Lindokuhle Sobekwa's "breakout" photo series Nyaope: Everything you do my Boss, will do, was published in the Mail & Guardian in 2014 – cementing him as a deep seer and a formidable artist. Now a decade into his lens-based practice, his solo exhibition Umkhondo: Going Deeper opens at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG). Named the winner of the FNB Art Prize last year, Sobekwa was the first artist working solely within the photographic medium to receive the award since Cedric Nunn's inaugural win in 2011.
In Umkhondo: Going Deeper, two significant and interconnected bodies of work – namely I carry Her photo with Me and Ezilalini (The Country) – unite under the banner of introspection and discovery, as Sobekwa navigates profound personal loss and grapples with his sense of belonging. "Photography is a powerful tool," says the artist. "It has enabled me to share the realities of smaller, more intimate narratives that project onto the larger map that is South African history."
The title of this solo follows Sobekwa's first museum show in 2022 at Huis Marseille in the Netherlands, Umkhondo: Tracing Memory. Translated as a "clue", "trail" or "trace", Umkhondo is a gesture to subtle imprints left behind. "The narrative thread of the exhibition is woven together by ideas of physical and spiritual journeys," reads the curatorial statement. "The horizon line cuts into the sky, as a way to trace place, and trees as anchors, which like ancestors, connect both above ground and below."
In the tender photo series Ezilalini (The Country), rolling hills and pastoral landscapes are quietly marked with scars of erosion. We journey with Sobekwa from his birthplace in Katlehong to his ancestral home in Tsomo in the Eastern Cape, where his maternal grandmother still lives. "I visited places where my mother is from, Tsomo, and where my father is from, Qumbu, and collected oral histories of my family. I tried to put all of that into the images as a way to mark history and family narratives that go unheard and are significant," Sobekwa says.
In the logic of the English language, the horizon cannot be reached or touched. In Nguni languages, however, 'umngqameko' can be arrived at – referencing the forms of closure that can be found while investigating one's history.
Sobekwa’s ongoing project I carry Her photo with Me is at the heart of the exhibition; begun in 2017 following the disappearance and eventual passing of his sister, Ziyanda. This series has seen multiple iterations and forms, and now includes a film interpretation which will be shown for the first time at JAG. Tracing both painful and heartening memories, images from the series showing colourful clothes on a washing line, the hostel where Ziyanda was found a decade later, and hand-written notes are set over a melancholic composition scored by South African jazz musician Nduduzo Makhathini.
The storytelling potential of photography is central to the work of Sobekwa, who documents experiences as a form of excavation. He stitches together fragments of memory in a quest to unravel the mysteries of the past, and to find comfort and closure. Through close observation, each image in Umkhonto: Going Deeper offers a kind of roadmap – shedding light on life's harsher realities alongside intimate everyday joys.
Held in collaboration with Goodman Gallery, Umkhonto: Going Deeper shows at JAG until Sun, Mar 23, 2025.
