In her Flowers Series, Gabonese artist Owanto reminds us of how the colonial lens could sometimes go as far as invading vulnerable moments during a female initiate ceremony. One imagines a stranger looking on, into an age-old ritual and capturing private moments created to define womanhood. One wonders if that gaze leaves its own kind of mark, a scar that deeply diminishes the girls’ dignity.
Even now the ‘black sound’ is a constantly energetic and evolving creature. With more and more cross-genre records being dropped across Dance and Pop regularly there is little doubt that black music is the mainstream sound and market leader across the Western world.
The twenty-some works sit scattered around the large exhibition hall and the first impression is nothing less than overwhelming.
Jean-Michel Basquiat is one of the most famous artists at the moment. He died almost 30 years ago at the age of 27. A lot of artists are influenced by him, especially black artists. His work is popular among young people. I am wondering how much of a poet he was. He started his career with texts on walls in lower Manhattan, in a lot of his drawings and paintings texts play an important role.
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.