Turiya Magadlela in THE PAST IS PRESENT, with
BRAD KAHLHAMER and HANK WILLIS THOMAS, MARCH 16 – APRIL 22, 2017, Jack Shainman, 524 WEST 24TH STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10011
Gift of Togetherness, 2012.
About:
Magadlela lives and works in Johannesburg. Working primarily with common yet loaded fabrics, she creates abstract compositions by cutting, stitching, folding and stretching these materials across wooden frames. Magadlela’s most recent solo exhibition, Impilo ka Lova (blank projects, 2015), employed pantyhose, a material imbued with notions of discreet femininity and eroticism, as a medium in which to articulate her personal experience of woman- and motherhood. The compositions are double-edged; suggestive of sexual intimacy and violence. Simultaneously, they are aesthetically seductive plays on colour, line, and form. A work from Magadlela’s I never made Swan Lake (2015) series of pantyhose works will be on display at Pace Gallery’s group exhibition ‘Blackness in Abstraction’, opening on the 24th of June in New York.
Umudiyadiya, 2015.
Never Made Swan Lake, 2015.
iMaid ka Lova 8-10, 2016.
Magadlela has also used prison uniforms, beds and linens, in conjuction with ‘kaffersheet’, a beige fabric traditionally worn by Xhosa traditional leaders, to create monuments to the political prisoners of South Africa’s Apartheid past, as well as an analysis of the social and psychological impact of imprisonment in the present day. The Kaffersheet series was displayed in a solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2015.