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24 Jan 2023 (2 min) read
The presentation seeks to centre the pluraliversal realities, cosmologies and mythologies that inform the diverse practices of these artists’ visual vocabularies.
Ukhanyo I, a photographic work by multi-disciplinary artist Sisonke Papu is included in Today, I wish to talk to your dreams, a group exhibition in collaboration with the Investec Cape Town Art Fair at the Belmond Mount Nelson Hotel.
Curated by Amogelang Maledu, the exhibition reflects on the myth-making strategies and hermeneutic imaginations of Africa by Africans. The presentation seeks to centre the plural realities, cosmologies and mythologies that inform the artists’ visual vocabularies.
Today, I wish to talk to your dreams will open on 26 January 2023, and run until 5 May.
Papu hails from Mthatha in the Eastern Cape and makes spiritually resonant work in a variety of media. As an igqirha (the isiXhosa designation for someone who has been called by their ancestors to heal), their work explores spatial, emotional and spiritual temporalities by engaging ideas of everydayness, the real and imaginary, dreams and memory, the unseen as well as the mythical, ritual, sonic and cosmic.
Ukhanyo, they say, can be considered as light consciousness: “It is a state of awareness in which one seeks guidance and knowledge through the alignment with the movement of the sun. Since the sun illuminates everything and we come to know ourselves and the physical world around us, light and darkness, day and night, life and death become intricately linked with the sun’s position in the sky. When our inner sun rises up we reawaken to the spirit world and we access the wisdom of our souls. Through trusting that we have all the power to transform our reality, we can dissolve the dense energetics and scripts that run our consciousness in the background and journey endlessly in the path of light.”