AustraliaIl Sentimento del 2000, Arte E Foto: 1960/2000, La

Triennale de MilanoArt Gallery of Western Australia, PerthMostra Africana de Arte Conemporanea, Video Brazil,

Sao PauloL’Afrique a jour, in collaboration with Biennale Dakar

2000, AFAA, Lille, FrancePusan International Contemporary Art Festival, curated

by Rosa Martinez, Pusan, KoreaFoto Biennale Rotterdam, curated by Clive Kellner

Public Collections

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Modern Art (NY), The Studio Museum in Harlem (NY), Guggenheim Museum (NY), The New Museum (NY),The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, National Museum of African Art (Washington DC), Pretoria Art Museum, Mary and Leigh Block Gallery (Northwestern University), University of South Africa, Durban Art Gallery, Tatham Art Gallery (RSA), University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), South African Embassy (Washington DC), Sasol (Durban, Cape Town, New York), Cape Department of Education Trust (RSA), Arco Foundation (Madrid), Gilbey’s Ltd, Metropolitan Life (RSA), South African Breweries (RSA), Old Mutual (RSA), Gencor SA Ltd (RSA), Transnet Ltd (RSA), Sanlam (RSA), Johannes-burg Art Gallery, South African Reserve Bank, Herdboys (RSA), Rand Merchant Bank (RSA), Wooltru (RSA), Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art (Northwestern University), Kunsthalle Hamburg (Germany), Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art – Cornell University (NY), South African National Gallery, LaSalle Bank (Chicago), Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon (Spain), Pro-gressive Corporate Art Collection (Ohio), North Carolina Museum of Art, Bouwfonds Art Collection (Nether-lands), The Corcoran Museum Gallery of Art (Wash-ington DC), Daimler Chrysler Collection (Germany), Smithsonian Museum (Washington DC), Boland Bank (RSA), PKS (RSA), Siemans Ltd (RSA), ABSA Bank (RSA), MTN Collection (RSA), Vodacom Collection (RSA), JSE – Stock Exchange (RSA), Stellenbosch University (RSA), Samuel Harn Museum, (USA), Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig (Austria), Absolut Collection (Sweden), Ministere Culture Communication (France), Pompidou Centre (France)

Selected Recent Bibliography

Sue Williamson,‘Zwelethu Mthethwa’. South African Art Now, HarperCollins: New York, 2010.

Okwui Enwezor, Isolde Brielmaier, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Aperture Foundation: New York, 2010

Okwui Enwezor, Chika Okeke-Agula,Contemporary African Art Since 1980, Damiani: Bologna,

2009.

BIOGRAPHY

Zwelethu Mthethwa was born in 1960 in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa.

Selected General and Academic Achievements

2005 Commissioned for the International Absolut CollectionElected on to the Association for Visual Arts Executive Committee

1998 Panelist, National Arts CouncilNominated for the Vita Awards

1996 Vice-Chairman of the Association for Visual Arts and convenor of its Selection CommitteeCommittee member of the Friends of the SA National Gallery

1995 Vice-Chairman of the SA Association of Arts (Western Cape)

1993 Won the City of Abijan prize, Biennale (Ivory Coast).Won the Bertrams VO Award

1987 Won a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the USA, Rochester Institute of Technology

1985 Won the Irma Stern Scholarship1984 Awarded the Class Medal for graduation with a

distinction in the Fine Arts Department (UCT)1981 Awarded the Simon Gerson Prize for the most

promising art student (UCT)

Solo Exhibitions since 2000

2010Is it our goal …? and other related issues. At CIRCA on

Jellicoe, Johannesburg, South AfricaStudio Museum in Harlem, New YorkZwelethu Mthethwa at iArt Gallery, Cape Town, South

Africa

2009New Works, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

2008Children of a Lesser God, Everard Read, JohannesburgContemporary Gladiators, Andréhn Schiptjenko,

Stockholm

2007Private-Public Spaces, Galerie Anne de Villepoix, ParisRecent Works, Galerie Oliva Arauna, MadridMaidens and Dance of Life, Christine König, Vienna, in

cooperation with Galerie Hengevoss-Dürkop

2006Gold Miners, Jack Shainman Gallery, New YorkNew Works, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South AfricaMaidens, Galerie Hengevoss-Dürkop, Hamburg,

Germany

2005Women in Private Spaces, Andréhn-Schiptjenko Gallery,

StockholmTicket to the Other Side, Gallery Hengevoss-Dürkop,

Hamburg

2004Harvesting Workers, Davis Museum, Wellesley College,

Wellesley, MALines of Negotiation, Jack Shainman Gallery, New YorkNew Works, Association for Visual Arts, Cape Town

2003New Works, Jack Shainman Gallery, New YorkInterior Portraits: Zwelethu Mthethwa Photographs, The

Cleveland Museum of Art, OHHamburg Kunsthalle, Galerie der Gegenwart, Hamburg

2002Marco Noire Contemporary Art, San Sebastiano, ItalyMuseum of Contemporary Art, St Louis, MOGalerie Hengevoss, Hamburg

2001Private Spaces, Goodman Gallery, JohannesburgGalerie Jensen, HamburgCentre National de la Photographie, curated by Regis

Durand, ParisMother & Child, Marco Noire Contemporary Art, San

Sebastiano, Italy

2000Jack Shainman Gallery, New YorkGalerie Hengevos and Jensen, part of the Triennale der

Photographie, Hamburg

DIFFICULT DANCEALEXANDRA DODD

‘The great thing about being human is our ability

to face adversity down by refusing to be defined

by it, refusing to be no more than its agent or its

victim ... I could have dwelt on the harsh

humiliations of colonial rule or the more dramatic

protests against it. But I am also fascinated by

that middle ground … where the human spirit

resists an abridgment of its humanity.’

Chinua Achebe1

The Family’s prized possession (detail) 2009 pastel on cotton paper 107 x 210 cm

8

DReAMS fROM ANOTHeR TIMe

‘I’ve worked all my life with the cultures on the periphery of the

city,’ says Zwelethu Mthethwa, taking a step back from two

immense and dazzlingly vivid pastel drawings coming to life on

the wall of his studio in the old heart of downtown Cape Town.

‘For me, culture at the periphery offers a lot. There’s a lot of stuff,

lots of layers about how we live. And I remember what drew me

there first …’ The recollection takes him back to another place,

another time. For although Mthethwa has made Cape Town his

adult home, inhabiting its very epicentre on a daily basis, he – like

the characters he photographs and conjures in his drawings  –

was also once a disoriented stranger in this peninsular city.

As a young boy growing up in Umlazi on the undulating

hilly outskirts of Durban, he remembers ‘guys coming from the

hostels into the township’. ‘They looked very different; more

traditional and rural,’ he recalls. ‘And they sang songs which

were weird to me; traditional songs I wasn’t really familiar with.

They danced differently, they spoke a different dialect and they

always travelled in a group, so the dogs would bark when they

passed by, creating a spectacle. As kids we were drawn to that

noise, so we’d go there and check them out. Even as a kid, I was

attracted to that idea of “us and them”.

‘It’s the same thing with the culture at the outskirts of the city

today,’ he says. ‘People come looking for jobs mainly, but city

The Family’s prized possession 2009 pastel on cotton paper 107 x 210 cm

‘They sang very weird songs – traditional songs I

wasn’t really familiar with. They danced differently,

they spoke a different dialect …’

Zwelethu Mthethwa2

16

people always look at them with suspicion and say they’re differ-

ent to us.’ Mthethwa remains drawn to outsider communities,

fascinated by the dissonance between people’s damning pre-

conceptions and the realities of life within these communities.

‘The assumption about people who live in informal settlements

is that they are dirty, that there’s a large criminal element there,

but when you get there, you find that people don’t match up to

your initial suspicions. Once you step inside, their houses look

spectacular – they might be poor, but that doesn’t mean that

they are not house-proud. I try to focus on the elements that are

positive. It’s about looking at poverty very carefully and trying to

avoid making sweeping statements.’

Both of the drawings on which he is currently working are

fastened to a vast scrawled-on stretch of wooden crate cov-

ering the wall of his studio and bearing the markings of ten

full years of work in this downtown space. Both images emerg-

ing from the flat, whiteness of paper illustrate shackland com-

munities on the peri-urban fringes of Cape Town. A cluster of

government-issue houses is growing up on a stretch of land in

the near distance, goats run through the dusty alleys between

makeshift houses or a pack of stray hounds sniffs around a va-

cant lot that is being used as a football pitch, discarded tyres

hold down the corrugated iron roofs of makeshift homes …

But the contingency of the circumstances does not rob these

scenes of their beauty or buoyancy. For Mthethtwa, images are

a medium through which to narrate the myriad ways in which

people adapt to the challenges of their circumstances.

In The New Community, butterflies dance around the head of

a young girl wearing a mysterious blue mask. ‘These creatures

start as little pupas and become butterflies, so they connote

I Depend on You 2010 pastel on cotton paper 107 x 183 cm

18

growth and change,’ says Mthethwa, ‘but change that is beau-

tiful, because if you look at the pupa and you look at the butter-

fly you’d think they are two things that are not remotely related.

It’s about a beautiful change.’

‘I have always been a visual person,’ he says. His passion for

drawing kicked in early, at the age of six. When he was 12, he

was given a camera by a lodger who was living with his family

at the time. And his immersion in the language of the visual was

sealed by an early love of movies. ‘When I grew up, we didn’t

have real cinemas. We had a hall,’ he recalls. ‘Our neighbour

had a projector and he was the projectionist at that hall. The

hall had very high windows and my dad had a very high ladder,

so the neighbour would borrow the ladder from my dad every

Saturday to block the windows so that light didn’t pour into the

room. Because of that I could go in and out for free, so that’s

how it started.’

Begging for More 2010 pastel on cotton paper 107 x 156 cm

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IMMeDIATe HISTORIeS

Mthethwa was born in 1960 at the height of apartheid. This

was the year of the Sharpeville Massacre when the South Af-

rican police opened fire on a crowd of black protesters killing

69 people and fuelling an uproar of riots and demonstrations

across the country, and the declaration of a state of emergency.

It was also the year in which Cameroon, Somalia, Benin, Côte

d’Ivoire and other African states gained their independence,

and the year that kickstarted a heady decade of free love, space

travel, counterculture and social revolution.

Mthethwa’s arts education was initiated at the Open School

in Durban, which was founded privately and was one of the

few institutions in the country at the time that offered black

students a chance to be educated in fine art. This enabled him

to gain entry to Michaelis School of Fine Art at Cape Town Uni-

versity, and it was at this time that he began photographing the

beginnings of informal squatter camps around Cape Town.

‘I am speaking about visual practices that recognize coevalness,

that reach beyond the stock images that have endured until

now as the iconography of the “abandoned” continent.’

Okwui enwezor, Snap Judgments3

The Couple in the Next Room (detail) 2009 pastel on cotton paper 107 X 150 cm

22

After graduating, he received a Fulbright Scholarship that

allowed him to study at the Rochester Institute of Technology,

where he received his Masters degree in Imaging Arts in 1989. It

wasn’t long before he started to gain a reputation for his larger-

than-life pastel drawings and large-format photographs of the

inhabitants of the poor settlements on the outer fringes of the

Mother City.

Since the end of apartheid and the start of the democratic

era in 1994, South African photography has exploded from a

charged cell of semi-isolation onto the world stage. Having had

over 35 solo exhibitions in the United States, France, Germany,

Italy, South Africa and Switzerland, Mthethwa’s photographic

portraits have been key to this global proliferation of South

African images.

‘Photography has maintained a vital presence in African cul-

ture for over a century. But the recognition of African photo-

graphers and their unique visual language has come about only

recently,’ writes curator and art historian Okwui Enwezor in the

book that accompanied the watershed 2006 exhibition Snap

Judgments at the International Centre of Photography, which

included images by Mthethwa.

‘When Western photography engages Africa, it seems often

to evoke pathological images of disease, corruption, and pover-

ty. The global media almost never depict contemporary Africans

in ordinary situations; images of crisis frequently eclipse other

Untitled (from the Coal Miner Series)2008chromogenic print150 x 193 cmUnique

24

representations. In response to this partial view that overlooks

the complexities of daily life across a vast continent of over fifty

nations, [images like Mthethwa’s] force a recognition of the

contradictory and varied forms of photographic practice that

are now arising across Africa.’4

Mthethwa is motivated by a desire to create ‘a contemporary

history’5 that portrays people in a humane light. In his photo-

graphs, people appear not as the desperate, hopeless inhabit-

ants of yet another nameless shantytown, but as feisty survivors

with few resources, but a persistent will to happiness despite

the sometimes cramped and compromised nature of their cir-

cumstances.

‘From the earliest recorded history of the photographic en-

counter, Africa has made for a fascinating and elusive subject,

at once strange, intoxicating, carnal, primitive, wild, luminous,’

writes Enwezor. ‘Wherever and whenever photography engages

Africa, it invents a pathology of spectrality and transience. Each

pathology in turn invents its own panacea: pity, infantilisation,

paternalism, or the re-animation of the grotesque … The act of

photographing Africa has often been bound up with a certain

conflict of vision: between how Africans see their world and

how others see that world. In a way, this is a clash of lenses, a

struggle to locate and represent Africa by two committed but

disparate sensibilities – one intensely absorbed in its social and

Untitled (from Coal Miner series)2008chromogenic print81 x 104 cmEdition 1/3

26

cultural world, the other passing through it, fleetingly, on one

assignment or another.’

As an African documenting the world in which he is ‘intensely

absorbed’, Mthethwa’s images are not are not about disorder,

plague, collapse, war or desperation. Never ignoring the land-

scape and environment, he documents domestic life and the

harsh realities of labour, keying into the rhythms of modern

South African life and the lives of those in our neighbouring

states connected to this country via the currents of labour and

migrancy that flow across our increasingly fluid borders. His im-

ages of families, relationships and people interacting with their

environments document both urban and rural realities, captur-

ing a range of different aspects of life in South Africa.

His studio is testament to his passion for people and pop cul-

ture. The sound of a pennywhistler on the street below wafts

in through the open sash windows and mingles with Sly & The

Family Stone’s Everyday People blasting out from a portable ra-

dio hidden behind three easels:

‘I am no better and neither are you

We’re all the same, whatever we do

You love me, you hate me

You know me, and then

You can’t figure out the bag I’m in

I am everyday people’

Untitled (from Quartz Miner series)2008chromogenic print81 x 104 cmEdition 1/3

28

Untitled (from Mozambique series)2006chromogenic print84 x 106 cmEdition 2/3

In addition to the innumerable sticks of pastel in every imagin-

able colour that cover an entire trestle table in the centre of

his studio, spilling over onto the window ledges, the walls are

covered in images of football heroes, sangomas, soul divas and

newspaper headlines retrieved from publications like the Daily

Voice and City Press.

‘When I am in my studio I am in an enclosed space and I

am alone. I don’t allow a lot of people in – only my very close

friends. It’s my own private world. And when that world gets

too intense for me, I go out into the landscape and take pho-

tos,’ says Mthethwa. ‘I interact with other people and see more

things than when I am in my own private space. I like moving

between these two different worlds.’

The line between photography and drawing is a fairly fluid

one for Mthethwa, who deems both media to be of equal im-

portance, allowing a free flow of conceptual traffic between his

two fields of practice. Many of the elements in his vital pastel

drawings are based on photographs, while his photographs are

consciously constructed, with forms and colours operating in

similar ways to the planes and patterns of an abstract painting.

‘Unlike David Goldblatt’s superlative images that are indelibly

rooted in the nuanced history of the land, Mthethwa’s pictures

contemplate the realities of the immediate present, in a manner

that forgoes a heavy-handed anthropological or documentary

dissection, and instead employs a more intimate and humanist

30

Untitled (Gladiator 23)2008chromogenic print81 x 104 cmEdition 2/3

touch,’ write the young collectors behind the cult American

photography blog, DLK Collection6.

His work addresses the economic and political realities of

present-day South Africa in a manner that does not conceal

the hardships of working-class life, but also infuses one with a

sense of the almost zany hopefulness of a new nation in a phase

of rapid growth and metamorphosis. In this sense, his works

militate against what curator Okwui Enwezor refers to as ‘Afro-

pessimism’7, grappling instead with the compelling immediacies

of post-apartheid life in South Africa.

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GeTTING TO KNOw YOu

People are at the centre of Mthethwa’s oeuvre. Whether we

encounter them as some kind of contemporary Samurai war-

rior wielding a sharpened machete at the crest of a vast field of

sugar cane, leaning against a mountain of coal sacks, scaveng-

ing for recyclables in an immense pile of rubbish, or digging

their way through a torrent of red quartz dust, in their gaze one

detects an irrepressible note of stoic perseverance, and in their

pose sometimes even a flash of pride or defiance.

The large scale of his photographs, coupled with a directness

of gaze, establishes a confrontation between the spectator and

the subject, whose exhaustion, weariness or blank indifference

is never masked. Somehow, though, there is always some re-

deeming detail to rescue his subjects’ individuality from the re-

lentless morass of hard labour or rugged survival against which

they are pitted. It is this tension that imparts to his images such

a strong psychological impact.

Mthethwa is intent on revealing people’s dignified efforts to

maintain a sense of quirky personal identity in the ways they

choose to decorate their homes or the styles in which they

choose to dress. Even if the people in his images are shoulder-

ing up against social forces beyond their control, there are some

areas of life over which they do exercise a degree of choice.

Despite overcrowded living conditions, rough cardboard walls

‘My aim is to show the pride of the people I photograph.’

Zwelethu Mthethwa8

Untitled (from Sugar Cane series)2003chromogenic print150 x 187 cmUnique

34

and corrugated iron roofs, people’s cramped personal spaces

have been made to somehow take on their unique person-

alities. Colourful pop-cultural clippings from newspapers and

magazines cover the walls like wallpaper, revealing people’s de-

sire for beauty, glamour, sexiness or even just a bit of upbeat

decoration.

When one looks closely at the images that make up Mtheth-

wa’s Interiors series, one is overtaken by an air of disarming

tenderness in observing, for example, that a man who does not

possess a wardrobe has hung his only pair of pants on a hanger

to keep them neat and straight, as if they had been ironed, or

that a woman has gone to the trouble of cutting newspaper

into pretty patterns to adorn her very basic kitchen cabinet. One

is struck by the sensitivity with which people have laid out their

limited belongings to lend a dash of definitiveness to the small

spaces they call home.

Untitled (from Interior series)2000chromogenic print96,5 x 129,5 cmEdition 2/3

36

PHOTOGRAPHeR/PHOTOGRAPHeD

Legendary 20th-century photographer and Magnum Photos

co-founder Robert Capa famously declared that if your photo-

graphs were no good it was because you were not close enough

to your subject. It’s an assertion that bears particular relevance

to Mthethwa’s photographs, which evidence a great sense of

ease and openness between author and subject.

Unlike news photographers, who tend to swoop in and out

of social contexts driven by the urgency of deadlines and news

cycles, Mthethwa returns again and again to the communities

he photographs, establishing relationships with people over

time. ‘Some projects take years to be finalised,’ he says. ‘Some-

times I don’t get the image I’m looking for, so I’ll return a year

later and try again.’

He tries to establish a connection and a free-flowing ex-

change with his subjects to ensure that they play a role in how

they are depicted. Acutely aware of the ethical concerns and

power dynamics at play in the photographic contract, he has

described the relationship he develops with his subjects as ‘a

difficult dance’9.

‘When I use my camera, my subjects are very much aware

that I am taking photographs because I always ask them, and

people either grant me a yes or a no. They are very much aware

of my intentions,’ he says. ‘In this regard, I am not the only

Untitled (from Sugar Cane series)2003chromogenic print81 x 104 cmEdition 1/3

I am trying to portray people in a different light.

They may well be poor, but I want to portray them as

decent human beings, people like any other people.’

Zwelethu Mthethwa

38

director. I am the principal author because I edit, but it is some

kind of collaboration.’

In a recent discussion with Mthethwa, Enwezor asked him if

it had ever occurred to him that his images might be guilty of

glamorising poverty. ‘Is there an ethical commitment on your

part in terms of how your photographs operate in the world

in relation to the subjects themselves, but also their situation?’

asked Enwezor.

‘I try to be as honest as I can with people,’ Mthethwa re-

plied. ‘The photographs are not rushed. I go back and forth

until I think that I’ve got the right one … When I move into

people’s spaces, with which they are very familiar, it gives them

a certain kind of power to be very assertive, to be very sure of

themselves,’ he said. ‘I don’t use flash because flash somehow

glamorises things … I am trying to portray people in a different

light. They may well be poor, but I want to portray them as de-

cent human beings, people like any other people.’

Untitled (Gladiator 11 from Contemporary Gladiator series)2008chromogenic print81 x 104 cmEdition 2/3

40

HYMNS Of COlOuR

Imagine if Mthethwa’s images were in black and white. Some-

how the soul would be drained from them and they would

come across as a lot more grim or depressing. The proliferation

of background detail in his photographs – the bright lettering

or the repetitive patterning of brands or logos – would be lost

to us. The emerald green of a floral wallpaper, the pale cerulean

blue of a cloudless sky above a sugarcane field in Umzinto or

the ubiquity of the earthy red sand of the Mozambican quartz

mines inject a note of the hyper-real into the real.

Part of the emotional wallop delivered by both his drawings

and his photographs, is drawn from the almost magical lushness

of their colour. ‘Colour plays a major role in my work because

it has this spirituality of lifting things, and infusing complex and

spiritual understandings into the everyday,’ he says. His abun-

dant palette, applied in an exuberant manner that is more po-

etic than strictly representational, recalls Henri Matisse’s mastery

of the expressive language of colour.

‘Maybe ten years ago my faces were purple and then I’d have

some red faces, some green faces …’ he says. ‘But of late I’ve

been using very dark, grey-black faces, which are a new element

in my work. For me, black is a phenomenal colour because it is a

composite of all other colours. When the sun is very bright and

‘I chose colour because it provides a

greater emotional range.’

Zwelethu Mthethwa10

Born Free 2010 pastel on cotton paper 107 x 155 cm

For me, black is a phenomenal colour

because it is a composite of all other

colours. When the sun is very bright

and shines on black skin, it becomes

very poetic.

Zwelethu Mthethwa

42

The Couple in the Next Room 2009 pastel on cotton paper 107 x 150 cm

shines on black skin, it becomes very poetic. There are people

who are called black, but they’re not black at all, so I wanted to

start exploring the multiple nuances and shades of black.’

On first glance at one of his drawings, you might perceive the

sky as being quite simply blue, but on closer examination you’ll no-

tice it is not monochromatic at all, but an assembly of graded hues

that make up the blue you see. ‘There are a lot of colours overlaid

on top of each other, so when you look at it closely, you see differ-

ent kinds of blues and greens in the sky,’ says Mthethwa.

Similarly, you might on first glance imagine that that the crisp

linen tablecloth you see in The Couple in the Next Room is pure

white, when it is, in fact, a whole mixture colours that make up

the texture of the cloth and the shadows cast by the hats and

cups on this plain of apparent whiteness.

44

HONeST fICTIONS

Mthethwa composes his drawings in much the same way that

a novelist strings together a narrative, drawing on exact docu-

mentary details from his lived and experienced world, and fus-

ing them together with the glue of his imagination. His draw-

ings are a rich amalgam of real and imagined worlds, based

partly on photographic fragments, partly on memory and partly

on direct representations of the real.

The woman carrying a bucket on her head in MaDlamini out

bound to the Meat Market is based on a photograph of a stranger,

whereas the male character wearing the bright yellow makarapa

hat in the same drawing is the artist’s friend, Harry Sithole, who

owns the shop, African Image, on the corner of Church Street,

just below Mthethwa’s studio. Sithole came into the studio to

model for Mthethwa, as car guards in the area sometimes do.

But his image has been stitched into a peri-urban scene based

on other visual fragments from life and photographs.

In this way current documentary realities come to play a role

in imagined scenes. You’ll notice, for example, the presence of

aeroplane vapour trailing in the sky in several images, referenc-

ing carbon emissions and the current fragility of the environ-

ment. So what appears to be a beautiful blue sky on a harmless

MaDlamini out bound to the Meat Market 2010 pastel on cotton paper 107 x 150 cm

My work is about people’s culture

and football is a core element of

township life.

Zwelethu Mthethwa

46

sunny day is also a subtle reference to the contemporary politics

of environmental abuse. A burning brazier in an enclosed room

is a warm and glowing point of focus in another image, but also

references the health hazards of township living. The bucket is

another recurring motif, pointing to limited natural resources

and people’s lack of access to fundamental amenities like run-

ning water. At the same time, the bucket evidences people’s

desire to stay clean and healthy.

As an artist of the immediate, contemporary world, Mtheth-

wa’s images are also scattered with references to the working-

class legacy of the game of football, which has always been

the people’s sport of choice. ‘We can’t ignore the World Cup,’

he exclaims. ‘It’s a really big event in the world ... My work is

about people’s culture and football is a core element of town-

ship life.’

A single drawing may combine elements from both urban

and rural landscapes, fusing them together like novelistic ge-

ographies to create seamless visions of the world as it exists in

Mthethwa’s mind and the minds of the people who populate

his images. Double geographies and dual fidelities are common

in South Africa where most people are torn between the place

of their origin [and often their eventual return, in death] and the

city that has shaped their adult working lives. Patterns of forced

migrancy were entrenched by the homeland system under

apartheid, which ensured a steady flow of cheap labour to the

mines. And the constant upheavals, transitions and spatial trans-

formations of migrancy persist in the post-apartheid era against

a broader global backdrop of wanderers and wandering.

‘When I started working in the informal settlements, I wanted

to find out where people actually come from, so I went out into

the country to try to trace their roots and get a visual sense of

how people live in those settings. Migrancy is not just a thing that

The Only Child 2010 pastel on cotton paper 107 x 180 cm

48

happens within South Africa’s borders, but regionally too,’ says

Mthethwa. ‘So I was always curious to see where in our neigh-

bouring countries people had come from,’ says Mthethwa.

‘Sometimes the scene I’m depicting is in an informal settle-

ment, but the view out of the window is a contrasting view of a

rural area. But that could just be a mind game.’

He calls it a ‘mind game’, but perhaps this stitching together

of disparate places – this fusing of double geographies – is also

a kind of attunement or healing. In the plane of the image, as in

the spiritual plane, two places exist not as a fractious duality, but

as a continuum – a whole. The world has been reconstituted on

a single flat plane, and in that fertile dreamspace it hums with

lush colour and it is abundantly beautiful.

NOTeS 1 Achebe, C, 2010. The Education of a British Protected Child. London and

New York: Penguin Classics: An imprint of Penguin Books, pp 22–23 2 Zwelethu Mthethwa interviewed by Alexandra Dodd, 23 February 2010,

Cape Town, South Africa 3 Enwezor, O, 2006. Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary

African Photography. New York: Steidl ICP 4 Enwezor, O, 2006. Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary

African Photography. New York: Steidl ICP 5 Zwelethu Mthethwa and Curator and Dean of Academic Affairs of San

Francisco Art Institute, Okwui Enwezor, in conversation, Aperture Gallery and Bookstore, March 2010

6 http://dlkcollection.blogspot.com/2010/02/book-zwelethu-mthethwa.html 7 Enwezor, O, 2006. Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary

African Photography. New York: Steidl ICP 8 Zwelethu Mthethwa interviewed by Alexandra Dodd, 23 February 2010,

Cape Town, South Africa 9 Zwelethu Mthethwa and Curator and Dean of Academic Affairs of San

Francisco Art Institute, Okwui Enwezor, in conversation, Aperture Gallery and Bookstore, March 2010

10 Zwelethu Mthethwa interviewed by Alexandra Dodd, 23 February 2010, Cape Town, South Africa

Red Wall 2009 pastel on cotton paper 108 x 180 cm

This exhibition catalogue

is published in conjunction with

the exhibition

Is it our goal …? and other related issues –

Photographs and pastel works by Zwelethu Mthethwa

at CIRCA on Jellicoe, Johannesburg

3 June – 30 June 2010

Published in 2010 by CIRCA on Jellicoe,

2 Jellicoe Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg

Copyright © CIRCA on Jellicoe

Copyright text © Alex Dodd

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted, in any form or by any means,

without prior permission from the publishers.

ISBN 978-0-620-47119-0

Designed by Kevin Shenton

Printed by Ultra Litho, Johannesburg

Zwelethu Mthethwa would like

to thank:

Alexandra Dodd

Everard Read

Framed Master Gilders and Framers

iArt

Jack Shainman Gallery

Jurie Senekal

Orms

Cover image MaDlamini out bound to the Meat Market (detail) 2010 pastel on cotton paper 107 x 150 cm

This page

The New Community (detail) 2010 pastel on cotton paper 107 x 210 cm