A secert third thing: an exhibition in an apartment, exploring the haunting and the haunted of johannesburg
image by peter matlowa
A city of haunted faces, a place to work, to live, to hustle, to pray, to hope and hope and hope. Johannesburg will keep you around as long as you are contributing to it. Beware: if you grow tired, it may just chew you up and spit you out. Joburg is like that. Or perhaps, it will cradle you until you find your footing, it will show you the people who you will one day cling to as the city rages around you. Johannesburg will keep you alive with it’s constant renewal of energy, people, opportunities and love. Joburg is like that. Which Joburg, dear reader, do you know? Which Joburg shows itself to you? What do you understand about this great temperamental child of a city? The exhibition “A Secret Third Thing” curated by Aza Mbovane, Mbako Moemise, Mosa Naleli, Zoleka Motlhasedi and Denzo Nyathi was another noble attempt at understanding this place so many of us call home.
Image by Shona Michela
This time the exploration of the city was through textile works by Senzeni Marasela, a short film by Siyababa, an Installation piece by Oratile Papi Kanopi and a painting by Masindi Mbolekwa. The exhibition was held in an unassuming apartment building in Maboneng, namely 503 Situation East on Fox Street. Playing into the “secretiveness” of the city that the exhibition explored, from outside you wouldn’t be able to tell that an exhibition was taking place on a fifth floor apartment. The apartment, which I learned used to be artist studios, felt like a place where art should be.
The placement of the works was interesting: Siyababa’s piece on homosexual Zulu love and violence was played in the shower, the most intimate space in the home. While Kanopi’s smashed beer bottle and sign were at the heart of the apartment, where the lounge used to be. Marasela’s embroidered pieces took up a whole wall in the lounge and on the wall next to it hung Mbolekwa’s painting. It was a small, relatively empty space but the artworks’ arrangement made the apartment feel full.
I got the chance to speak to some of the curators about their process and intentions with this exhibition. It started serendipitously, Mbako and and his housemate had moved into a new apartment but had to pay an extra month for the Maboneng apartment before they were eligible to terminate their lease. This meant that the apartment was vacant and available. The five curators were excited by the possibility to make some lemonade out of lemons and quickly began curating a new exhibition, a show about Joburg, about its secrets, its haunting and its hope, a reaction to the city held in the city. They worked together, democratically choosing the works they wanted to present.
This was an intensive process, five opinions in a room, each one stating their case. Each curator spoke about this process with joke indignation, speaking of the process Denzo said, “If one could’ve been a fly on the wall… everything is painfully democratic. It’s an exhibition curated by born frees as millennials would say.” When I said that five opinions is a lot to work with Zoleka added jokingly, ”Five opinions of people who work in the arts! So we all think we know best, but it’s ok! It worked.” And it did work, you could tell the show was intentional and considered, the pieces were all in conversation with the others. Nothing was random. Aza added that, “It’s what being in Joburg is like, a constant negotiation with the city and the people around you.”
From a speaker placed in the kitchen, came voices talking about their work and their connection to Joburg. These voices were those of Senzeni Marasela, curator Lerato Bereng and Matthew Dowdle and music duo Stiff Pap. Senzeni Marasela can be heard saying, “Joburg is the ultimate African city, we are a society of immigrants here”. She talks about her persona’s mission, the history of Joburg, how she knows Joburg from it’s buildings, what it means to go from the village to Joburg and back again, how women in Joburg are on the periphery. It’s a fully present and insightful perspective.
Lerato Bereng, a director at Stevenson gallery. She talks about the dominance of whiteness in Cape Town and how Joburg felt like a place where she could be, how Joburg was the perfect place to hold the show “Sex” that she curated, how Joburg was completely formative to her even with its hostility, how she’d want to live in Joburg over any other place in the world. Matthew Dowdle speaks about how different Joburg is now compared to 2019 and the 10 years before that, how his main job was to bring people into the city because, “the city is real life, its the real side of Joburg, its where the culture we consume is actually created, all the interesting people were based in the city”, how he started Kalashnikov in Braamfontien, how connected he felt to the people around him and the city itself, how Braamfontein used to be a real art hub full of energy and newness, and how we need to avoid sentimentality and embrace change.
The final interview is with Stiff Pap. They talk about Joburg as a place to make money to send home, a place to manifest dreams and chase opportunities. Their eclectic sound: a mix of electronic music, hiphop and kwaito was inspired largely by Joburg’s diversity and the music born from Joburg itself. How Joburg was the place to go to “make it”, how they “really like being black and being surrounded by black”.
The recordings are raw and sincere, they set the tone for the whole show.
The works themselves were perfectly chosen. The first, Siyababa’s short film displays two men, shirtless and facing each other on a balcony. They gaze lovingly at each other, the chemistry is palpable. They talk in love letters to each other, romantic and sexual, they want each other badly. Then, in between their declarations, they suddenly slap each other. The slaps are sharp and forceful and every time one happens, there is a laughing track that plays. This track connects the work to TV soap operas that are usually watched in the family room and the fact that being gay as a Zulu man is still seen as controversial in many spaces, particularly the family room.
This unashamed portrayal of gay Zulu love on TV is a rebellion against South African homophobia particularly directed at gay Zulu men. The combination of the men’s loving words, lustful body language, violent slaps and the laugh track behind it all creates a short that is impossible to look away from. It’s a piece about intimate “violence” between queer people and a showcase of the grey area that the characters inhabit, somewhere between love and violence a place where the two meet and perhaps form a new dynamic, a secret third thing. Mbako had insight into the characters’ relationship with Joburg saying, “It is a romantic work about intimate violence between queer people who have left KZN to come here, who are still heavily battling a masculinity complex but are now becoming metropolitan people in this bigger city. The work really shows a reality in Joburg.”
In Senzeni Marasela’s embroidered pieces, her persona, Theodora, searches through Joburg for her husband who came to the city for work, a story that is historically familiar. The embroidered pieces look like topographical maps, some of them with buildings and one or two with figures. It’s a hint at a map of some kind, a proof of her performance and the search for her husband. They don’t have a sequence, the curators chose from a series of 150 pieces and Zoleka said she was interested to see which ones different people gravitated towards because, “we’re all a bit lost and looking for something in Joburg”. It’s true, the wall of embroidery acts as a tarot deck in some ways, the ones you’re drawn to could tell you a lot about what you’re longing for, what keeps you in Joburg. For Theodora it’s the search for her husband. The work acts a response to the city that shapes both Senzeni and Theodora, like all the artists in the exhibition, she speaks to Joburg at eye level. “No one can speak down to Joburg, it demands a reverence and perhaps the artists are saying they revere it”, Denzo said when asked about what the artists mean through their work.
Another artist who undoubtedly speaks to the city literally face to face is Papi Kanopi. In his one installation, a broken beer bottle lies smashed on the floor surrounded by plastic caution signs made by Kanopi. In the other, a knocked over lamp posts rests against the wall. It is covered in signs, imitations of the Daily Sun headlines that can be seen plastered on lampposts all around the city. But these signs, created and printed by Kanopi have more poetic, intriguing questions than usual: one simply and mysteriously stating, “Testify”. In both installations, it feels like the outside world is inside, a strange liminal space is created, something altogether familiar and unfamiliar. The works he creates mirror the posters which are usually seen in motion. Mbako spoke on this, saying, “these are things you see when you’re moving fast, Joburg is a fast city, and you don’t even see them. So in his work I feel like it’s trying to gain the attention of the city, like look at me, remember me, remember this area, this spot, this phrase”.
There’s a desire to stop and communicate in Kanopi’s work. He isolates an experience that many may not even realise are apart of their navigation through the city and this focus on the seemingly mundane creates a sudden presence, a groundedness. The viewer is able to observe the city that surrounds them through Kanopi’s work and his words. He speaks to the city in the language it understands and seems to be longing for it to speak back. Denzo speaks about Kanopi’s reverence to the city, “He’s a fourth generation Soweto resident, so there’s real roots there and a recognition of the fact that (Joburg) has formed him and so many like him before”.
The only painting of the show was created by the exhibition’s youngest artist, Masindi Mbolekwa. The painting shows an emaciated black dog above a lush pink satin material. The two exist against the black canvas. It’s a striking juxtaposition, the dog’s bones clear through it’s skin and the blanket draped luxuriously against itself. This painting shows the contradictions of Joburg. Zoleka said, “the skeletal dog exemplifies certain parts of the city that are not so well maintained, a bit violent, a bit scary, but then you have the really lush blanket, this could be the Sandton of Joburg, this could be the Houghton, the bougier parts. The thing is that Joburg doesn’t exist without the other.” Beyond the mirroring of the city, the work also feels like a prayer, or a hope, for comfort and relaxation in the face of death. This longing is particular to Joburg, in a place that can be so fast paced and dangerous. There’s a wish for a moment of pause.
The exhibition has a common thread which is the haunting of Joburg and the longing it creates. The artists, and in fact the curators too, are all longing for something. The location in Maboneng, a place which used to be heralded as the art district of Joburg, in a building which used to be artist studios, shows the curators’ own longing for a time gone by. They participate in it, perhaps all citizens of Joburg too.
I asked Mbako if he thinks Joburg haunts or is haunted more, he said, “I would say Joburg is a haunter, you cannot fight the city. If the city doesn’t want it, the city will take it back. Joburg takes back what is unmaintained, if you don’t feed this thing… Covid came and it moved everything out of the inner city and we see an immediate degradation of communities and then the production of shows, I think the city itself listens and it pays attention and if it isn’t maintained it takes it back.” It made me think that the city is a living thing, and not just because of the people who call it home but because there’s a sense that the city keeps track of who gives it what and who takes what away. Mbako continued saying, “It’s like a child! It’s this child we have to take care of, and we have to love, and show attention and repaint and polyfill, and we have to make sure it’s upheld. I love the idea of Johannesburg being like that.”
The flutist, Bhekumuzi Ndlovu closed the show with a beautiful performance. Ndlovu, originally from KwaZulu Natal, came to Joburg for work. Like so many other people living in the city, he too came to Joburg in search of something, looking for success, expression and freedom. His melodies floated through the space, tying all the works together in an even stronger knot. An ode to the people of Joburg, hoping to find something here, an ode to the artists of Jozi, trying to create something lasting. This show really did feel like a reassuring gesture to Joburg, a way to say, “Don’t worry baby! I notice how you work, I notice how you change me, I’m here and I want to make you something beautiful. Here you go.”
