Journey to the end of the night

Nicholas Hlobo, his goatee matted into two stubby little horns, his knitted beret pushed back to show his closely cropped head of hair, steps up to the microphone. Now would be a bad time for the Joburg artist to say "Um."

Martin Scorsese, his alert brown eyes made bigger by his dark-rimmed glasses, is watching Hlobo. So are Wole Soyinka and Doctor Ruth, although at 140cm, the tiny sexologist's view across New York's David H Koch Theatre is obstructed by canyons of crystal glass, exotic topiary and people taller than her, which is pretty much everyone.

Cool as a cucumber, Hlobo begins speaking. His speech lasts little more than two minutes, but compacted into those two minutes is the story of a big year. "This journey ..." he begins his speech.

Anish Kapoor, the silky-haired sculptor whose name Hlobo pronounces as "A-neesh Kah-poo", is standing next to the artist, beaming paternally. Kapoor, who designed the dyslexic Orbit tower sculpture next to London's Olympic stadium, was Hlobo's mentor during 2011.

At least this is how Swiss luxury brand Rolex, which for the past decade has underwritten a generous year-long arts mentorship initiative, would prefer to describe it. Mentorship, however, makes it seem stiff and formal. Mostly, the two caught up whenever they had time, which wasn't often, griped about what Kapoor describes as the "falsely global art world," and also compared notes.

"We are very different as artists, Nicholas and I," Kapoor told me earlier in the day, before the dinner. Where Hlobo works with soft, often-recycled materials - leather, silk, car-tyre rubber - his mentor prefers polished stainless steel, plastic and cement. The two also differ in the way they give form to these materials.

"Nicholas has over the past few months become much more of a figurative artist," remarked Kapoor, who prefers to sculpt large abstract forms. "For me that represents an opening up of his process, but also a difficulty, because everything becomes that much more explicit. I am not entirely sure that that's where the deepest poetry lies."

But this is all speculation now, the red carpet dinner the swan song for Hlobo and Kapoor's 2011 mentorship cycle. Prefaced by an intensive weekend of events, as six bright young things from Australia, Jordan, Lebanon, South Africa and the US, each presented new works in the fields of art, music, dance, literature, film and theatre, all that the sponsor now requires of its protégés is a two-minute thank-you speech.

Hlobo, who showed an ornately costumed figure counting time in a game of hide and seek, is the first to go, his speech a kind of digestive following a starter course of Lobster Napoleon with roasted tomato tartare.

"This journey," he says, reading from a pre-written document scrolling on two see-through screens in front of him, "has allowed me to see clearly, even when the night had fallen. It got me to realise that it is not only the dominant star we call the sun that possesses a life-boosting force, the little ones that pierce through the depths of the faraway space do exactly the same."

A contextual fact to make sense of the cryptic talk: shortly after it was announced that Hlobo had been selected by Kapoor to be his protégé, in late 2010, the artist's long-time partner was murdered at their home in Joburg. Hlobo was away at the time. The death was not reported in the news.

All the good that 2011 brought Hlobo - three exhibitions at the Venice Biennale, a very favourable nod by New York Times art critic Roberta Smith, a headline-grabbing acquisition by Puma CEO Jochen Zeitz - was marred by this loss.

On stage, Hlobo suddenly detours from astronomy to pop music. He mentions the obscure Icelandic band Sigur Rós. He says a line from their 1997 debut album Von made him aware that he had to hold tight and not let go, "even when you feel your vessel threatens to stop in unknown passageways".

Painter Glenn Ligon, whose work Barack Obama brought into the White House when he did some redecorating, smiles appreciatively. Also listening intently are Brian Eno, a 2011 mentor in music, Andre Brink, a Rolex Arts Initiative advisory board member, and Marian Goodman, William Kentridge's powerful New York dealer.

Kentridge will follow Kapoor, John Baldessari and David Hockey as Rolex's visual arts mentor for 2012/13, entrenching SA's involvement with the initiative, which started in 2005 with Baxter artistic director Lara Foot's mentorship by Sir Peter Hall, creator of the Royal Shakespeare Company. But I'm interrupting Hlobo's moment.

"Once the storm had passed," he continues, "you feel grateful for not having lost your grip on the lamp as it allowed you just enough light to make your way through. My time with Anish was an enlightening process. We managed to connect, despite having great oceans and a landmass between us. Through mind, spirit and individual preoccupation with our own works, somehow there was a way to communicate each other's journeys."

Journey is one way of describing it. When I chatted with Hlobo a year ago, a few weeks after his partner's death, the storm he would later allude to in his New York speech was very real. Storm? Make that raging typhoon.

"I find myself bleeding emotionally and psychologically," said Hlobo. "Someone who was dear to me, who was very supportive, is not there - I feel all alone.

"I have to redefine who I am," he added. "I have to do things differently, I have to look hard over my shoulder, I have to put my guard up. Before December 11 [2010], I was very much like a child, I was very playful. But now life has become very, very serious."

One can only guess how this deep unseen hurt must have sat with Hlobo during those lonely moments in the thin air, flying long haul. Then again, Kapoor's 2011 wasn't exactly all helium lightness either.

Yes, the London-based artist got to put on his first-ever exhibition in his birth country, India, and he grabbed news headlines with an inflatable mobile concert hall designed to tour earthquake-ravaged parts of Japan.

But while Hlobo was garnering acclaim in Venice, a technically audacious smoke-plume sculpture Kapoor devised for a Venetian basilica flopped spectacularly. He also got divorced. You could say the pair met as equals.

"I would like to thank ..." Hlobo's two minutes of public attention are almost up.

Think of it as a long and ongoing two minutes. Hlobo, who has been on something of a hiatus from art making since his November speech, has a busy year ahead. He is due to appear on the Sydney Biennale and another show at Le Palais de Tokyo in Paris; he is also preparing for a solo show in Cape Town.

"Where do you get the time?" a curious Chinese journalist asked him in New York.

"I live in my own time," Hlobo responded. "I have my own way of calculating time, and my time is not conventional time."

So, two minutes becomes a lifetime, and vice versa.