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
As the world continues to grapple with a pervasive and unsettling darkness, the arts persist as a vital force through which compassion endures. The words of Claude Monet and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. echo the enduring task of the artist: to touch the heart of humanity, illuminate paths forward, and offer hope in times of despair. Increasingly, we recognise the consolatory power of art. Artworks are not merely observed; they speak back to us. In them, we recognize ourselves—our experiences, vulnerabilities, and the shared human condition. Art possesses a quiet ability to reunite the individual with an inner self, restoring connection where it has frayed.
The title of the exhibition, Holding Isihawu, draws from the Zulu word for compassion—a quality powerfully embodied in the works of the exhibiting contemporary African artists: Bambo Sibiya, Frans Thoka, Andrew Ntshabele, Asanda Kupa, Steve Maphosa, Siphamandla Ex, and Fumani Maluleke. While the artists differ in material language and visual expression, they are united by reflections on Black African life and its intrinsic humanity. Across their diverse practices, Isihawu prevails as an ethical and emotional constant.
Bambo Sibiya creates works that are both declamatory and alluring, revealing far more than the immediate gaze apprehends. His most seminal works centre on the gendered diversity of the Black African experience, with his current body of work foregrounding Black women. Sibiya’s portraits speak to political and social transformation in post-apartheid South Africa. His reimagined domestic workers’ uniforms—elaborately restyled in an almost Rococo manner—are lifted from their utilitarian origins and transformed into symbolic, empowered garments. Though commemorative, the works resist illustration; their rhetorical force recalls the persuasive gravity of Jacques-Louis David—assertive and resolute.
Frans Thoka’s practice draws upon the grey-and-white striped “prison” or “migrant” blanket, a material dense with historical implication. Through restraint rather than spectacle, Thoka addresses the disenfranchisement of South Africa’s Black majority under colonialism and apartheid. His focus on land—violently reallocated through the 1913 Natives Land Act—reveals wounds that persist generationally. Thoka’s mixed-media landscapes are achingly beautiful without seduction, drawing viewers into narratives of dispossession that connect suppressed pain with a quiet sense of exaltation. Understanding here is achieved only through compassion—through love.
At the core of Andrew Ntshabele’s practice lie soulful introspections of history. His collaged paintings layer images of children over vintage documents, juxtaposing a past that failed humanity with the promise of futurity. Children appear as blessing and inspiration—buoyant, dignified, and full of possibility. Marked by subtle interplay between sepia and rich colour, earthiness and splendour, the works resist sentimentality. The frequent depiction of children from behind creates a paradox of intimacy and distance, suggesting worlds beyond our immediate grasp and ensuring the paintings’ enduring resonance.
In contrast, Asanda Kupa’s tapestries radiate what might be described as an Arnoldian “sweetness and light.” Her pastoral, communal scenes are imbued with wholeness. For Kupa, community is sacramental, echoing Martin Buber’s philosophy of I and Thou: we are who we are because of others. Her work affirms connection, care, and shared presence as essential human conditions.
Fumani Maluleke offers a material expression of African heritage and rural life through landscapes painted on grass mats. Anchored in childhood memory and slower rhythms of living, his works evoke stillness and reflection. His figurative paintings further capture moments of ceremony and ritual rooted in township life, affirming continuity, vibrancy, and communal celebration.
Ludumo Maqabuka explores the duality of a traditional Xhosa upbringing and life in Johannesburg. Urban visual language—graffiti-like colour and texture—forms the backdrop to restrained portraiture depicting Black men and women shaped by struggle and resilience. These works honour pain without surrendering to it, affirming endurance and transformation.
At the heart of Steve Maphosa’s practice lies a meditation on migration and becoming. Having relocated to South Africa, his work reflects the re-encountering of self through displacement and re-rooting. Bold colour, rhythm, and pattern lend immediacy to compositions that quietly consider identity as fluid and continuously reassembled. Movement here is psychological as much as geographical.
Siphamandla Ex similarly grounds his practice in lived experience, reflecting on Black life, community, and the everyday. His bold canvases are charged with affirming energy, elevating ordinary moments through colour and compositional openness. Community is not abstracted but felt—an active force where dignity, continuity, and quiet joy coexist.
Across these practices, land, community, and individual strength converge in nuanced visions of Black life in South Africa and the African diaspora. What binds these artists is the philosophy of Ubuntu—Umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye abantu: I am because we are. As Roman Krznaric reminds us, empathy holds the power to transform lives and reshape human relationships. Across geographies, Black communities have transformed constraint into rhythm, beauty, and innovation. Shaped by lived experience, ancestral memory, and contemporary thought from the Global South, the works in this exhibition remain locally rooted and globally aware.
Participating in American Black History Month from this position is an act of resonance rather than comparison. Black history is not an archive of the past, but a living continuum—unfolding through art that speaks both for itself and forward and here Artyli pays homage to the artists who do not merely reflect shared histories but activate them. Through this collection, we acknowledge that Black excellence does not emerge in isolation, but is forged through centuries demanding courage, ingenuity, and spiritual endurance.
