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Kalashnikovv Gallery is pleased to present the artist walkabout of Tinyiko Makwakwa’s solo presentation ‘Cosmos & Community’, taking place on Saturday, 19th June at 11am, 70 Juta St.Tinyiko Makwakwa (b. 1984 - Johannesburg, RSA) Studied her Bachelors in Applied Social Science at the University Of Brighton, UK. She is a self-taught textile and fibre artist raised in Tzaneen, where the city had its limits, the homelands were the gift that kept on giving. That is where, as a child, her love for nature was nurtured and a solid foundation for the textile arts informally began.
Makwakwa's studio-based practise shows deep respect for the interwoven narratives between material, history, landscape and the process of experimentation through making, the use of needlework techniques that were originally related to the repurposing of fabrics and the repair of garments as well as the ecological process of cultivating colour through botanical dyes and Earth pigments.
Her current body of work entitled 'Cosmos and Community' is inspired by her pre-colonial matrilineal heritage of the Van’wanti clan. Who originated from present-day South Sudan and began migrating along the Great lake region, with groups settling in various regions in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and near the Luvuvhu and Limpopo rivers, generally where there are larger bodies of water, as well as coastal areas of southern Mozambique. The Van’wanti share the Xitsonga language, cultural beliefs and practices with other Vatsonga. They have an inherently strong bond and kinship with each other as with their traditional leaders, Tihosi. The many frustrations that came from what seemed to be a lack of credibility in oral history, that turned out to be an appreciation of how sometimes forms of resistance to avoid scrutiny or being shrouded in secrecy can be a form of self-preservation. But mostly how everything is hidden in plain sight.
As always, when the student is ready, the teacher appears.
For more information, the exhibition catalogue, and to RSVP please email the gallery at [email protected].
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Kalashnikovv Gallery, 70 Juta Street, Johannesburg, South Africa