Like a Fish in the Water

In the starkness of their rendition, focus on foreground action against a flat background, and narrative impact, the works in this exhibition are reminiscent of traditional iconographic paintings. Maluleke’s palette is more subdued than earlier paintings, with a prevalence of golden/mustard hues, enlivened with an experimental approach to mark-making and inclusion of unconventional materials such as glitter. In contrast to the didacticism of religious art, however, he brings an idiosyncratic point of view that embraces ambiguity.

Maluleke has cultivated a vocabulary of forms with personal significance that recur throughout his oeuvre – including calla lilies, which he describes as communicating the push and pull between strength and fragility; portraits of his sister Nozipho, whom he regards as an extension of himself; and the ‘lêkê’ plastic jelly sandal, which featured heavily in his first solo exhibition at Southern Guild, Grace in Grand Bassam. All of these appear in this latest body of work alongside religious symbols and objects of contemporary relevance (including a VR headset), establishing the primacy and power of one’s own unique mythology in building a life of meaning.

Blue Dance depicts a crowd of worshippers clad in the blue and white uniforms of the Apostolic and African Zionist churches, surrounding a haloed figure. Inspired by the memory of physical energy experienced at a recent church service, the work transmutes the rhythmical pattern of colour and shape into movement and sound. The person in the middle, says Maluleke, is “the guider and the light”. He is intentionally depicted asan anchoring presence, grounded in his own centre, but the congregants are harder to read: they are moving in their own directions and it is not clear if they are attracted to or repelled from him.

A painting of a red-roofed house with a halo hovering above it also invites multiple readings. The work envisions the artist’s lifelong dream to build his own home – a place of refuge and warmth, blessed by divine intervention. The building in this work is intact but the paint drips down from its walls and windows, as if the structure is dissolving. Is the promise of sacred protection forsaken? Maluleke offers an alternative interpretation: “I like the idea of human fallibility and emotional dissolution living together with faith. Even when we are at our lowest, rather than close ourselves off from shame, we can still go to God.”

Birth, death, sacrifice, transcendence – Maluleke depicts the arc of human struggle and contemplates the pursuit of purpose and connection. His faith encompasses the creation of his own cosmology free from the strictures of doctrine and the confines of Western conceptions of formalised religion. His artistic practice is a pilgrimage of sorts, an insistence on the redemptive power of the imagination and a dreaming into being of his highest ideals.