Holding Isihawu
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it’s simply necessary to love.” - Claude Monet
The world continues to grapple with a threatening darkness, but the arts have ensured that compassion endures. The words, said by French Impressionist painter Claude Monet and renowned African American activist and minister, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, echoes the task of the artist - which is to touch at the heart of humanity, illuminate the paths forward and to provide hope in a time of great despair. There is an increasing realization then that the power of art is consolatory. Artworks are chosen and speak back to us, because it is ourselves, our experiences and the human condition that we come to recognise as being depicted within them. The arts then can be conceived as possessing a mysterious ability to reunite the individual with an inner self that strives to be decent during very indecent times. This is a key inspiration in the book of John Armstrong and Alain de Botton, Art as Therapy (2013).
The title of the exhibition, Holding Isihawu, is the Zulu word for ‘compassion’ which is quintessentially captured in the artworks of the following exhibiting contemporary African contemporary artists: Bambo Sibiya, Frans Thoka, Andrew Ntshabele, and Fumani Maluleke. There is variability in the use of material and the expression of message, but collectively, their dual reflections of Black African life and its intrinsic humanity, is never without the prevailing presence of Isihawu, which holds strong in the oeuvre of each artist.
Land, community, and individual strength, converge in these very different visions of Black Life in South Africa and in the African diaspora, to which the Americas are indelibly connected. What joins these artists is the abiding lore of Ubuntu – I am what I am because of who we all are / Umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye Abantu. It is the power of mutual understanding, rather than the exacerbation of perceived differences, that makes for a more wholesome world. This view is the root of all great cultures as it is scarce in all dying empires. As Roman Krznaric reminds us, “empathy is … an ideal that has the power both to transform our own lives and to bring about fundamental social change. Empathy can create a revolution. Not one of those old-fashioned revolutions based on new laws, institutions or governments, but something more radical: a revolution of human relationships.”
