IYEZA is a new body of work by Buhlebezwe Siwani first exhibited in Makhanda and now open for viewing at the Standard Bank Gallery in celebration of Siwani's selection as the Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art 2021.
The exhibition showcases Siwani's incredible range as an artist with work in performance, film, photography, paper and sculpture. As an artist, Siwani uses her experience and practice as a traditional healer to explore spirituality, culture and history, centering the black female body and gaze.
The name of the exhibition comes from the isiXhosa word for medicine, or more broadly, a substance meant to ward off dark energy and bring in the good. As the artist explains, “These spiritual energies are intrinsic to my work and form the central ideas around the exhibition pieces, how our bodies and spirits are tied to the earth and waters on and in which we are born and raised. The land and water is healing on its own, it is medicine, it breeds medicine.”
Taken together, the exhibition points to the radical power found within nature and plants. By embedding them within the histories of black women's labour, ecological warfare as well as the links between the physical and spiritual, Siwani seeks to show the potential for healing in reclaiming and reconnecting with plants and the land.
Those familiar with the Standard Bank Gallery will know it for its pristine white walls and carefully polished parquet floors. Siwani's exhibition disrupts this carefully maintained space with three different installations. The first of these is Yehla Moya which has a series of videos projected across the top floor of the gallery with a video playing across a body of water being centre stage. Yehla Moya means 'spirit enter' and the room is a tribute and recognition of woman who have studied or are studying traditional healing. As the projections swim across the walls and the various sounds merge, you quickly lose sense of yourself as your gaze follows the women's movements across the screens.
It is this immersion that makes IYEZA so unique. The other two installations transform two rooms on the bottom floor. ilangalibalele, meaning the sun-up in the sky, features four wooden structures hanging from the ceiling. They are comprised of imphepho and imbola and as the light casts their distorted shadows across the walls it looks as if Siwani has crafted four wooden, celestial bodies. You are encouraged to take your shoes off to enter this room, and the feeling of the soil scattered across Standard Bank's floors combined with these floating orbs creates a sense that you are beneath the sky rather than a couple layers of concrete. It is the connection between the earth and the sky and ourselves and our ancestors which Siwani wants to highlight, and the piece centres itself around the idea that our bodies are made up of constellations of our ancestors.
Taken together, the exhibition points to the radical power found within nature and plants. By embedding them within the histories of black women's labour, ecological warfare as well as the links between the physical and spiritual, Siwani seeks to show the potential for healing in reclaiming and reconnecting with plants and the land.
It is Siwani's daring and tenacity in expressing these ideas which makes this exhibition so powerful. She refuses to constrain herself to a single medium and her works integrate a vast range of materials, sounds and mediums in order to disrupt and engage with the socio-political environment. This is a must-see.
Head to Standard Bank Gallery on Thu, Apr 6 from 18:00 to 21:00 for a First Thursdays event with a special performance from a multi-award winning jazz artist.
