Grahamstown artist Vusi Khumalo is bidding farewell to the town that's been his home for 20 years. Last Friday he hosted a small art exhibition and open house, giving the community a chance to see his work and his home – which he hopes to sell.
Grahamstown artist Vusi Khumalo is bidding farewell to the town that's been his home for 20 years. Last Friday he hosted a small art exhibition and open house, giving the community a chance to see his work and his home – which he hopes to sell.
Khumalo, whose work is recognised internationally, is moving to Johannesburg to be closer to his family. He focuses on housing in his art – particularly in the townships and informal settlements that he sees gradually disappearing from the country. "I'm trying to make tomorrow's history today," he told Grocott's Mail.
"I'm capturing that history for future generations, so that they see how we lived in the rondavels, in the townships, in the informal settlements."
His works capture all facets of community life: women washing, men in municipal blues coming home from work, youths playing soccer. Much of Khumalo's art is "3D", his canvasses layered with everything from grass and twigs to corrugated metal.
"I try to use the real materials that they use to build the shacks," he said. The effect is to compound an already skilfully created sense of depth, and these works can be almost hypnotic in their intricacy. The viewer does not simply look, but rather explores them.
The textured canvasses refuse to be only images, but loudly call attention to their own objectness – they capture not only the landscape they visually represent, but the physicality of art and of their own birthing. Khumalo takes two to three weeks to complete a work, focusing on one at a time.
The process is dynamic; he stops toiling on a canvas only when "it tells me that it's finished, and I say that I am also finished". Khumalo began to cultivate his artistic talent while in exile in Tanzania, at the Dakawa Camp. He taught art at the camp while continuing his training through correspondence with the University of London and, ultimately, a summer of study at Gerlesberg Art School, in Sweden.
When Khumalo returned to South Africa in 1992, he taught at the reconstituted Dakawa Art and Craft Community Centre, in Grahamstown, before beginning to work on his own, from 1996. Being successful as an artist, Khumalo said, is about trying to be original – "developing your own unique style, and growing within it".
Artists, he added, "have that passion inside – that burning thing inside that really pushes you."
