Entangled, Various Artists

Visitors viewing the Entangled art exhibition

The past decade in southern Africa has borne witness to an unprecedented ideological shift. Three interlinked movements, Rhodes Must Fall, Fees Must Fall and Black Lives Matter, have reframed the ways in which many of us think and speak about our cultural and educational traditions and their symbols, calling on us to recognise the ongoing impact of colonial history. In turn, local and global debates about monuments and memorialisation have multiplied.

Through a selection of artworks produced since Rhodes Must Fall, the exhibition Entangled takes an intimate look at how artists in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe have grappled with colonial legacies, their material manifestations and visual symbolism.

Both Nicola Brandt’s own artworks and her collaboration with Gift Uzera and Muningandu Hoveka create a link between Namibia’s colonial past (first as a German colony and later occupied by South Africa), and the spectres of Rhodes that exist in several places in South Africa, Zimbabwe and the United Kingdom. Here the relationship between empire and ecology also comes into view.

Rhodes’ enduring presence is visible in Raymond Fuyana’s painting, which depicts a memorial to the South African War (1899 - 1902) and reminds us how a small number of men profoundly influenced the aesthetics of colonial memorialisation across countries and continents.

The drawings of Isheanesu Dondo reference Great Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe Bird as a way of pointing to how these symbols were appropriated into the Freemasons’ visual lexicon in both the colonies and the metropole.

A woman watching a film titled Man of War: Leave My House by Gift Uzera, Muningandu Hoveka and Nicola Brandt

Zenaéca Singh looks at how sugar farming in South Africa, one of the primary undertakings of the British empire, relied on indentured Indian labour, including women. Singh uses as her medium the very output of that labour - sugar.

The presence of collective ancestors resounds in Tuli Mekondjo’s work, which mourns and honours the memory of her Namibian female forebears. She metaphorically stitches together past and present, birth and death, reminding us burial can be followed by resurrection.

As decolonial movements urge us to rethink teaching, learning, knowledge systems and the institutions that uphold them, this exhibition foregrounds the role of contemporary artists in shaping revisionist histories and new ways of knowing.

Browse the catalogue below to discover more about the artists and view the artworks featured in the exhibition.

ENTANGLED: Southern African Artists reflect on Colonialism, Monuments & Memory