Notes

Collage has been central to Langa’s practice since he first achieved prominence in the late 1990s. Celebrated as a “radical scavenger,”¹ this lot is typical of his enigmatic approach to working with found images. Presented on a paper ground that has been intensively worked over, the lot additionally features various paper panels pasted over a large drawn figure. Some are blank, while others feature constructed and found images. The pell-mell orchestration of these images resembles an inner-city street wall littered with flyers. The relationship between the various images is opaque.

Commenting on Langa’s method in his collages, critic Tracy Murinik writes: “The requirement is not to find iconic images, but rather to progressively establish an image field in which he can locate himself. From magazines, newspapers, songs, movies,  mail-order catalogues, popular everyday stimuli, Langa draws and develops his archive: images of black people are reconstituted into surrogate portraits of childhood and family. They become referential of his personal history, like snapshots.”²

 In 2017, Langa described his method as an artist as “quite fugitive,” further stating of his way of working, “I do not start with anything concrete, nor aim at making a defining statement, but merely allude to forms as a means of record-keeping”.³

1. Hamza Walker (2002) ‘Moshekwa Langa: The Global Village Revisited’ in Moshekwa Langa, Chicago and Geneve: The Renaissance Society. Unpaginated.

2. Tracy Murinik (2003) ‘Artist always on tour’, in Moshekwa Langa, Cape Town: South African National Gallery. Page 18.

3. Moshekwa Langa (2017) Press release for exhibition Fugitive, Johannesburg: Stevenson: https://www.stevenson.info/exhibition/2245

Provenance

Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg.

Private Collection.

Exhibited

Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, Moshekwa Langa: Ramokone, 25 August to 22 September 2012.

Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, Other People’s Memories, 28 January to 26 February 2015.