South African artist Lungiswa Gqunta presents her first UK solo exhibition, Sleep in Witness, in three rooms at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, UK, until 30 October 2022. Gqunta's "Dreamland" sparks conversations about knowledge systems and collective experience in colonial-affected societies.

Zinodaka

Seemingly inspired by dreams, Gqunta creates her work by documenting and linking dreams as a spiritual practice. Through dreams, as well as conversations with mothers of family and friends, the artist recounts her experiences as a black woman, establishing a platform for a form of knowledge not generally accepted in Western academia. Curator Laurence Sillars explains: "Apartheid has rendered meaningless many different ways of knowing and transferring knowledge." Gqunta brings personal identities and experiences to the fore, and this exhibition shows how people understand and other ways of collecting information.

Ntabamanzi

"Zinodaka" fills the first room of the exhibition; a layer of dry clay covers the entire floor, created by Gqunta barefoot, creating ridges and hills that form the landscapes she imagined in her sleep. A number of pieces named "Water Stones" are scattered throughout the scene, and as their name suggests, they are hollow and crystalline blue. They are shaped by pressing rocks into the surface of blown glass, leaving an imprint of the natural environment. 'Zinodaka' has a sense of contributing to something breaking, which is often seen in South Africa's lingering colonial landscape but subtle in Leeds art galleries. Gqunta's work has a lot to offer, and its interaction with our senses enriches the viewer's perception of it. Clay floors are already cracked when dry, and walking around the space can make the cracks bigger. Every step or weight shift creates a crunch that reminds us of the unintended effects of our own. It's easy to give the impression that the room is full of children, delighted by the crunch under their feet.

Zinodaka

Gqunta said she likes the idea of two different parts colliding, be it peaceful or violent. The layered experience of dreams is a fundamental concept of this exhibition. Gqunta wanted viewers to feel as though they were traveling through different dreams while viewing the exhibition. Thus, it leaps from the cracked water-dotted landscape of "Zinodaka" into the tangle of two giant waves of "Ntabamanzi". Using a technique used in a previous work, Tending to the Harvest of Dreams, Gqunta and her team spent seven months wrapping barbed wire in strips of blue fabric and allowing the wire to maintains its curly structure. The tangle starts on the floor opposite the room and rises to meet in the middle, leaving an arch to walk underneath. The room triggers images of parted seas and rough waves, with small spikes of wires sticking out from under the blue wrap, forcing us to make sure to keep an eye on our bodies at all times. In this way, the artist tries to express the potential danger around us, and the metal coins entangled in the waves suggest the hope and wisdom of the ocean.

Ntabamanzi

The third room shows a 15-minute video that Gqunta describes as "a place of rest." Originally titled "Riotous Assembly," the piece is now called "Gathering," a reference to the Riotous Assemblies Act, enacted in South Africa in 1956, which stipulated that a certain number of black people gather in one place to be Unlawful. But Gqunta thinks it's beautiful to come together in public spaces. Black-and-white video projected onto brown walls, echoing the brown of the clay floor of "Zinodaka," shows Gqunta and a friend folding sheets and singing "yakhal'inkomo" (the Nguni word for bull call, history refers to the indescribable suffering of black people in South Africa under apartheid). It seems to acknowledge and reframe the historic and deep-rooted struggle felt by blacks living under oppressive systems.

Gathering

They took 15 minutes to stop and rest and then come together, the sheets seem to continue the theme of the exhibition and fit perfectly with the disordered and associative nature of dreams, giving us one last thought: Where there is a dream, there is There are ongoing stories and constant world collisions.

Article Source:艺术与设计

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