Sthenjwa Luthuli

“umthente uhlaba usamila”

05.06.21 - 10.07.21

Sthenjwa Luthuli's latest work is an invitation into the unknown — where speculative sensations and bold dimensions collide.

umthente uhlaba usamila is an extension of Luthuli's first solo exhibition, Inkaba Yami, which he presented at WHATIFTHEWORLD last year. The artist turned his focus inward in the previous show: this time around, it was a reckoning with his bloodline. The works within this collection depict headless figures assembled in a rhythmic arrangement that invokes what appears to be a dreamlike, other-worldly plane. This is what Luthuli describes as the "unknown place''.

Three years in the making, the exhibition came to fruition when Luthuli was trying to find his voice. This led him to work through a painstaking process of producing these remarkable woodcut prints, each of which are painted in dot-textured colours inspired by "umkhati—the beautiful shades found in outer space''. From the wood cutting process - which takes several weeks - to pressing works of this scale, which he and his team do manually in the studio with a bottle, the process is laborious and physically hard on the body. It requires great meticulousness. A move in the wrong direction, one small smudge and the process has to start again.

The process's demands on one's mental and physical state are things that Luthuli was attuned to from a young age. He was born in KwaNyuswa (Bothas Hill, KwaZulu Natal) and later moved to Marianhill with his family. His childhood and subsequent artistic path were altered and shaped by his difficulties with conventional education. Luthuli recalls that "Growing up, I was a young person who had a lot of fear”. In his early schooling life, he struggled with language barriers and literacy; his inability to fit into the parameters of the South African schooling system caused him not to complete his schooling.

Other memories that stand out vividly from his childhood are centred around the ideas of enduring hard work. "My parents loved me. But they did not not spoil me. Whenever I came home from school, I would have to wash the dishes or prepare dinner before attending night school. Back home I worked with my father, who was a builder, mixing cement and cleaning his tools before going to bed. I often woke up tired and was always trying to catch up here and there". The exhibition is named umthente uhlaba usamila, a reference to these childhood experiences, which prepared him for the more strenuous aspects of producing this work, specifically the incessant cutting, kneeling and pressing.

Luthuli's challenges led him to chart his own unique path through learning. Serendipity and more informal learning methods are how he started to develop an outlet for his creativity. After leaving school, he acquired carpentry skills during a very short stint in a workshop before spending time at home learning how to paint. Later, an encounter with ceramicist Sibonelo Luthuli led him to the BAT Centre, where he started exploring printmaking, which opened him up to more creative possibilities. It was the first time he felt seen and affirmed for his work, and it naturally felt like home. ''I was failed by the education system, but at the BAT Centre, I was awarded for being a good student for the first time in my life. That made me want to find a way to really blow people away with my work''.

Using a surrealist frame of reference, Luthuli's work is an evocative contemplation of his past and futurity in conversation with his elders. Growing up, he was taught that the way forward can only be revealed by those who came before. The figures in his work are the people who form part of his lineage, whose clan names he calls when burning imphepho and asking the ancestors for guidance. He portrays them as headless because although we may not always know the identities of our ancestors, we know they exist. Luthuli depicts these guides as existing joyously in the unknown place; a spiritual plane where they are seen floating in "umkhati".

Each encounter with his elders is a lesson reflected in his works. In Identity demands, he contemplates the experience of not being able to take on his paternal name because certain rites of passage, izinto zamasiko, had not been performed historically. He thinks about times when it was most difficult to proceed in aspects of his life, yet he still found himself able to forge forth, despite the circumstances. Another work, Abongoni, reflects the collective ways Black people existed in previous times, where we were in complete alignment with nature. The unknown place that Luthuli's has conjured up is a manifestation of the ancestral realm: "I had a hard life and was considered a slow-learner. I always knew that there was something that I loved, even though I did not know where to go. When the opportunity to practice art came to me, I felt happy and at home for the first time. I want to show people that the unknown place is always here". It is also a place within, where he found his most uninhibited self— where his work came into being.

Bio

Ntombenhle Shezi is a writer and researched based in Johannesburg. She is an MA candidate in History of Art at the Wits School of Art (WSOA), and her research interests are gender and visual cultures. She is also the Communication and Partnerships Manager at the French institute of South Africa.

Born in Bothas Hill, KwaZulu-Natal, Sthenjwa Luthuli (b. 1991) is a South African artist working primarily in carved wooden reliefs and woodcut prints.

Luthuli held his first solo exhibition, Inkaba Yami, in 2020 with WHATIFTHEWORLD in Cape Town. Upcoming projects in 2021 include solo exhibitions with Unit Gallery in London and BKhz Gallery in Johannesburg. His work has been exhibited widely at national Art Fairs such as Investec Cape town Art Fair,  FNB Art Joburg, and Latitudes and Turbine Art Fair in Johannesburg, South Africa as well as AAF Lagos, Nigeria. His work was also included on the group show, The Medium is the Message, at Unit gallery London in 2020. 

His work forms part of public collections such the Leiterin der stadtischen Galerie in Bremen, Germany and the National Art Bank at Oliewenhuis Museum in Bloemfontein, South Africa. Significant private collections include American collectors; Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz’s (Dean Collection), as well as the Judith Greenblatt Collection, New York, and Homestead Collection, Cape Town.

In 2012, Luthuli was nominated to participate in the Velobala mentorship program hosted by the African art Centre at the Durban University of Technology. Significant projects include a mural in the Concordia Tunnel in Bremen, Germany. In 2017 he was placed runner up in the Sasol New Signature Awards Competition.