Drawing from nature as inspiration, Jan Ernst creates elegant and alluring ceramic designs that delicately balance form and function. For him, ceramics is linked to exploration, experimentation and finding equilibrium in composition, structure and materiality. With an educational background in architecture, Ernst’s main medium is clay, through which he brings to life gracefully gorgeous organic designs. Although his formal journey into ceramics began later in life, the little mud houses and clay villages made in his childhood ignited a passion he would later pursue. Tactility, peculiarity, decay and delight are all significant principles that hold the work of the Cape Town-based artist. He doesn’t shy away from contradiction  —durability and nuance are handled with great finesse. 

Below is a conversation I had with Ernst about his practice, his philosophy towards beauty and what he has planned for the future. 

Nkgopoleng Moloi: You describe your work as functional art, can you tell us what you mean by this? 

Jan Ernst: The first thing that comes to mind is an architectural phrase by Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, ‘commodity, firmness, and delight’. He believed if a design embraced and balanced all three aspects, the creator would have been successful in his task. Commodity refers to the functionality of the design – in the case of the candelabra, the aim is to successfully hold candles. Firmness refers to construction/making of an object that is steady. Finally, delight refers to the fulfilment of the aesthetic function. 

N.M: When I look at your work, there is a subtlety and delicacy – an almost minimal approach but not quite. How would you describe your visual language? 

J.E: You are right. There is an interplay between the delicate and robust. Minimal yet slightly adorned with texture. Nature is full of these nuances. The minimal aesthetic is driven by the functionality of the design item. Through my work, I aim to create a balance between what is pure and true to clay as a material and something that reflects the manicured environments we live in.  

N.M: Can you tell us about your journey into ceramics? How and when it began? 

J.E: If we go way back to when I was a little boy growing up on a farm, one could say that was the time it all started. I remember building mud houses and little villages made of dirt and clay found in the garden. I was first introduced to formal training in ceramics in high school during my art classes. Before I completed my master’s in architecture, I attended the art school at Nelson Mandela University and was further exposed to it in my sculpture and 3D studies. It was through my architecture studio that I began working with Vorster and Braye Ceramics. I was almost instantly hooked to the medium but wanted to explore it in a new way. 

N.M: Your work is hardly ever smooth. It is scarified with incisions and marks on its skin. Can you tell us about the process of mark-making in your work? And why this approach?  

J.E: I am personally drawn to textural items – I love to touch objects because of the interaction with it.  While ‘smooth’ is technically also a texture, the mark-making comes from my interpretation of the textures found in nature and leaving traces of engagement with the piece. I use texture, not as an applied decorative element, but rather to enhance the compositional lines of the pieces. The thin lines on the coral-like candelabra emphasize flow and curves and give movement to the piece.

The mud-like texture on the anthill anchors the piece to its environment and represents the earth/dirt created by ants when they form anthills. Creating these textures takes a lot of time. I inscribe with a thin tool to create the lines or smash a blunt object into very wet clay to create the earthlike texture. I suppose there is something about removing or taking away from the purity of the smooth clay.

N.M: You describe the work as being influenced by natural structures —corals, fungi and rock formations —what is it about these structures that fascinates you? 

J.E: I find organic forms fascinating. It never tries to be something other than what it just is. Very truthful. It reflects growth, decay, and change, so there is a story of time passing behind it. Like the rock formations in the Cederberg that are carved away by the winds to create monolithic sculptures.  From a ‘making’ point of view, clay also prefers to be shaped into organic forms rather than straight lines – so the medium accommodates the inspiration and physical form very well. It is incredibly challenging to create something like a webbed structure floating in the air, but that’s the beauty of it. Pushing the medium to its limits and succeeding. 

N.M: I’m interested to know if you have a philosophy towards beauty. In your work, how much do you think about beauty, how do you think about what beauty is and how do you bring it to life? 

J.E: I think of beauty all the time while I am creating. I suppose it is influenced a lot by my architectural background. I find beauty in composition, structure, materiality, and functionality. These elements working together in harmony create a result that is aesthetically pleasing and serves a purpose. That might be a very academic approach, but I also find beauty in the absurd, in the awkward and technically wrong – it is like a good joke with a strong punch line. The quirk and the cleverness. 

N.M: Can you tell us about your process of creating the works, from inception until completion? A piece such as the 6 Arms, 3 legs Ceramic candelabra or the Ant hill candelabra in Terra Cotta, for instance?

J.E: The seed of the idea comes from exploring nature and borrowing ideas from the environment. I love to walk around in the veld or spend time on the rocks by the ocean. Nature never stops to provide inspiration. From that point, I begin to stylize and abstract through rough sketches and models. A lot of the models I make are used to just understand the form,  to refine, subtract, and add until it feels good. In my mind’s eye I see the lines of the candles meeting the clay. Triangular composition, and the inclusion of shapes such as circles or ovals and then distorting it into more organic and free-flowing shapes. The last bit is the texture I apply. The choice of texture is a simplified graphic of the real texture found on corals or anthills for instance.

N.M: Do you collaborate much within your practice? If so, can you tell us about your approach to collaboration?

J.E: I think collaborations create some of the best design results. It is valuable to see how someone else thinks about your work and what their approach would be. Within a collaboration, it is important to stay true to your design character but borrow what is relevant from the other party. I am currently collaborating with another studio whose design style is completely different from mine—thin, utilitarian and very stylized. I am gaining an appreciation for detail, precision, and geometry.

N.M: Bernard Leach ( the man thought of as the father of pottery)  used to describe pottery as “a way of connecting the hand to the heart”. I’m curious, as someone with a background in a different field (architecture), what is it that ceramics offers you that perhaps architecture or interior design does not? 

J.E: What fascinates me most about ceramics is seeing how something that I have designed can take shape right in front of my eyes while I am engaging with it. During my studies in architecture, we used to build models of what our buildings would look like [pre-computer-generated imagery]. Architecture is a slow profession and these days we are very removed from the physical. Everything happens on computers with digital representations and virtual tours – it does not leave much room for creating by hand. The idea of connecting hand and heart through pottery is something I can relate with. There is beauty in the process of engagement, in understanding the physical form right in front of you and the time spent perfecting it.

N.M: Can you tell us about your plans for the near future, if any? Are you working on new collections? What is the direction etc? 

J.E: I am currently working on a new collection called “Formations” – it is commissioned by a private client in Stellenbosch and will include a desk, side table, floor lamp, bench, and table lamp. The idea is to challenge the structural qualities of clay as a medium in its purest form. The desk, for instance, will not have a substructure made of steel or timber. The design aesthetic is driven by rock formations inspired by the Cederberg or fungi from the Newlands forest in the Western Cape. It aims to showcase the overlapping organic structures from the micro to the macro-scale.

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Like many cities in the world Lagos is a city of extremes. Individuals who fit into the mould of heteronormativity (especially those protected by wealth) are considered worthy of protection and celebration while others (feminised, queer and poor bodies) are rendered invisible and unworthy. Queer and poor people are not only invisible, they are also unsafe due to discrimination, criminalization and violence.

“The Royal House of Allure” is a name of a (safe) House on mainland Lagos where members of the queer community in need of boarding (due to various circumstances) live together. A House is a family unit that one is able to select into; a place of gathering for those who are not allowed to gather anywhere else. Houses are more than just places of survival, they are a  physical embodiment of radical queer expression that encourage solidarity. House culture originates from New York’s ballroom culture which emerged in the 1920s and reached an apex in the 1980s — a matriarch, referred to as house mother, provides housing as well as a support system for members of the LGBTQIA+ community (referred to as her children). These establishments actively advocate for inclusivity and provide members of the community with a space to construct a sense of self through artistic practices within beauty, fashion and music.

In 2019, Mlangeni spent six weeks in Lagos photographing the queer community at The Royal House of Allure. His awareness of the House came as a result of interactions with well-known queer figures in Nigeria, through social media. This photographic essay forms part of a larger body of work photographing queer communities on the continent (specifically South Africa and the DRC).

The Royal House of Allure contains simple images that reveal the complexities behind representation. The images diverge at a single specific point; those that display fantasy through glamour where subjects actively pose for the camera and those that offer quieter banal moments where subjects are simply going on about their day at the house: braiding each other’s hair, having conversations, sewing clothes, napping, cooking, laughing and taking selfies. They offer us a glimpse of the love and acceptance between community members within the social structure of a House.

John Berger saw glamour as a modern invention linked to ideas of grace, elegance and authority but of course, glamour is also inextricably linked with visibility, notions of beauty and power —those who see themselves (and are seen) feel powerful while others are rendered unseeable and therefore unworthy. Although it seems so obvious that it might require no comment, representation matters and images have the potential to influence systems of thought, views and opinions. The idea that images have the potential to influence systems of thought goes a long way in explaining Mlangeni’s commitment towards documenting various communities in his practice. The Royal House of Allure forms part of his broader practise of (re)imaging and (re)imagining vulnerable bodies as safe, seen and worthy of protection and celebration.

The series was presented at the second Lagos Biennial (26 October–23 November 2019) alongside works by over forty local and international artists and artist collectives.

Text by Nkgopoleng Moloi

Sabelo Mlangeni: The Royal House of Allure

blank projects

Opening 6pm, Thursday January 23
January 23 – March 7

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“History and the past are not one and the same.” it is this very simple yet resonant line that makes me pay attention to Sepideh Mehraban’s latest show; Until The Lions Have Their Own Historians, The History Of The Hunt Will Always Glorify The Hunter. The setting off point for this exhibition (which includes eight works of mixed media on found carpets) is, of course, a quote from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.
The exhibition proposes to us that history, as a study or retelling of past events, is in fact not neutral—it is shaped, crafted and moulded by those with power, where forces of censorship and propaganda are constantly in operation to undermine and silence.

Mehraban investigates, examines and cross-examines recent Iranian histories using “formal” and “informal” accounts and records (memories, stories, oral history, newspapers, archives, carpets, family photographs); both public and private, real and metaphorical records function as repositories that can be (re)negotiated and (re)interpreted. This amalgamation of personal and public accounts deviates from unchallenged methods that present history as final. Furthermore, the use of abstraction as a mode of creation (with the grid format of the newspaper as a source of inspiration) recontextualises how we think through history, lending the works as prompts into further inquiries as opposed to retellings of ‘facts’.

I interviewed Mehraban to find out more about the exhibition, her research and her practice.

NM: I was intrigued by the notion (in the exhibition text) that history and the past are not the same. Can you speak more about this?

SM: History is only one angle of the past, history is a story we are told, usually by those who manage to speak the loudest. The title of this body of work draws from a famous line in Chinua Achebe’s seminal work Things Fall Apart; Until The Lions Have Their Own Historians, The History Of The Hunt Will Always Glorify The Hunter.
My goal is to challenge the idea that someone or some entity can tell you what happened to you. It’s really critical to have these conversations, especially in places where the conversation is so highly politicised.

NM: Can you speak to us about the format of the newspaper as a source of inspiration? What do you feel this format allows you to do (or not do)?

SM: Newspapers are physical artefacts of the past. They belong to the time when cellphones, the internet and twitter didn’t exist. Their materiality, like books, is nostalgic and also in a way traumatic. They are traumatic because the news is tampered with over the course of history. In the case of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the news do not follow the narrations and stories that many Iranian families have experienced. The grid of the newspaper is a signifier of the structure of spreading information and at the same time control of information where we see the elements of propaganda and censorship play out. Censorship and propaganda are just as traumatic as the actual violence of revolution.

NM: I’m thinking of the newspaper from the lens of censorship and propaganda (as you’ve mentioned above). Through your explorations of history, what can you tell us about the relationship between these different parts of how history is told and experienced?

SM: My childhood experiences and family’s stories were at odds with the official state history, the controlled and censored domestic news channels, and also with the increasingly reductive international media and its lifeless headlines and statistics.
It is this discord between the grand narrative and the chronicles of everyday people that I explore in my work, the multitude of personal histories behind (and absent from) the headlines and politics. Stories of individual lives, of hopes for change, of disappointment and ultimately of the humanity behind the abstracted media coverage. It’s a subject with universal relevance, as I discovered on relocating to South Africa in 2012. I found parallels between the two countries: the complex histories marked by trauma and political turmoil, empty promises and disillusionment, and the abundant memories and lived histories of ordinary people.

NM: When I think about the carpet and paint over the carpet I have an image of covering and uncovering and I think we can say this with history as well, where we have an understanding of the accounts that make up history until we uncover more and more. With your research into the 1979 revolution, can you speak to us about things that you are uncovering?

SM: The 1979 revolution was a populist and nationalist movement consisting of Marxists, Islamic socialists, secularists and Shi’a Islamists. These diverse groups united to overthrow the monarchy but instead of a democracy, they ushered in an Islamic fundamentalist-led theocracy under Ruhollah Khomeini. There is propaganda by the current government to frame the movement as a religious uprising, which is not the case. The 1979 revolution was an uprising against a dictatorship with a hope for a better future.

NM: Can you talk to us about how you are thinking through post-apartheid South Africa and post-revolutionary Iran, together, if at all?

SM: Both of these countries have complex histories marked by trauma. The recent student movements such as Rhodes Must Fall, Fees Must Fall and Open Stellenbosch of 2015 are indicators of social and political changes. These protests influenced governmental action (e.g. university fees were frozen after the Fees Must Fall campaign in 2015). There were also student uprisings on the other side of the hemisphere in Iran; after the 2009 controlled presidential election, which saw Mahmoud Ahmadinejad come into power. At the present moment, there are still protests occurring in Iran after the increased price of petroleum where people are demanding a long-term resolution from the government. Over the course of a week, the government shut down the internet and at least 106 people were killed during demonstrations. There is no international coverage of this in western media nor in the Iranian national media. People are cut off from the world which is nerve-racking to witness in 2019.
In Iran and South Africa, the student uprisings and protests are characterised by the traumatisation and upheaval of ordinary lives. In both countries, protests are indicative of a need for political change and transformation.

NM: I’m interested in this idea of intergenerational trauma; how do you see this manifesting today and how do we begin to think of ways of fracturing that trauma and moving towards healing?

SM: We need more empathy toward each other and our world. We need more care. We need leaders who promote humanity and equality for everyone. We could make small changes by starting with our families and our communities. We need to listen. There are many voices that need to be heard and it takes years to heal completely but it’s not impossible. The future is bright with our younger generation—with their awareness and knowledge of their world and themselves.

Until The Lions Have Their Own Historians, The History Of The Hunt Will Always Glorify The Hunter is on view at SMITH in Cape Town until 30th November. For more information about the exhibition or the artist, you can contact Jana Terblanche at jana@smithstudio.co.za.

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Katharien de Villiers’ Bananas and Saints Alike is a seedbed for humour, exploration, fantasy and joyful emergence. In this exhibition, showing at SMITH in Cape Town (till 30th Nov), de Villiers presents a collection of paintings in mixed media—fabric, wood, oil pastels, acrylic, car paint and found objects—these components that do not always exist together in a gallery setting create a complicated and irregular network of paths, inviting the viewer to join in on the journey of meaning-making through spontaneous and undirected playfulness. The starting point is a question (or perhaps questions), followed by states of confusion. However, de Villiers doesn’t run away from this confusion, she welcomes these tattered shards of incertitude and embraces them as potentially generative.

From the title, all the way to the imagery, Bananas and Saints Alike accepts the fundamental notion that life is often incongruous, illogical, perplexing and un-encompassable. There is no illusion of order, no imposition of narrative, no metaphors, no ideology, no historical analysis or even politics. Meaning is created through engagement, but it also reconstructs and mutates through multiple re-engagements.

Below is a short but very insightful conversation I had with the artist about the exhibition.

NM: For this exhibition, the question of “what is the show about?” remains unresolved. Given this state, what would you say the exhibition is pointing us to or asking us?

KdV: The question “what is the show about” remains unresolved simply because the show is many things. The show is one founded on questions and potential relations instead of answers and clear understanding. In its confoundedly unresolved nature, Bananas and Saints Alike is waiting in anticipation for the viewer to respond.
I am drawn to scenarios that don’t feign truth, but rather acknowledge the prevalent confusion of real life. This confusion is fueled by multitudes of meta-narratives driven by vastly different bodies and minds. Bananas and Saints Alike is a world open to the grey of the daily, the hybridity of understanding and the overwhelming nature of even the simplest moments when one wishes to understand.

NM: If a show defies political commentary, historical analysis, or self-examination then it seems the idea of storytelling becomes one of the ways in which the work can be interacted with. What stories are you personally interested in right now?

KdV: A year ago I read a book by Nigerian author, Teju Cole, called Known and Strange Things. It is a collection of essays which takes the reader into the non-linear, relational mind of this incredible author. Similar to Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Cole peels back the readers’ eyelids, forcing one to acknowledge and experience the complexities of contemporary “truths”/ moments. These stories have had a massive impact on my work— not because of the subject matter, but rather because of the exploratory nature of the author’s voice. With this body of work, I was driven toward exposing mundane narratives (a washing line, a fruit basket, a low-budget shrine) as the complex things they have become over time and in the mouths of many.

NM: As an artist, what is your relationship with play?

KdV: In my practice playing can be immediately related to making. Making is simply thought made visible, and has proven itself to be my most successful means of finding out whether something would work. The possibilities that thrive in play cannot always reach their potential if the outcome has been programmed, but when thought is translated as rhizomatic progress through making, play reigns supreme.

NM: One could argue that there is a “withholding” in this exhibition. “The act or art of withholding” conjures up ideas of mystery for me, do you feel that there is still enough mystery in the (art)world? Maybe the starting point should be why mystery?

KdV: Why not mystery? Mystery exists in all the most beautiful facets of our lives—love, spirituality, forgiveness, and ultimately, it is the core of this thing called life. For thousands of years individuals have been caught up in “the truth of life”—personally, I prefer the mysteries. Mystery exists sometimes despite the hard truths we find in our daily lives. It is the feeling before you fall asleep and the moment the sun sets behind the horizon. It is what you take home after watching an inspiring film or eating a mouthful of delicious food. There can never be a shortage of mystique; only our inability to acknowledge it. Reality often tries to replace mystery with understanding, but why open yourself up to such disappointment?

NM: I’m interested in the idea of mutation as method, why is this notion of mutation worthwhile? What does it do?

KdV: Mutation allows change. It is free-flowing energy designed to allow external forces to influence and alternate the path a piece was originally set on. Besides the physical presence of mutation (interaction between 2D and 3D, the morphing of the boundaries of canvas or super-imposed imagery contorting a clear understanding of the work) the most powerful changes take place once the works have left my studio and enter the public realm. There they are exposed to all kinds of projections from every engaging viewer. The ultimate mutation is the works bending and folding to fit versatile narratives. Being made as subjects in flux, it is only natural for the works to be opened up for further transformation.

NM: Can you tell us about specific works in the show, that have completely mutated or transformed from what they were when you began making them (either in terms of the idea, the materials or the entire form)?

KdV: By far my greatest challenge was Bananas and Saints Alike. The title piece of the show started as a relatively small collage of snake-skin material, Mary with Baby-J and about four bananas. What started out as a manageable piece became the heavy-weight championship of my young career. It was also the first piece that broke the boundaries of the canvas (and my first real engagement with yellow- in no uncertain terms). The piece’s mutation set the tone for further works, forcing me to push each piece beyond the point of breaking into a realm where it can exist beyond its original context.

Katharien de Villiers was born in 1991 in Cape Town. She currently lives and works in Cape Town.
For more information about the exhibition or the artist, you can contact Jana Terblanche from SMITH Gallery Cape Town at jana@smithstudio.co.za.

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MOTHER IS A DRUM is a solo exhibition by Grace Cross, presented at SMITH in Cape Town (31 July – 31 August 2019). The show is an exploration of motherhood and the physical actions that accompany the experience – the revelations of motherhood, what Lucienne Bestall, in a text accompanying the exhibition, refers to as the pleasures of abiding, of repetition, of surrender, of finding in ordinary devotion the most perfect communion.

Below is a short conversation with the artist, Grace Cross, about the show.

NM: Looking through the work and thinking through these physical actions of motherhood, I can’t help but think of choreography – a sequence of repeated actions; repeated day in, day out. Is this something you can comment on?

GC: So much of being a mother is a blur of ritual and repetition undertaken with huge amounts of energy and love. There is both pleasure and boredom derived from these daily meditations of care. It is like a dance between you and your child, they reverberate and reflect off you constantly, learning and growing how to be in the world. I love the idea of a mother being like a drum; able to bounce back, to always reflect an immediate response, and for play to emerge through the repetition of its beats.

I wanted repeated phrases and patterns in the paintings to reflect the rituals of motherhood. The urging, scooping, wiping, rocking, picking up becomes the daily beat of early mothering. You see these repetitions in the painted text ‘pat pat pat pat’ or ‘pick drop pick drop pick’. It requires powers of ordinary devotion. And that very ordinariness builds through its repeated everydayness to a kind of colossal, beating, fierce love between mother and child that there is nothing quite like.

NM: The titles of the works are quite potent, what is the process through which you named the works? 

GC: I like to title work with poetic text that illuminates and opens up what is inside the frame. Many titles link to theories I’ve been researching, like Winnicott’s ‘good enough mother’, or the term ‘when one becomes two’, which looks to reframe the way we talk about babies without referring to the mother, as they are absolutely inseparable entities from each other.

Others refer to common english expressions and idioms like ‘the mother of invention’ or ‘the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world’. ‘Jugs’ is a work with many breasts patterned and built upon each other, some leaking, some vessels overflowing. The title references ceramic jugs that hold liquid, and refers to the colloquium for breasts, and also the juggling act that mothering requires.

NM: The yarn (particularly red) is a recurring thread in the works, does this speak to something specific? 

GC: I see painted red thread in my work as connecting me to a legacy of women that have come before me, and as the figurative umbilical cord that connects me to my child. My practice is connected to textile making, and to a history of women’s work with fibre. Thread is something that binds, sutures and fixes through the violence of puncturing when sewing.

Thread joins together other threads when being woven. It can connect and break apart. I want my paint brush to act like thread, bringing symbols, people and histories together and apart. I paint the thread to literally and symbolically connect objects in the paintings. Red is a colour that is synonymous with life; with desire, with love and loss and pain, and to childbirth. The red thread is the symbol that returns again and again in my work as a link and a gesture to a female lineage I am tethered to.

NM:What have you found in your meditations on motherhood? Is this work a celebration, a further contemplation, a wondering?

GC: I think the show is trying to give an honest representation of my experience of motherhood. Both celebrating it because it has delivered love and meaning into my life, but also looking at the reality of the tax it takes on energy reserves, on sleep, on space and how it monopolizes one’s identity. There is a stark before and after, and becoming a mother is like crossing a river into a foreign land, where your hormones and self is altered unutterably.

It is both a shock and thrill to discover this new person you become. Motherhood has shifted my creative practice, both physically and psychically, because of its time restraints and mental limitations. The work is an outpouring of that experience (the guilt, the shame, the legacy, the joy, the laughter, the depression, the weight). I feel it reflects both a prideful boast (look what I delivered into the world) as well as a darker look at what becoming a mother takes away from you. So much of mothering is conducted privately. I wanted to represent it in a way that is loud and honest and that pays tribute to the journey.

For enquiries please contact info@smithstudio.co.za

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Joe Turpin is a young South African artist exploring the depths of art through historical narratives, semiotics and the expansion of his painting practice. He is drawn to the politics of positionality; investigating what it means to be a young white man, an African, an emerging artist —often drawing on his Jewish heritage to explore concepts of migration and persecution, identity and cultural paradigms.

Turpin graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Fine Art. He currently works and lives in the city of Johannesburg.

The interview below is one of multiple interviews I have conducted with the artist as I have followed his artistic practice though a number of years.

Nkgopoleng Moloi (NM): How has your degree prepared you for the art world (if at all)? 

Joe Turpin (JT): I think my degree has prepared me in the amount of information and learning I was able to access, as well as the people and places I met and found out about. I definitely feel like I would be behind had I not studied. The skills taught are also valuable to my practice.

NM: How are you thinking of framing your practice now that you are outside a formal structure – in terms of time, concepts etc? 

JT: Well, I think that I make work when I have the time, and I try to do that as often as I can, and when I have the materials. But there are freedoms and constraints… I no longer have a studio space, which I had a year ago, but I also don’t make work for art school deadlines anymore. I have my own deadlines.

I am also finding myself less worried about people’s attitudes towards my work. My concepts and interests simultaneously evolve and stay the same in a sense —a keen interest in mythology and in history.

NM: I want to find out your thoughts on the concept of time —given that so much of your work deals with history and trying to understand that history?

JT: I have understood for a while that time is not linear, but this is simply how people (including myself) perceive it. I believe time moves in cycles as we change and grow. From an early age I understood this construct, as we would celebrate Jewish holidays under the lunisolar calendar, which tells me that the year is now 5779 ( and not 2019 as per the Gregorian Calendar). I sometimes feel it —during certain times of the year, seasons when the light looks the same as a memory I had in that same season (previously)… the people around me at that time or smells are evoked again. It means that the passage of time has repeated and reached me again. Only now the people are gone and I am older, and hopefully wiser.

NM: Can you tell me about your process of naming works?

JT:  I name my works according to the moments that are depicted within them. It is similar to how a musician decides to name a song, or an author to name a book.

What is a fitting description, and what do I think of or see when I imagine the work?

If the painting is about a myth, then the myth’s name, or the characters, or the exact angle or moment I paint —All of these might surface in the name. Some of the works are untitled. It is not a long or stringed process. I always document the names. Naming is power.

NM: Your practice spans various mediums, what is the medium you keep being drawn to & why do you think that is? 

JT: I am constantly drawn to painting, but I love working with whatever I need to. Sometimes a work will demand a medium from me. That’s another area where art school really helped me —I previously saw myself as a painter but now my work is broader; I have done video, installation, photography, a combination……..but I return to painting. It’s my passion, what I fell in love with, and it’s where I think I have so much more growing to do. I’m harder on myself when I paint. But it’s meditative, it’s soothing, controlling and yet very freeing.

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Dennis recently presented his second solo show with the Goodman Gallery in Cape Town; “Options” (24th January – 9th March 2019),  comprising a new series of drawings and installations. These drawings convey an intense process of gesturing and mark making —incisions revealing complex patterns and points moving in space.

One is not quite certain what is depicted in Dennis’ drawings; are these intestine, worms or unspecified worm-like shapes ?

The artist complicates iconography, notions of “finished work” as well as the one-directional nature of the art making process (with artist as teacher and viewer as learner). His work is open but not hollow—this openness of the work exposes itself to misreading and misinterpretation. Dennis uses the work’s vulnerability to misinterpretation as an opportunity for new knowledge to enter the space; where the viewer/interpreter takes on the role of “completing” the artworks. In this sense, the work’s impact can only be multiplied as each new set of eyes creates a possibility for a new narrative to emerge.

I had the opportunity to briefly interview the artist about his process as well as his  reflections on the recent show.

Nkgopoleng Moloi: I’m interested in this idea of using drawing as a way to think about something else, while simultaneously being the actual thing. What is your relationship with different mediums, how you approach them and how you use them to say (or not say) different things ?

Nolan Oswald Dennis: I was thinking about Audre Lorde’s idea — the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. And I was thinking about when a tool stops being the master’s tool and becomes your tool? What kind of transformation must happen to give these tools the capacity to dismantle houses ? I think of the media I work with in similar ways. Who does this belong to? What can it do ? What do I need to do for it do something else ?

This is mostly an unspectacular process, and in my practice consists mostly of small gestures for holding secrets: marks, notations, clues. I want the work to be open to misreading as both a tactic for concealing things in the work (world) as well as a way of revealing things in the viewer.

NM: I have read a couple of articles of your last show; “Options”, each one is different and interprets the work differently. What is your view on this openness with which we are reading your work? 

NOD: I think the work is only halfway done until it is read —the question is always who is reading, and therefore who is doing the other half of the work?

It’s actually a huge responsibility to put on a reader/viewer, to demand that they put themselves into the work. I’m all about leaving some space which demands filling — the idea that to “see” the work requires you to first put something of yourself into the work. The viewer must start with an interpretation before they can “see” the work, not after they see it. I think what you see is also an invitation to share the labour of making this art work.

NM: Susan Sontag speaks of this idea of needing to interpret artworks, that we can often do it at the expense of the form; placing too much attention on what we think the work means vs what the work is, especially in terms of materiality etc. What  are your thoughts? 

NOD: I guess I am interested in those forms, in terms of materiality and technique, which are already inadequate. What I mean is that some forms (drawings, models and maquettes ) already assume that they must be interpreted —that they are working forms and not final forms. The materiality of an architectural model is only a simulation of whatever concrete or brick structure might ultimately be built. So formal questions become themselves interpretive —you have to ask yourself on the level of the material; what does this cardboard mean?

For me that’s an important place to occupy —the place before or parallel to the real world. It’s a place that allows asks us to do some interpretive work.  I think art is important for its ability to operate from this parallel position where little can be taken for granted. It’s a place where things can be remade, and I think it’s interesting to think about how things can be both one thing (materially) and a totally different thing (interpretively)……that objects can have this double life.

NM: Can you explain how the printers installation in the exhibition work on a technical level (Biko vs Fanon and Winnie Mandela) ?

NOD: The first part of the work is research to build the dataset. In the case of Biko/Fanon, that means reading “I write what I like” and “The Wretched of the Earth” and extracting every sentence with the words ‘touch’ and ‘hold’.  This is then converted into two long lists of sentences. 

The second part is writing an algorithm which selects sentences from this dataset and produces new sequences as an ongoing poetic conversation. Part of what this algorithm does is recombine the sentences based on a number derived from the ambient noise (static) in the room where the printer is placed.

There are two printers which run this code in real time, reading text from the dataset and combining it in a sequence read from the electrical noise of where it is installed. The printer then prints, on roll of thermal receipt paper, an ongoing conversation between Steve Biko and Franz Fanon about touching and holding. 

Nomzamo is a single printer which does a similar thing with the archive of Winnie Mandela, except she is alone, having a dialogue with no-one (or everyone) based on the words ‘before’, ‘between’ and ‘alone’.

NM: I’m interested in this concept of Ubuntu vs black loneliness as you speak of it. When we experience one and not the other or both simultaneously etc. Can you elaborate on your thinking through this? 

NOD: I guess it is something I’m still working through; Ubuntu as a theory of radical interconnectedness and Biko’s declaration “black man you’re on your own” as a kind of radical loneliness. I’m interested in how these two concepts work together—as a dialectic of black consciousness. And also how they are both theories of love and theories from love. Radical empathy and radical entropy, a tactic of black entanglement.

NM: What texts are you currently reading or engaging with that are informing your thoughts/work?

NOD: I’m always reading Angel Kyodo William’s “Being Black” about black zen practice.

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