Reality and fiction, past and future, South and North – Moshekwa Langa is a wanderer between worlds. The South African artist interweaves different materials, value systems, cultural reference points, and motifs in his works. Within the frame of the exhibition series Solo for…, the ifa Gallery Berlin presents his site-specific installation The Jealous Lover. The installation describes the hope for a better life in the metropolis, a hope which “captures, captivates and grips” people like jealousy. The exhibition series Solo for… presents artists that have exhibited at the ifa Galleries already at the beginning of their international careers. Moshekwa Langa participated in the show Changing the point of View – African Video Art in the ifa Galleries in 2000.
For his works, Moshekwa Langa (*1975, Bakenberg/South Africa) often uses ordinary materials such as packaging, cardboard, found objects, thread reels and strings. Installations, work on paper, photographs and videos are combined to complex assemblages. These multi-layered visual and at times also linguistic networks illustrate political developments and the artist’s personal recollections from his childhood under the Apartheid regime to his exile in the Netherlands. Everything is connected with everything else, there are no linear developments, the lines meander and meet at different points of intersection.
In his new installation The Jealous Lover Moshekwa Langa examines the pull that cities exert on people. The desire for a better life in the metropolises – connected with the abandonment of traditions and relationships – exemplifies the experiences of people in the globalised and digitised world; the difficulties of orientation as well as the fascination for networks. In addition, the exhibition presents a selection of Moshekwa Langa’s drawings and gouaches. Drawing from historical, political, scientific, poetic, and private elements, images and words from different cultures, he constructs fictional landscapes and mind maps that reflect intercultural experiences and the difficulties to navigate within an elusive reality.
Programme
Friday, 11 July 2014, 16:00
Guided tour of the exhibition with Moshekwa Langa
Thursday, 17 July 2014, 19:00
The Future in the Contemporary – Potential and Challenges in International Art Exchange
Introduction by Elke aus dem Moore, director of the department, Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations
Into the Darkness – Black Subjectivities and Alternative Knowledge Production
Lecture by Seinethemba Twalo, artist, author, DJ from Johannesburg, currently artist in residency at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart
Sunday, 14 September 2014, 11:00 – 13:30
Children’s Art Programme – Cartographies of the interstice #2: LEGENDS
From the age of 6. With Annika Niemann.
Thursday, 18. September 2014, 19:00
Re_Mapping: Maps of Dislocation
Exhibition Talk with Annika Niemann
Urban excursions with Elfi Müller – from the outside to the inside
Sunday, 31 August 2014, 12:00
Sunday, 7 September 2014, 12:00
Sunday, 21 September 2014, 12:00