Talking art: Newcomer with a sense of history

28 June 2016 - 10:14 By Staff reporter

Kemang wa Lehulere, 31, is a young artist from Gugulethu, Cape Town, whose work explores the tension between the individual and the forces of history and the ways in which we make sense of that relationship. He won the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for visual art in 2015 and was named the 2017 Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year, with a solo exhibition opening at the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, Berlin, in March.In a new exhibition, on at the Stevenson Gallery in Johannesburg, Wa Lehulere explores the capacity of objects to unravel their prescribed meanings and literal forms. He paints, draws and sculpts. The gallery says: ''Wa Lehulere's works draw on communal social experiences of the past - specifically the student uprising of 1976."When did your interest with art begin?It started in high school when I took art as a subject in Grade 10 - I chose it instead of maths because I didn't get along with the mathematics teacher.What drew you to art?You can make art with whatever you want and it can be anything you want it to be.How do you feel about being the first South African to win the Deutsche Bank award?I don't think about it as a German award given to me as a South African artist. Instead, I think of it as an international award given to a young working artist who has something to say.What message does your work convey?I'm interested in how historical events and moments can help us deal with questions in the present, but also in how history repeats itself in many ways.Where would you like to have your dream exhibition and why?My dream exhibit would be in Gugulethu because that's where I grew up and it's the streets of Gugulethu that made me who I am.What has been the response to your work internationally?My work has been better received internationally than in South Africa.What abiding interest does your work express?Collaboration, collectives, history, homage and social imagination.About this exhibition?It's a celebration and a critique, a love song and a lamentation - a sad love song. - Rea KhoabaneOn until July 15, stevenson.info..

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