Commune.1 is proud to announce the open studio of poet and artist Ayanda Mabulu. Following a two-month in-gallery residency at Commune.1 Mabulu’s large-scale paintings and paper works are presented in progress along with materials, visual references, writings on the wall and other outcomes of his creative process. According to the artist, working in this way in the gallery space is like a mirror of the unfinished business of racial redress and thus assumes a performative function.
In this new body of work the artist’s message is once again a highly politicized one. The contradictions of our current politics – evinced by Marikana – are conflated with the psychological and physical harm inflicted on the black body during colonialism. Mabulu employs visual placeholders for these systems of repression in addition to both recognizable and anonymous politicians and colonial figures.
Like in his previous solo exhibitions, Mabulu demonstrates the political reach of the artists’ prov...