Investec Cape Town Art Fair 2024

Vela Projects is proud to exhibit new works by Nozuko Madokwe and Songezo Zantsi in Booth ALT14 the Investec Cape Town Art Fair 2024. Nozuko Madokwe presents three paintings created with raw earth and natural pigments that the artist sourced from the mountains around her home. Tapeworm derives its title from a song by Lesego Rampolokeng and the Kalahari Surfers that names the interconnectedness of various crises, from the “poverty turning countries into nuclear waste dumping grounds” to “corpses sown in German fields like seed, sprouting Palestine, a bad harvest of Israeli weed,” sentiments as felt today as they were in 1993, when the track was released.

This mutual connection has led, after centuries of colonial and capitalist exploitation, to mutual contamination. The earth is sick, and we, in turn, are sickened. Another painting, Inceke, is named after the clay that initiates wear on their skin when they undergo ulwaluko. In the work, Madokwe is expressing her curiosity about this ritual and masculinity more broadly. What shift (psychological, social or spiritual) occurs when a boy becomes a man? How does this affect them personally as well as society at large?

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Songezo Zantsi’s presentation includes three paintings rendered in oil on canvas. Departing from his previous work, which referenced images by famous struggle photographers in a realist style, these paintings are based on the artist’s own lived experience. Each image depicts a scene from a wedding that Zantsi attended in the Transkei, which he experienced as culturally very different from the Ciskei, where he grew up. Two works, Silapha (we are here) and Sifikile (we have arrived) show guests arriving at the ceremony to negotiate terms on behalf of the bridegroom. This group of men – drunk and singing, wielding sticks and riding horseback – were an imposing presence, representing at once the joyful fanfare of the celebration and the unspoken threat of violence. Stylistically, however, Zantsi has muted the dramatics with soft tones, warm colours and light (if not invisible) brushstrokes. It is as if the vibrancy and intrigue of the moment has taken on the look of contemplation, the quiet presence of memory. Qwalasela (to take note), which portrays a figure walking with two horses through a landscape, embodies this gentle, melancholic mood. The fact that all three of the paintings feature men riding or guiding horses is, according to the artist, a pleasant coincidence, one that highlights the often overlooked relationship between humans and animals in South African art history.