BA'ZINZILE: A Rehearsal for Breathing | Curatorial Statement, Khanyisile Mbongwa

Stellenbosch Triennale Curatorial Statement

by Khanyisile Mbongwa

 

The Stellenbosch Triennale is the brainchild of the Stellenbosch Outdoor Sculpture Trust and its years of

experience in enacting public art exhibitions in Stellenbosch. The Triennale takes public art in Stellenbosch to

new heights in terms of its international reach, the scope and variety of the art to be showcased as well as its

intention to place creativity in critical dialogue with society. The Triennale marks an intentional and purposeful

attempt to use creativity, imagination and public space as a meeting point in engaging with the collective and

distinctive milieu of our past, present and future existence and all its complexities- a place where we imagine

futures.

 

The Stellenbosch Triennale aims to make Stellenbosch the primary destination of multi-disciplinary art in Africa

by tapping into the creative impetus that is reverberating across the continent. The Triennale turns Stellenbosch into a curated public laboratory for creative expressions and engagements in response to society’s question’s now, then and there; what kind of people do we want to be? What relations to nature do

we cherish? What knowledges and technologies do we deem appropriate? What aesthetic values do we hold?

The Stellenbosch Triennale holds great promise of interesting horizons of possibility and shifts for the town of

Stellenbosch and beyond.

 

The Stellenbosch Triennale emerges within a creative cultural renaissance in South Africa that has seen new

public and private art institutions take shape with the Zeitz-MOCAA and the Norval Foundation in Cape Town

and the Javett Art Centre in Pretoria being welcome additions. The Stellenbosch Triennale pulls threads from

this existing ecosystem as well as adding to it by offering a different location that seeks to use the Triennale

as a vehicle to democratize access to art by offering free access to all the exhibitions and programs of the

Triennale as well as re-imagining Stellenbosch as a creative city.

Stellenbosch Triennale 2020

 

The inaugural Stellenbosch was held in 2020 under the theme ‘Tomorrow There Will Be More Of Us’. At three

major exhibitions at three locations in Stellenbosch, the Triennale imprinted its footprint with the town with the

Curator’s exhibition, On the Cusp exhibition and From The Vault exhibition. The Curator’s exhibition focused

on artists in the current, those with established practices whilst On the Cusp focused on revealing and unraveling the creative talents of tomorrow. It focused on young art practitioners who have pushed their creative boundaries and sit on the cusp of beauty and magic through their aesthetic, conceptual, critical,

material choice, form or installation methods. From the Vault looked into institutional vaults for art collections

in vaults (Stellenbosch University and Fort Hare University art collections in conversation) to be presented to

audiences with a new set of curatorial lenses. Please see www.stellenboschtriennale.com for more information

about the Stellenbosch Triennale 2020.

 

The Stellenbosch Triennale will be held in Stellenbosch from the 19th of February to the 30th of April 2025.

 

The theme for the next Triennale is BA’ZINZILE: A REHEARSAL FOR BREATHING.

 

 

UKU’ZINZA: an invocation from the Nguni people that speaks to being grounded, being calm. Stillness as a mechanism for survival, as strategy for imagination, as Aliveness and Insistence. In a world losing its breath, where breathlessness pervades, we witness the tremors in our bodies and the depths we must dive to sustain life. This exhibition explores Breath and Breathing through states of duress and on-going extractions, using Rehearsal as a mode of Improvised philosophies. Breath: Breathing is a fundamental act: taking air into the lungs and expelling it, exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide. Breath manifests in various forms: puff, pant, gasp, wheeze, blow, sigh, impart, imbue, transfuse, murmur, whisper, utter. Breathing is about continuing, persisting, insisting, remaining, holding, being present, and having a place. How have our breath been disturbed, disrupted and dislocated? How have we sustained

ourselves throughout these interruptions? Breathing through States of Duress: We breathe through the duress of histories of colonialism, enslavement, apartheid, wars and on-going genocides, wounded by its impacts and suffocating under its weight. Yet, we Insist, finding ways to Improvise our breath, our Aliveness, and our existence.

 

Respiration: Breathing in states of duress and harm, ukuphefumla ngenxeba – to breathe through the wound.

How our lungs enact somatic breathing by tracing the vascular systems of survival, cultural recovery, hope, courage, and strength in the quest to stay in the rhythm of our breath and thus life. Ukuphefumla – to breath, umphefumlo – the spirit, attends to a place of altered and interrupted destiny. The compositions of how to breathe in breathlessness are embodied in toyi-toyi, the southern Africa dance used in political protests or in voguing movements used in queer culture - the life that pulses in exaltation below our feet, opening a portal

to Aliveness. This practice of breathing in situ, being in ritual with oneself, is a profound expression of

insistence.

 

 

Rehearsal: A rehearsal is a session of exercise, a drill, a dry run, a practice in preparation for a ceremony. It involves repetition to align, figuring out interpretation, mapping pathways, and creating contingency plans. It is an attempt or experiment to reveal something about the world in near future time. Improvisation, Jazz and the Black Tradition: Improvisation serves as a compass—composing, arranging, and executing without preparation. It involves off-the-cuff creativity, imagination, and skill mastery. It’s about creating rhythms and frequencies,

composing notes from the haikus of our existence. Jazz, as a Black tradition of improvisation, is birthed from ancient traditions of wailing. This reappears through horn instruments that require deep breath, mimicking the throat as a vocal cord. Jazz embodies the mode of rehearsal as improvised philosophies, crafting compositions on how to breathe in breathlessness where even wailing is a form of breathing!

 

Exhibition making as a Rehearsal: positioning the Triennale as a rehearsal for the actions and changes we aspire to enact in the real world. This exhibition is a rehearsal for breathing — Breathing is holy. Art becomes an infrastructure of care, posing the question: if death is the given condition, how do we prepare

to live?

 

Through this Triennale, we aim to map out pathways for Breathing by inviting artists to make works on site in

Stellenbosch that attend to breath and breathlessness thus entering a Rehearsal as Improvised people.

 

BA’ZINZILE: A REHEARSAL FOR BREATHING invites you to explore these themes, to engage in the practice of insistence and to find stillness and sustained breath amidst chaos.