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Participating artists
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Akilah Watts
Barbados, Caribbean. B: 1996.Watts is a contemporary artist who received her BFA in 2017 and participated in the Prizm Art Fair that same year. She works with various mediums and has appeared both... -
Amita Makan
Gqeberha, South Africa. B:1979 -2023Celebrated internationally for fabric constructions with embroidery and collage, Amita Makan infuses her work with identity, memory, and history by using vintage saris while incorporating contemporary influence with found materials,... -
Andrea du Plessis
Cape Town, South Africa. B: 1980A multi-disciplinary artist specialising primarily in fields of traditional painting and new media, du Plessis studied Fine Arts at the University of Pretoria, a postgraduate diploma in Art Therapy in... -
Bercia Roos
Johannesburg, South Africa. B: 1961Bercia Roos is a local artist who finds beauty and purpose in detritus and discarded items. Her career began as an interior decorator and fashion designer, and she continued creating... -
Francois Knoetze
Cape Town, South Africa. B: 1989A visual artist working in video, performance, sculpture and new media, Knoetze holds a BA in Fine Arts from Rhodes University and an MFA from Michaelis School of Fine Art... -
Mbali Tshabalala
Johannesburg, South Africa. B: 1988Mbali Tshabalala (1988) is a Johannesburg based artist and curator who has recently relocated from Cape Town after spending two year as assistant curator at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary... -
Nyakallo Maleke
Johannesburg, South Africa. B: 1993.Nyakallo Maleke is a local artist and writer, based in Johannesburg. Her creative practice is grounded in an expanded concept of drawing, which she views as a means to tell... -
Nindya Bucktowar
Mauritius and South Africa. B: 1988A multi-disciplinary artist who experiments with clay and multiple mediums to create installations inspired by natural and urban landscapes, Bucktowar specialises in ceramic topographical sculptures and installations. She graduated with... -
Pardon Mapondera
Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe. B: 1992Mapondera’s tumultuous education (as a result of his country’s economical and political frustrations) led him to apply at the National Gallery Visual Art and Design. He was advised to pursue... -
Shalom Kufakwatenzi
Harare, Zimbabwe. B:1995Kufakwatenzi works with self-expression, telling people’s stories and recording what she sees and experiences in her day-to-day life. She works with different mediums, allowing them to bring out the best... -
Takudzwa Leeroy Guzha
Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe. B: 1995Art proved to be a passion for Guzha in school, which led him to focus on art as a career and continued his art education at the National Gallery School... -
Regi Bardavid
Egyption/South African B. 1945Bardavid was born in Alexandria Egypt and has travelled extensively, living in Italy, Zimbabwe, Zaire and South Africa. She has remained firmly rooted in the ‘abstract’ throughout her career which...
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To embrace the shadow is the journey of the sun and the soul
Curatorial statement by Ruzy RusikeThese artists, like nature herself does, allow for the process of life, death and rebirth. This opens the conversation of poverty, reification, racial injustice, and the fight for climate justice.
Despite our familiarity with the notion of ‘ashes to ashes and dust to dust’, our distance from our environment has never been greater. The distance between us and the ground is immediately captured in our embrace of the concept, it is an embrace laced with madness where our cravings have pulled us away from our natural home and driven us to urban complexes.We are rendered imbalanced, incapable of dialogue with the natural world. We must recapture our origins, when we were embedded in a reciprocal relationship with nature. Indigenous knowledge systems and traditional healers know this intrinsically, but most of us have forgotten the way.Eco-psychologist, Theodore Roszak, writes: “In four centuries of taking wealth and comfort from the body of the Earth, modern science has not troubled to produce a single rite or ritual, not even a minor prayer that asks pardon or gives thanks. ”Therefore, the human being exists in alienation from nature, making it a moral, political, and ethical quandary of our time.Anthropocene is a geological epoch that encapsulates the commencement of tangible human impact on Earth’s ecosystems. It is a euphemistic term (“anthropo” referring to “humans” and “cene” meaning “new”) that fails to condemn humanity as the cause of mass extinction of plants and animals alike, the pollution of our oceans, the swathes of deforestation, the alteration of our very atmosphere, and countless other lasting impacts. Therefore, when we present the environmental crisis of our time, what is it that we are calling people to recognise? Thus far, the environmental crisis has been narrated to us by scientific, technical, political, and economic conversations that analyse and atomise the issues and problems through these lenses. However, a shortcoming is the oversight of our connectedness.All such forms of isolation are artificial because that which is isolated needs to be reconstituted as you can only artificially remove anything from the natural world and the greater system - Roszak. The philosophy of Ubuntu found in the Bantu languages of East, Central and Southern Africa transcends this individualism, the ethos of choice in the Western world.Ubuntu’s ethical message is not restricted to one’s own ethnic group, regional community, or nation, but covers all of humanity, our ancestors, and the realms beyond our present understanding. It is the standpoint that a person is a person through other people. “I am what I am because of what we all are.” We affirm our humanity when we acknowledge that no single individual is complete without another.These interpersonal relationships are integral to our understanding of moral behaviour and communal living in our world. We must return to this understanding before we embrace a corrupted state of ecological unconsciousness, where our shadow becomes separate from our experience of the sun and our soul.This exhibition does not seek to interpret ‘sustainability’ in its most reductive sense – climate change and renewable resources. Instead, the artists curated here respond to the intimacy of what it means to create an environment for human life and generational well-being, forming part of the process of nature that eliminates the ego, which puts us at the centre of the ecosystem.These artists, like nature herself does, allow for the process of life, death and rebirth. This opens the conversation of poverty, reification, racial injustice, and the fight for climate justice.The core issues at play sit beyond our reach, deep within our unconscious minds and thus the sensual aspects of living within the world are ignored. The only manifesting symptom capable of surfacing from deep within our minds is profound grief. This grief is prevented from expressing itself despite the fact that it knows – we know – that our land is dying.This is the root of this exhibition. In it, we face the shadow and acknowledge that the consciousness of our being demands courage, determination and choice. We must integrate what is seen and known with what is unseen and unknown. In this interconnected spiral of reality and spirit, we take a journey of sun and soul. Without the light, the conscious self will be a slave to the shadow.In this journey, our spirit connects to the world and we may find that we can tap into our unconscious mind and the ecological wisdom it carries.Maybe then, we can save ourselves.Maybe then, we can save the world. -
The Exhibition
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In remembrance of Amita Makan
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AKILAH WATTS
ARTIST STATEMENT
I am intrested in depecting a black Barbadian experiencce. My work focuses a lot on my own personal experience as a black Barbadian artist but I also touch on more general Caribbean experiences in some of my works. My main goal is to instill a feeling of nostalgia and or curiosity in the people who view my work. I want the viewer to be entranced in a style of Caribbean art that feels familiar but still relatable.
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Akilah WattsNexus, 2021Acrylic on canvas152 x 122 x 2.5 cm$ 11,500.00
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Bercia Roos
Artist Statement
Roos explores rebirth and connections to the past through the repurposing of junk and scrap from various sources, from found objects in the world around her to her husband's workshop and Johannesburg's salvage yards. Through her creative vision, she channels the ethos that one person’s trash could be another’s treasure.
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Francois Knoetze
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Francois KnoetzeVideo Home System Suit, 2022Mixed media sculpture (VHS tapes)190 x 92 x 44 cm(C006884)R 69,000.00 (inc tax)*Mongo n. slang. object thrown away and then recoveredCape Mongo follows the stories of six characters as they journey through the city of CapeTown. Each Mongo character is made from the city’s discarded waste–mythical ‘trashcreatures’ which have emerged from the growing dumps of consumer culture. In sixshortfilms, the creatures revisit the spaces of their imagined pasts–the locations associated withtheir material existence and the constitution of their social relations–as if walking againstthe consumer-driven currents of city. From postmodern shopping malls to the bustlingstreets of the Bo Kaap to leafy suburbia and desolate shipping-container yards, thesecharacters’ journeys conjure up imagery that touches on some of the historical trajectoriesthat have lead up to the endemic inequality and social alienation which characterisespresent day Cape Town.Artist Francois Knoetze has constructed six wearable sculptures entirely out of waste.Rather than merely disposable items which are purged from our lives as soon as the garbagetruck disappears around the bend or which lie dormant in an ever-widening layer in thecrust of the earth for future archaeologists to marvel at; Cape Mongo imagines trash objects–specifically, the packaging of domestic consumables and the electronic devices used torecordevery-day life–as mnemonic vestiges of the activities that shaped them. Performingall over the city of Cape Town for a period of two years, Cape Mongo is the documentation ofthese performances but also pulls together found footage relating to variousissues aroundhousing, food security, inequality and racial segregation.
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Mbali Tshabalala
Artist Statement
My artistic practice is an ongoing interrogation of ideals around mental health in black societies; expressed through cultural and religious beliefs that assert misconception and contribute to uninformed notions and superstitions such as, ‘black people don’t get depressed. or ‘mental illness is a symptom of bewitchment or privilege’.
“I embrace the manifestations of an evolving self,” I seek to liberate myself from the latter.
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Mbali TshabalalaA World Within ILinocut, paper lithograph, watercolour and hand printing on archival paper112.5 x 83.5 cmSold
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Nindya Bucktowar
Artist Statement
Bucktowar works to highlight relationships between bodies and physical or imaginative ‘space.’ Holding it open, falling through it, emptying it, paying homage to it, moving between disciplines and approaches as if moving through rooms of a house. In this house, there are many rooms. Drawings are important, henna patterns are important — also clay, leather, tiles, buildings, the city, the sea. As an early-career ceramic artist, many of these rooms (excitingly, terrifyingly?) remain open.
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Often refered to as mud mountains, earthforms are an exploration of monumental moments in nature. Textures and forms are extracted from topographical earth formations, to bring to the viewer a playful sense of scale and a re-examination of one’s relationship with the spaces we occupy.
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Nyakallo Maleke
Artist Statement
Her practice is grounded on an expanded concept of drawing, which she sees as a form of research to tell stories about space, movement and walking. Maleke's drawings take shape across media, techniques and disciplines, and can manifest as installations, performances, sound pieces, prints or sculptures. Her recent works are invested in materiality, often combining traditional drawing media with meticulous embroidery-like stitching and unconventional materials such as wax paper. -
Nyakallo MalekeCode Switching Duologue: To Be Given Back Distorted, 2019/2021Installation (Not for Sale)500 cm(C006893)“...given back distorted”-Code Switching Duologues (2019) -Drawing and mixed media installationSouth African scholar Barbara Boswell asserts the notion that the process of fictional writing by blackwomen writers is the space for reimagining themselves on the space of the blank page. A set of drawings/monologues accompanied in the form of a visualized research is being used as amethodology for understanding how vulnerability, potentially reorganizes, silences and reveals thepersonal, and the public through how it moves and interacts in the public space. Code switching duologueis an attempt at thinking about writing processes such as journaling and fiction as a tool for locating andimagining personal narratives of the body, space and feelings through abstracted mark making. It is a workthat invites the audiences to participate by means of walking with the work through space
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Pardon Mapondera
Artist Statement
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Pardon MaponderaUntitled II, 2022Plastic straws, thread, plastic
85 x 42 x 29 cmSold -
Shalom Kufakwatenzi
Artist Statement
This is an installation about Letting out emotions or depressing thoughts or pressing matters. It is usually used in the context when friends have something to tell each other, mostly latest gossip (ndidudunurire/ tell me). This piece is inspired by a sunflower, how it is not perfect as a rose but Unique in its own way. A lot of people are suffering from depression and as a Queer person, I am looking at a Queer point of view. How hard it is to come out to people close to you especially your Family and Friends, especially when you come from a conservative or religious family. It can be hard coming out in an environment where they see you as a taboo or in a country that regards Homosexuality as illegal. The word Dudunura means Undo, in the sense that you should not keep it in but tell someone -
Shalom KufakwatenziDudunura, 2023Mixed media183 x 50 x 26 cm$ 880.00
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Takudzwa Guzha
Artist Statement
A tale of a migrant worker from Nyasaland, promised to be given a wife if he was to work for aZezuru man for five years, herding cattle and ploughing the fields. But when it was time to pay,the Zezuru man and his familykilled the man. Now his spirit is claiming what belonged to him andis causing turmoil in the lives of all family members.
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Takudzwa GuzhaAchimwene vakabata kanoMixed media on paper126 x 224 x 2.5 cmSold
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Mwoyo WekuberekaSpeaks on how a woman would do anything for their child, despite thecircumstances.NematomboDepicts a man with a pipe (mutoriro/dombo) which is more of a psychedelicsubstance that damages brain cells and causes hallucinations, hence one may become violentand uncaring even to their spouses. This results to a mental health challenge that one may needrehabilitation.
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Regi Bardavid
Artist Statment
“My inspiration comes from the act of play. Releasing the Self of all obligations and constrictions of upbringing.”Regi Bardavid has remained true to her obsession with abstract paintings for over four decades. She has during this time developed a strong and loyal following for her colourful canvases created from oil paint and beeswax. -
Andrea Du Plessis
Artist Statment
Du Plessis uses her practice as a means of exploring humanity’s complex relationship to bothnature and technology. The Covid-19 pandemic has sparked in her an interest in the sublimeexperience and the interplay between nature, technology and spirituality
Her creative methodology involves extensive experimentation with emerging technologies suchas augmented reality (AR), algorithmic art, image and sound generated by artificial intelligence(AI), as well as virtual reality (VR). She revisits antiquity through her use of traditional oil paintingtechniques used by the old masters, such as glazing and the golden ratio, while exploring waysof integrating traditional media with modern technologies. By juxtaposing the 19thcenturyRomantic tradition of painting with contemporary, emerging technologies she aims to create atension-filled interface, momentarily transporting the viewer into a familiar yet alien world, whileoffering an opportunity to reflect on their connection with nature.
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Andrea du PlessisFirst Light, 2022Multimedia: oil on canvas with AR ineraction116 x 90 x 4 cm (framed)
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For more infomation contact:Tyron Redman (Marketing and Sales Manager)+27 76 278 1722tyron@themelrosegallery.comFor interviews please let us know if you are interested in scheduling interviews with the curator or participating artists.Curator: Ruzy Rusike+27 71 422 7564ruzy@themelrosegallery.com
To embrace the shadow is the journey of the sun and the soul: Curated by Ruzy Rusike
Past viewing_room
