MAWANDE KA ZENZILE was born in Lady Frere, Eastern Cape, in 1986.
Double Date, 2014.
About:
Central to Ka Zenzile’s practice is the idea of the found object. The ‘object’, however, can be anything from a pile of firewood to a supremacist ideology or the image of Batgirl. The show is conceived as a laboratory of ideas, where iconography from low and high culture, historical and contemporary political constellations is forced into dialogue. Mowgli from Disney’s Jungle Book crosses paths with Osama Bin Laden and Saint Sebastian, in an attempt to trace the violence that lies at the core of all these narratives. Recurring motifs are the scarecrow, with its associations of both power and vulnerability, and the boat, which suggests an interest in exploration and travel, as well as its darker counterparts of conquest and slavery.
JFK: Historical Painting, 2014.
Black man you are on your own, 2014.
Untitled Scarecrow, 2014.
Statement:
My work draws attention to history, politics, colonialism, slavery and migration/immigration. I explore how culture, commerce and institutionalised power determine (or dictate) our lived experience. I’m interested in the rise and fall of ideological, political and cultural systems – those that dictate or those that succumb. In my time I have witnessed the falling of the ‘twin towers’, the lynching of Saddam Hussein, the assassination/execution of Osama Bin Ladin, conflict in the Arabic nations (Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Sudan, Pakistan, and so on), and the current tension between Russia and Ukraine, the US and other European nations/superpowers. (text Stevenson Gallery, SA)
