SIMNIKIWE BUHLUNGU
suggestures among us (Interlude)
02 June – 29 July 2023
Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Bookmarking a larger project that explores ways in which we come to know, suggestures among us (Interlude) exists as a moment compiled by ‘suggestures’, wherein inconspicuous encounters, looped socio-historical tangents, hazy familiarities, and shallow depths ultimately ask “what’s happening in a pause that we may have missed before?”.
Through textual and sonic presences, prompts, and questions, this exhibition has situated itself somewhere three-quarters of the way down of Buhlungu’s practice recently. The framework of “interludes”––or “interluding”––exists as time and space for thought and quietude (not so much sonic quietude, but a sensorial tranquillity), while also indicating that happenings present in the exhibition have occurred before, and subsequently intend to trail onwards. Reappearing from previous moments are pre-existing material elements, contextual concerns, and forms such as the Khuaya stands, the materiality of reel-to-reel tape, the ubiquity of the puddle, and Post-It notes. Drawings that lament the loss of a wallet that map ways of how it could’ve been relocated have tethered their way into this exhibition, too; titled Theory Sketches (wallet) I and Theory Sketches (wallet) II, they were made alongside the 2020 film, On The Minds Of Many.
A time-stretching visual anthem, the banner Don’t I Know You From Somewhere? attempts to reckon with familiarities–people, sites, histories–while also leaving space for one to err, sidle into slippages and chronological mishaps. This work is thought as “remembering with texture”, as articulated in Jacob Dlamini’s 2009 memoir Native Nostalgia–especially in context of how one embraces nostalgia even in times of socio-political and historical upheaval–and it is textually asked in this work. Similarly, the Post-It note titled Ah, Konje, adheres as a useful remembering of remembering–albeit with something else to say.
As an attempt to sample a paused moment, reel-to-reel tape looping conjures a history situated in a completely different yet ubiquitous context, with this work being the cousin of the sonority echoed in Buhlungu’s debut exhibition dissonated underings [hic!], after-happenings and khuayarings (sithi “ahhhh!”) at Kunsthalle Bern (CH), in October 2022. Departing from historical echoes, the tape loop (Same-ing the same Sames) samples a moment of playing on D.D.T. Jabavu’s Sames piano in his home in Middledrift, South Africa, in October 2021. Jabavu, a South African scholar, writer and educator–amongst other titles–is a significant generational key here; the tape loop samples the artist playing this piano, upon the encouragement of Makhulu Victoria Jabavu–his last born daughter, now in her eighties, who lives in and minds the historic house, which she also grew up in. The piano is said to have been bought over by Jabavu from his travels in the UK circa the 1920s -1930s, which is one but many indications to his appreciation and affinity to spiritual and choral music from the 19th and 20th centuries in South–and beyond. The sonority of the piano mechanises the sharing and storing of the movements and everyday mundanities of this family located within a broader socio-historical lineage within the country. A centuries-old chronological echo, Makhulu Victoria’s narrative sharing and invitation to engage with the piano – which itself ‘interluded’ a conversation of considerable personal depth – situates suggestures sonically in this exhibition.
Embracing this exhibition as a support system for this interlude are the Khuaya modular stands. They are thought as invitations to sing, sit, sit still, sit and play a beat with your hands, listen, read, to be rearranged, to be borrowed and as a calling for a communal activity which is yet to happen. Having debuted as part of the first Khuaya installation, they return to facilitate this moment of pausing.
Passing by for a visit (again!) is a puddle, whose rather preoccupied interlocution and considerable depth in the exhibition was explored in an expanded moment of reading on the 4th of June, alongside artist Negiste Yesside Johnson, titled Our Friends Are Deeper Than We Thought (A Conver-something).
Text by Simnikiwe Buhlungu