Marian Goodman Gallery has kicked off its 2018-2019 season with an inaugural presentation by draughtsman, performance artist and sculptor Kemang Wa Lehulere at its London outpost. The Cape-town native initially rose to prominence in 2006 with Gugulective, an artist-led, community-engaged collective co-founded with childhood artistic associate, Unathi Sigenu and is rapidly emerging as one of South Africa’s most prominent artistic exports.
Last year he scooped both Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year honour and the Malcolm McLaren Award at Performa 17 in New York, exposure that piqued the interest of Marian Goodman Gallery. Drawing on years of social activism, the artist confronts themes of post-apartheid unrest and broader socio-politics by recounting and re-enacting what he deems to be ‘deleted scenes’ from South African history.
The show – titled ‘not even the departed stay grounded’ – features both new works and reworked strands lifted from the multi-element Performa commission, I cut my skin to liberate the splinter, comprising messages-in-bottles, imposing sphinx-like ceramic dogs and bird houses indicating the prevalence of forced removals under apartheid. The exhibition sees an expansion of new imagery with large chalk wall drawings and objects bound and suspended by shoelaces spanning floor to ceiling.
The artist will present a partial reiteration of his now distinctive salvaged classroom desk and chair construction, defaced and riddled with generations of juvenile inscriptions – personal initials and crude carvings of genitalia – exuding themes of collective revolt and a poignant narration of the 1976 student uprising. ‘The works are not as huge and complex as my previous installations. I want to simplify and distil ideas I have been thinking through,’ the artist tells Wallpaper*.
‘Wa Lehulere’s exhibitions and performances are spaces for working out ideas’ says School of the Art Institute of Chicago professor Delinda Collier, ‘not allowing something to be fixed into a static representation is very much at the heart of all he does.’ Visitors to the exhibition will be encouraged to donate books to be passed on to Wa Lehulere’s forthcoming library project in Gugulethu.
INFORMATION
‘Kemang Wa Lehulere: not even the departed stay grounded’ is on view until 20 October. For more information, visit the Marian Goodman Gallery website
ADDRESS
Marian Goodman Gallery
5-8 Lower John Street
London W1F 9DY
-
Gucci turns its windows into an endless library of books, artefacts and rare treasuresFeaturing a collaboration with artist Luca Pignatelli, ‘Endless Narratives’ unfolds in Gucci store windows worldwide – a reflection of creative director Sabato de Sarno’s broad cultural interests
-
Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025: Formafantasma revisits the masculine codes of modernist designFormafantasma wins a Wallpaper* Design Award 2025, for its Milan exhibition ‘La Casa Dentro’, which took to task the inherent masculinity and conservatism at the heart of modernism
-
Lesley Lokko reviews 2024's wins, shifts, tensions and opportunities for 2025Lesley Lokko, the British-Ghanaian architect, educator, curator, and founder and director of the African Futures Institute (AFI), has been an inspirational presence in architecture in 2024; which makes her perfectly placed to discuss the year, marking the 2025 Wallpaper* Design Awards
-
'It's a metaphor for life': rising star and 'Queer' poster artist Jake Grewal on his new London exhibitionBritish artist Jake Grewal speaks to Simon Chilvers about 'Under the Same Sky' as it opens at Studio Voltaire in London
-
Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025: Tate Modern’s cultural shapeshifting takes the art prizeWe sing the praises of Tate Modern for celebrating the artists that are drawn to other worlds
-
Inside the distorted world of artist George RouyFrequently drawing comparisons with Francis Bacon, painter George Rouy is gaining peer points for his use of classic techniques to distort the human form
-
‘I'm endlessly fascinated by the nude’: Somaya Critchlow’s intimate and confident drawings are on show in London‘Triple Threat’ at Maximillian William gallery in London is British artist Somaya Critchlow’s first show dedicated solely to drawing
-
Surrealism as feminist resistance: artists against fascism in Leeds‘The Traumatic Surreal’ at the Henry Moore Institute, unpacks the generational trauma left by Nazism for postwar women
-
Looking forward to Tate Modern’s 25th anniversary partyFrom 9-12 May 2025, Tate Modern, one of London’s most adored art museums, will celebrate its 25th anniversary with a lively weekend of festivities
-
Out of office: what the Wallpaper* editors have been doing this weekA week in the world of Wallpaper*. Here's how our editors have been entertaining themselves in the run up to Christmas
-
Love, melancholy and domesticity: Anna Calleja is a painter to watchAnna Calleja explores everyday themes in her exhibition, ‘One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night’, at Sim Smith, London
