Themba Tsotsi writes about the work of the South-African artist Kemang Wa Lehulere. Starting point are two exhibitions of Wa Lehulere at Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town: Here I am, a concrete man throwing himself into abstraction (2017) and To whom it may concern (2015).
Blank Projects is an institution that I been aware of for a number of years now, and the eclectic and experimental nature of the artist they show has been consistent and imbued with a measure of a collective aesthetic. Blank Projects is a gallery that extends African artists beyond what is political, into the realm of aesthetic and the theoretical.
At the crux of Khaya Sineyile’s work is an artist who is cultivating an alternative consciousness regarding how artists from his background are perceived, he is an artist seeking to alter the manner in which their works are received. His work is barren of that apologetic sentiment, where the social context of the township is perpetuated to be the quintessential context for cultural, historic and contemporary passivity in relation to the powers that be.