Notes

‘You know, I was born in apartheid time. When I turned 18 or 19, apartheid was being demolished. A big part of my life had been very much influenced by the governance and the structures of apartheid. When I went to high school, everybody found their hometown or village in our comprehensive school atlas, everybody except me. That made me very sad. Because on the one hand, I became the object of everybody’s jokes and on the other hand, on a level of higher reflection, it was almost as if not only myself but a whole group of people had been written out of history, as if their existence was negligible to the world around them. You look at South Africa and you know about places such as Johannesburg, Mamelodi and Langa Township, but you don’t know about Bakenberg. And Bakenberg is only an example among hundreds of others. Seeing that there are no books at my home, I got the idea that I should try to write myself into history, even if it’s not actually writing textbook history, but just imagining and projecting myself into a circle of narrative. That’s why I paint self-portraits.’^1
1. Moshekwa Langa, in Goodman Gallery (2016) New Revolutions: Goodman Gallery at 50, Johannesburg: Goodman Gallery, page 126.

‘The concept and strategy of a fluid personal identity is possibly one of Langa’s most resourceful and cunning devices. It is also potentially his most playful. Not only does he surreptitiously dismantle stereotypical conclusions about his practice by constantly shifting the margins, the strategy is also an essential means of experimentation: into new media, alternative personae and infinite creative possibility. Imaging his own body in various contexts in a number of projects, he insists on reclaiming agency over how he is represented, and consciously subverts the possibility of those representations becoming fixed. Langa does this even when his image remains absent from his work.’^1
1. Tracy Murink (2003) ‘Artist Always on Tour’, in Emma Bedford (ed) (2003) Moshekwa Langa, Cape Town: South African National Gallery, pages 11 and 12.