"All pandemics seem to have one purpose, to strip people of their flesh leaving only bones! So we use our bones to heal. Our divinatory bones, and an angry abused earth are the catalyst underpinning this exhibition. I believe it is vitally important to focus people’s minds on healing in all its aspects at a time like this, and to emphasise that our common survival depends on us working collectively to both heal ourselves and the earth." - Pitika Ntuli
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Pitika Ntuli’s acclaimed exhibition to tour SA museums.
Few online exhibitions grabbed attention during the height of Covid. Pitika Ntuli’s Azibuyele Emasisweni, (Return to the Source) stood out, for not only had the eighty-year-old artist produced 45 new sculptures from bones and other materials, but in relaying their full significance, some of the country’s most esteemed poets and musicians responded to the body of work with songs and poems. This made for an incredible online programme, however, as with all art, the works are best enjoyed in person. A national tour of Ntuli’s Azibuyele Emasisweni, which will show at Oliewenhuis Art Museum and then the Durban Art Gallery from October, will give the public a chance to appreciate these extraordinary works up close.
Azibuyele Emasisweni, (Return to the Source) was first opened at the National Arts Festival in June 2020 by Naledi Pandor, Minister of International Relations. It was part of the main programme of this arts festival and challenged fixed definitions of ‘contemporary’ and ‘traditional art’. The exhibition was curated by Ruzy Rusike.
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UKUPHAHLA
OPENING AIRWAYS FOR THE ANCESTORS BY SESIYAKHULA NJALO -
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Curatorial Statement
Ruzy RusikeThrough our tears, we can begin to plumb the depths of our inner being, helping us to understand the deepest questions of our lives, the journeys we are on, and our sense of belonging.
There is a sense of tranquillity and catharsis that we derive from crying. It resonates within and without, as the warmth of a tear falls onto our faces, touching our cheeks and then our lips. It is in these tears that we can understand the depth of our being and a realization of the answers to our lives’ deepest questions, along with a sense of belonging. Animals are embodiments of tranquillity as they live in harmony within it by constantly observing, assimilating, and being in stillness within themselves and without disturbance. As much as animals take from their environment, they give back to it constantly through their life cycle. Our cycle of giving back is at the end when our whole life form is placed into the earth and only our bones remain. Therefore, it is not by chance that Azibuyele Emasisweni (Return to the Source) comprises of works solely sculpted from animal bones. These bones are imbued with pure and natural energy in line with their attunement to the natural flow of the world. This contrasts humans, who remain within the energetic rhythms made by the intentions, will, and reactions of the communities we belong to. The bones that are on display in this exhibition represent both mortality and immortality: the transitory spirit of the animal. Azibuyele Emasisweni (Return to the Source) aligns the spirit to the bondless form of time.
SOURCE
Bones are the structure of what was once a life form. In semantics, the ‘bone’ is classified first as a noun and defined as ‘any of the pieces of hard whitish tissue making up the skeleton in humans and other vertebrates.’ In biology, it is defined as ‘the rigid organ comprised of bone tissues, and forms the skeleton of most vertebrates.’ While these English understandings are relevant, I will instead align this essay to its Nguni words, amathambo okubhula (divination bones). These are a set of bones used as a medium of communication between a traditional healer and ancestral spirits. That knowledge, whether it is indigenous or modern, is the outcome of model-making above the functioning of the natural world. All societies strive to make sense of how the natural world behaves. We strive to apply this knowledge that will guide practices which align with one’s social, religious, and cultural beliefs. Furthermore, the practice of exhibitions gives one a sense of range, reach, possibility, and what can be imagined when we platform an idea. As the word ‘platform’ comes from ‘plot’ and ‘form’, from stage and theatre, it suggests that there is a structure that can host other behaviours. Its exterior allows possible behaviours, while its interior stays relatively fixed – like different plays being performed in a single venue. Although the exhibition echoes existing ideas, there is a larger unfolding of messages that sets forth a new agenda when it comes to understanding the established knowledge systems of content, sculpture, spirituality, exhibition, and audience.
The Spirit
Pitika Ntuli identifies as an artist, academic polymath, political activist, struggle stalwart, poet, and spiritual healer – someone who embraces both the physical and spiritual aspects of humanity. In this body of 45 works, he has engaged in numerous collaborations with other thought-leaders in the arts, music, theatre, literature, politics, media, and performance. One gains a new-found understanding of oneself in a community of things, ideas, people, rituals, and languages. We can see this today, especially in this paradigm of COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, the internet, communication, and knowledge. We see his sculptural acts of divination to bind the spirit animal to the animal bone. We can see an act that aligns itself to the particular moment of a community that gathers around the interpretations of being. We consider what it is that they see or do not see: a community that grows around a concept. Thus, his works reverberate moments that have existed, currently exist, and shall come to exist. In other words, he collapses time through the act of activating the spirit of the bones by decorating them with symbols, beads, shells, objects, and hair which are relevant to the spirit of the bone that he wishes to call upon. Ntuli reconciles the chasm between the two - bone and spirit - by creating a space for the spirit of the animal to come into being. When communicated or brought to us, this spirit ceases to adhere to time but ties itself to the earthly plane that facilitates communication and allows us to draw from their qualities.
Historically, beads were traded for slaves as well as ivory, gold, and other goods distributed in Europe and around the world. Therefore, spiritual healers/izangoma treat and read beads as one of many connections to the ancestors. This symbiotic relationship can be read as the shackles that bound the ancestors to that of trade, conflict, slavery, life, death, and birth. The colours of the beads reflect the earth, air, wind, and fire – basic elements which align to meaningful symbolism.
Recently, Reverend Al Sharpton delivered a eulogy at the funeral of George Floyd that reflected the living part of a human in the afterlife of slavery of partus sequitur ventrem (that which is brought forth follows the womb):
Genesis II said that God formed man. And Jamie, they say he breathed breath, the breath of life to make him a live human being, which means that breath comes from God. Breath is how God gives you life. Breath is not some coincidental kind of thing that happens. Breath is a divine decision that God made. Some babies are born stillborn. God decides to blow breath in them. Breath is sanctified, breath is sacred. You don’t have the right to take God’s breath out of anybody; you can’t put breath in their body. But you don’t look at it that way because of your wickedness, principalities, darkness.
The word 'spirit' is derived from the Latin word 'spiritus', meaning breath, and healing implies a process of making something whole. Spiritual healing is concerned, literally and originally, with holistic breathing transformations. It connects itself to the beginning and the end: breath is that which bonds the earth-bound physicality to the fluid movement of the spirit. If breathing stops, one is declared dead. Because Sharpton connects “breath to God” and “God to sacred”, he reiterates the impure energies of humans who are not sacred but connected to it. Breath is the umbilical cord to many forms of experiences, intentions, and cultivations we witness through different flows of breaths. Ntuli, through the divination act of sculpting into the animal bones, is in alignment with the frequency of the soul of the breath of the earth. This breath occupies time, space, and construction. When, like George Floyd, breath inhabits that Fanonian “zone of non-Being”: wickedness, principalities, and darkness deform the sacredness of breath. That is why space and platforms are important: they give us insight into other narratives. More importantly, spiritual healing and spiritual healers have become even more important as they guide the process of making things whole again: rupturing the continued marked effects of apartheid, slavery, imperialism, colonialism, and more.
The Complexity
The direction of time has changed: we no longer see ourselves as living in a linear sense of time, in the sense of the past being followed by the present and then the future. Rather, the future happens before the present and time arrives from the future. This must be addressed because terms such as ‘primitive’ and ‘contemporary’ art were defined according to a linear understanding of time. Linear time is a concept which many Africans reject, hence the phrase “You have African timing”. The interpretation of these works, therefore, is that of an unfinished project. More precisely, it is in the conditioning of what temporality or contingency does with these works within our traditional interpretations of ‘primitive’ and ‘contemporary’ art. The future is trading algorithmically, seven-year plans, development proposals, military simulations, securitised promotions, economic forecasts. All these predictions seek to extract, mine, and trade on the future. What emerges from this is that the 54 countries that assemble the continent of Africa have never been the object of what we call the ‘futures industry’. This is an industry whose network apparatus, and whose devices aim, to develop or stage its laboratory of prefatory futures in Africa. Therefore, this exhibition ignites a new consciousness through human, nature, and animal coming together as one.
It is important to note that the term Afrofuturism in the last decade, has been criticised by many artists and critics. The fact the prefix of Afrofuturism remains focused on the cultural practices of the African diaspora has come under particular fire. Being in the UK, USA, and Europe, the term effectively ends up excluding the history and the future theories and practices produced by artists and theorists working in East, West, North and South African, the Caribbean, and South America. This means the ‘Afro’ in Afrofuturism is still American and Anglo-centric. It is the non-African attempt to monopolise theories around blackness.
There is, therefore, a lot of difficulty in defining or terming a moment in African art or how art is produced in Africa. As most of the works being sculptures, paintings, ceramics, and land art, they evolve and react to time. Furthermore, terms such as ‘Primitive’, ‘Contemporary’, or ‘Afrofuturism’ find problems to narrate this ongoing transformation. This art communicates consumption, industry, technology, taxation, labour, warfare, finance, insurance, government, bureaucracy, science, religion, and philosophy – all of this together was made possible by the ubiquity of slavery. Thus, we bond these works to concepts that are not our own. Because of this complexity, one will never be able to say with certainty when blackness started: before or during the sugar revolution? Or whether slavery followed from racism or whether racism follows from slavery? These works help us realise that we need to examine what they evoke in us as humans and the level of consciousness they activate.
Return
Through our tears, we can begin to plumb the depths of our inner being, helping us to understand the deepest questions of our lives, the journeys we are on, and our sense of belonging. The combination of air, fire, earth, and water is what gives us this breath of life. The act of Breathing is sacred and pure. It is our gift to ourselves. Bones carry the very essence to our life form after transcendence into spiritual beings. Bones are what remains of us on this physical plane. Through this transitory life form, bones transform to become the source. Tribute must be given to Pitika Ntuli as he has allowed us to go into his innermost source through Azibuyele Emasisweni (Return to the Source).
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Following in the tradition of the ‘Renaissance Man’, Pitika Ntuli is a true artistic, political and academic polymath. Interested in exploring the contradictory relationship between tradition and modernity, Ntuli’s witty and dark reflections on our society are captivating and visionary.
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The Aesthetic Charge of Pitika Ntuli's Bone Sculptures
PANEL DISCUSSION 20 Aug 2020Click here to listen to the conversationFollowing the very successful talks program, we hosted on the 12th of August 2020 an online panel discussion titled The Aesthetic Charge of Pitika Ntuli's Bone Sculptures. The Panelists' included the following: Pitika Ntuli (Exhibition Artist), Ruzy Rusike (Exhibition Curator), Prof. Hlonipha Mokoena (Art Historian), Athi Mongezeleli Joja (Art Critic), Thembeka Heidi Sincuba (Artist), moderated by Thembinkosi Goniwe (Curator)
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In Art, the creative act is a titanic battle between flesh and spirit. Each artwork is a diversion of the flesh, the body. Each time the artist dies, a new work is born, or rather the opposite: each time a work of art is born the artist dies a little. A little death invokes a greater desire to live and thus creates another artwork. When the artist dies finally, she continues to live through her offspring – her children and her artworks! - Pitika Ntuli
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The Sculptures
I am a healer: I throw bones to divine the State of the Nation in the season of anomie! - Pitika Ntuli -
Pitika NtuliThohoyandou's Dream, 2018-2020Bone, beads and found objects84 x 87 x 101 cm
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Thoyohandou’s Dream
I hear your thunderous footsteps
Echo on the land of our ancestors
Thohoyandou, grandson of Dimbanyika
Father of Velembewu
Spirit that eternally caresses the Njelele valley
To keep ancestral forces at peace
Elephantine memories flow with ease and purpose
Retracing steps we took since time immemorial
To heal our bodies and souls
When demons invade our spaces
We carry memories of honeycomb
Of heroic histories in steady and secure
Geographies
Before interlopers walked our land
Spraying diseases to give purpose to their cures
We look back to retrace our odyssey
Along rugged roads of sickness and healing
To witness the birth of memory
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Pitika NtuliMedium on Fire , 2018-2020Bone, beads and found objects175 x 95 cm
Medium on Fire
Prometheus stole the fire of the gods
Gave them to us to cook our food and light our caves!
I am a medium born from flames
Of memory and history
I dance you into health
Watched by the full moon
I am the warrior of the spirit
At war with pandemics
To appease the angry earth
Abused, polluted, pillaged and raped
Dance with me the ancestral dances
To heal our souls and those
Of those who drown in rivers
Of greed and corruption -
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Pitika NtuliInside the Elephantine Womb of Memory, 2018-2020Bone, beads and found objects140 x 124 x 111 cm
Inside the Elephantine Womb of Memory
There we sat looking back at our beginnings
Nestled cozily inside a pelvic throne
Surveying the landscape of our dreams
Battlefields with nightmares of pandemics
Stretching endlessly before us across clear blue skies
And fresh flowing springs
Sweating on cold winter nights
Fingers tingling as we eat
Thirsty throats and vain attempts
To cough the virus out
We lift our arms
To drum health back into our bodies
Circling in prayer to invoke Ancestral voices
To intercede -
Pitika NtuliSao Jose Paquette Africa, 2018 - 2020Bone, beads28 x 91 x 28cm(C002864)
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Pitika NtuliTrajectory of Po-To-Lo (Sirius B) on a Dragon Night , 2018-2020Bone and beads116 x 60 x 35 cm
Trajectory of Po-To-Lo[1] on a Dogon Night
We come from the
Planet of the red dog
I heard Credo Mutwa say
Even as the Dogon echoes hit my ears
We take our beaded paths
Dancing our way
To trace Po-To-Lo
Floating in infinite space
Riding on invisible boomerangs
We plot our return to the stars
The glittering stars
Of our birth!
[1] Sirius B
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Pitika NtuliThe Spirit of the Maroons, 2018-2020Bone and found objects150 x 52 x 90 cm
The Spirit of the Maroons
We lift our arms to catch
Winds of change
Even as coronavirus pollutes the atmosphere
We invoke ancestral spirits
To speak in their healing language
From tongues of love!
They put us in biting chains
As they recited the pasternoster
Cotton fields stretching to the gates
Of eternity
We guard our freedom
With our lives!
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Collaborators
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Pitika Ntuli invited 33 thought and creative leaders to collaborate with him by creating content inspired by the sculptures and exhibition for inclusion on the online platform. Their engagements took the form of essays, poetry, film, song and an exciting talks programme. The exhibition speaks to indigenous knowledge systems and the importance of ‘Returning To The Source’. Whilst the exhibition was presented online the museum show would be the first time that audiences would have the opportunity to see this body of powerful works in person.
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Below you will find poems inspired by Pitika Ntuli's sculpture by the various collaborators
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Moving Images
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History written in Stone
Through Belfast Black Granite Pitika Ntuli tells a story. A story that attempts to capture the crucial steps in our revolutionary struggles. The six individual sculptures write our history in stone, and trace the painful steps we took towards finding justice in our beloved land!
Shot & Directed by Galerekwe Maimane & James Reynolds
Edited by Zee Ntuli
Music by Chris Letcher
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Solitary
Art and solitary confinement carry the same birthmarks.” –Pitika Ntuli.This intimate short film provides the viewer with a personal insight into Pitika'smind and journey as an artist. He explains that art is like solitary confinement, where time seizes to exist, and that “Art exists in order to conquer time”.
Shot by Zee Ntuli & James Reynolds
Edited by Zee Ntuli
Sound design by Lorens Persson at Sterling Sound
Colourist Terry Simp
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Reflections by Nduduzo Makhathini (Artist, Healer and Improvisor)
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media