richardmabula

[richardmabula]

My work was featured in the exhibition “REVISITING THE LATENT ARCHIVE” curated by Khanyisile Mbongwa. It was part of “Joburg Fringe” Art Fair in Johannesburg, South Africa.

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Here is a beautiful article by Valerie Geselev. She has a very interesting take about art, my work especially.Take a look...  

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LETTER TO MY PARENTS

This body of work focuses on prejudice. It interrogates how our histories, both personal and collective, influence our ideas of who is the perpetrator and who is the victim of prejudice. Looking at the South African context, I interrogate how our siblings, parents and grandparents’ experiences of apartheid influence how we as young people (whom happen to find themselves in this country) relate to each other. I look at skin as a garment of representation. This garment is very powerful, as it is inscribed by all kinds of social codes, which are closely intertwined with streams of both imaginary and symbolic identifications. To say it bluntly, the nude body is no less clothed than the clothed body. The painting process is important in removing the pain from myself, and placing it in the paintings, whereby now I feel their pain, and heal from mine as a result.

Untitled (portrait 1) Oil on canvas 80,3 x 84.3cm 2014

Untitled (portrait 2) Oil on canvas 59,5 x 84cm 2014

Untitled (figure 1) Oil on canvas 168,5 x 120,4cm 2014

Untitled (figure 2) Oil on canvas 168,5 x 119, 5 cm 2014

Untitled (skin 1) Oil on canvas 84,3 x 59,7 cm 2014

Untitled (head study) Oil on canvas 38,1 x 29,6 cm 2014

Untitled (head scan 1) Oil on canvas 29,1 x 42,4 cm 2014

Untitled (head 2) Oil on canvas 29,2 x 42,5 cm 2014

Untitled (skin 3) Oil on canvas 42,2 x 29,2 cm 2014

Untitled (skin 2) Oil on canvas 42,2 x 29,2 cm 2014

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Chapter 1

Scene 1: It is the year 2114, and Richard Mabula is hanging out with some of his colleagues and friends in the Afterlife café. After a productive day at work, they are chilling on the large rooftop, enjoying the beautiful sky. Nelson notices that Richard looks very distant and unsettled.

Nelson Mandela: Rich, are you good bra?

Richard Mabula: Nah man, this whole conceptualizing stuff is killing me.

Nelson: Is it your lecturers?

Richard: Ya bra, they want me to write an artist statement about what my work is about.

Nelson: What’s the problem then?

Richard: Nah man, I make my art very intuitively, and there are things that I can’t really explain in academic terms, but I know what they are and that they have to be a certain way. Now they ask me all these questions that sometimes I’m like can’t I just paint, please!!!

Frantz Fanon: But we know your work...

Richard: Yah but you guys are my friends; they are the ones drilling me...

Siri Hustvedt: Ask us some of the questions, and we’ll try helping you come up with an “academically sound” response that relates to your work.

Frantz: So shoot Mabula!

Richard: I don’t know, things like, why painting?

Siri: Well painting is very powerful tool, because it can create an illusion of an eternal present. In this fast paced world that we live in, whereby a moment is quickly eaten away by the next second, a painting gives you a place to rest your eye on, and magically stop time, allowing you to see and ponder. Plus it has this immutable tranquility that makes it exist outside of time in a manner that no other art can. (Hustvedt, 2006: XV)

Richard: Hectic, that’s cool! Hehehe What about limiting myself to just painting the human figure? I mean, I really believe in its power to communicate in a very commanding way, and I find everything else very distracting... for now at least..

Victor Tupitsyn: Think of it this way, when one undresses in front of a camera, or even an easel, one is simultaneously wearing the garments of representation. (Stripped bare: 21)

Frantz: Wait, what do you mean?

Victor: Look, whenever one takes of ones garments, you reveal another layer of clothing known as ‘the nude’. This garment is very powerful in that on its fibers, the fibers of your skin, is inscribed all kinds of social codes that are closely intertwined with all kinds of streams of both imaginary and symbolic identification. To say it blankly, the nude body is no less clothed than the clothed one. And I find that it’s actually more difficult to penetrate the nude body than it is to pierce a chastity belt. (Karabelnik, 2004: 21)

Richard: And the worst thing is that the nude body is one you don’t choose, it chooses you. And it’s so coded and loaded with so many illusions. I mean I prefer to work with the body because; people don’t seem to possess the ability to see beyond that. I mean if we are trapped in the bodies that we were born with, I find it worth trying to understand this particular costume. I don’t know... But the thing about skin is that it raises issues about race, which I’m not sure if I want people to read that into my work.

Berni Searle: Look, you can’t avoid issues of race. Especially with you being South African, a country whereby the body was a primary site of identification in terms of racial classification. These issues simply cannot be overlooked. My advice would be that you continue working with ideas of ambiguity and mutability in relation to the concept of identity, and the various subject positions we occupy. I mean these positions are very fluid. (Westen, Dewilde & Josse, 2011:6)

Nelson: Berni is right. I found in my experience, South Africans, despite their skin color have been bound by prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I also learned that both prejudice and narrow-mindedness trapped even the oppressor. (Bill Clinton: x) I remember when I was released from Robben Island in 1990; I remember absolutely hating my oppressors. They have denied me so much, but they also took away so much. I thought about how I was abused, how I didn’t get to see my children grow up. (Bill Clinton: ix) I had lost my marriage, along with the best years of my life. I was filled with so much anger. And at the same time I was so scared, because I had not been free for so long, I remember walking to the car that was supposed to take me away, and it was then that I realized that...if I still hated them when I went through those gates, they would still have me. And I wanted to be free. So I let it go...(Clinton, 1995: ix)

Frantz: Hectic...

Nelson: But hey that was then, now I just dance. (Dancing)

Siri: Father of the nation! I see you still got your moves heita da! hahahahaha

Richard: I just make art. I paint realism...

Deborah Poynton: You know how they say that every artist is an artist for their own personal reasons. I need to paint in order to be okay with this world. (Poynton, 2013:12)

Richard: I remember how you were saying that paintings happen in the same way that life happens. (Poynton, 2013:12)

Deborah: Yah, and I mean over the years I just leant that the more I allow things to happen, the more true they felt. I mean whenever you try to impose meaning, the painting dies, and the meaning is lost. (Poynton, 2013:12)

Berni: I agree.

Liese Van Der Watt: Which is what I quite like about Berni’s work, it focuses not so much on origins; but networks, not purity; but the crossings and blurred areas, and just how you’re not so much concerned with the end result, but the process rather. (Westen, Dewilde & Josse, 2011:46)

Berni: You talk about my work so well, it’s like you’re reading my mind, shooo...

Liese: Hehehehe, I try ;)

Nelson: Hey enough politics, I need to chow.

Siri: I agree lets get some food.

Frantz: I need a refill, what’s this drink?

Richard: It’s a Pina Colada.

Frantz: Yoh It’s on point!

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Untitled (readymix 1 - 4), Oil on canvas, 20 x 20 cm, 2014

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Untitled (flesh colour 1), Oil on canvas, 20 x 20 cm, 2014

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Untitled (flesh colour 2 - 11), Oil on canvas, 20 x 20 cm, 2014

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Partial Identity

The history of portraiture is long. In my work I am exploring the idea of what is it that makes a portrait a portrait, and how it may represent identity. Given that identity is never singular, I work with the idea of partial representation. Current philosophers like Prof Cynthia Freeland still insist on a recognizable physical body, an inner life (i.e. character or psychological state), a self (bodily state) and a sort of expressiveness as conditions of portraiture.

Verisimilitude, described as a close resemblance between the depiction and the depicted, is important to me. It allows me to highlight, exclude/include and/ or emphasize certain aspects of a person’s appearance. These portraits while partial are finished works, in that they are explorations, and not final statements.

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Portrait 1-4, Chalk, acrylic & oil on canvas 78 x 103 cm 2013

Studio image of a work in progress

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Identity

This body of work explores ideas of what the government is/seems to be interested in an individual when it comes to their identity. The government seems to be interested mainly in three things, when it comes to one’s identity. That is, their place of origin, identity document photograph, and fingerprint. All of this information is important when trying to arrest someone. One can even argue that the identity document photograph is taken in a way that one will definitely appear suspicious, if they appear in the ‘wanted’ section of the newspaper.

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Untitled 2 Soil on paper 400 x 20 cm 2013

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Untitled 1 Soil on paper 70 x 100 cm 2013

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Reality/ Illusion

For this series, I was exploring the idea of reality versus illusion. I was interrogating how much of reality really is reality, and how much of illusion is illusion. And at what point do they merge or blur the lines? I worked from a series of photographs that were the reflection of the interior of the bus I catch to my school campus every morning at sunrise.

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