Reflections on the Bongi Dhlomo collection at the 'Yakhal' Inkomo' exhibition

In 2022, New York-based curator Tumelo Mosaka, with curatorial assistance from Sipho Mdanda and Phumzile Twala, installed an exhibition of artworks from the Bongi Dhlomo Collection, at the Javett Art Centre at University of Pretoria in South Africa, titled Yakhal' Inkomo. Begging the question: why did Mosaka decide to name this art exhibition, Yakhal' Inkomo, a phrase first popularised by the musician Winston Mankunku Ngozi and his Mankunku Quartet in 1968.

Yakhal' Inkomo roughly translates to 'ululating cow' in Xhosa and Zulu African dialects, mostly spoken in Southern Africa. Metaphorically it refers to sacrifice, a joyous event when a cow is about to be slaughtered, and is asked whether it is willing to be sacrificed/slaughtered for the purpose at hand, there is never just one reason, always various, according to the circumstance. The crudest understanding of this expression is that a cow is in agony, and therefore it is crying. Customarily, when an animal does not wail, it is understood as a disagreement, to the point that the whole event is postponed, because the entire point is that of universal communion.

An interdisciplinary art exhibition, Yakhal' Inkomo engages visual artists, musicians, poets and writers, exploring how they forged acts of creative defiance under the oppressive apartheid system, during the tumultuous late 20^th century period. The exhibition features works by some of the most important African artists, working from 1960 to 1990.

For the art event, Bongi Dhlomo assembled collections from 2017 to 2019, on behalf of the Javett Foundation. Dhlomo, an artist of the same period, as most of those in the collection, did not include her own artworks as the collector, politely explaining, “When there’s money involved, we have to be very careful, and so I didn’t want anything to overshadow the purpose of the project.” Just like the cow that articulates a wail of agreement to be slaughtered for the furtherance of the community, she understands that there is a wiser value in this, than that of selfish advancement.

The collection is a first-of-its kind, since naming an institutional art collection after an African woman has rarely, if ever, been done in South Africa. Indigenously the house of Dlomo is the same as that of the first democratic president Nelson Mandela, globally recognised for his totem praise; Madiba, today, is a national ancestor who prioritised forgiveness over revenge, progress over corruption.

With a collection of 138 artworks, Yakhal' Inkomo is a restitution for the South African public and the world at large. The collection includes artists who were in exile during the 20^th century, along with diverse local narratives, from the peripheral Bantustans to urban centres like SOWETO. It comprehends diverse art styles and expressions, influenced by varied international geographical factors and mannerisms of visual proclamation and pronunciations.

The Scream, 1988, by Cyril Kumalo is an example of an artwork influenced by western art history, originally created by Edvard Munch in 1893. The artwork as it did with Munch, symbolises anxiety of the human condition, localised to that of apartheid in South Africa. Back when the artwork was created, African people were being dispossessed of land and dislocated to industrial spaces with less lucrative prospects. The rule of thirds composition reveals two thirds of empty space, reflective of the black experience, with forced removals, where they must start anew each time. Creating new customary practices symbolised by a central figure beating a drum with a traditional pattern on it, the clustered houses in the background, contain a third of the image, alluding to the element of forced community, in small houses and an extremely limited residential area for a large population. The stylistic rendering of the figure is influenced by African masks and Cubism.

The second artwork is Mo Mahaeng Ke Mathatha (At Home is Difficult), 1992, by Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi. It is an amalgamation of different styles, but interpreted uniquely by Sebidi—colourfully and un-naturalistically. The application method of paint is similar to that of an abstract expressionist, but with a strict intention of modeling figures. The depiction of colour and scenic composition are surrealistic, not a typical clear distortion, but the method is inventive. Referencing the title, Mo Mahaeng Ke Mathatha, translating to melancholy, some of the figures have sad eyes including the main figure, that of a cow, looking down at the figure held in its human arms and torso.

The eyes instinctively move from the top left corner, and are at first directed by sheep-like figures looking outwards, to the left, and then balanced back into the picture by two profiles on the bottom left, one with an eye closed and another with an open eye. This guides the viewer up to the centre, assisted by the eye of a bird, indicating an upward focus to the sad central human figure being embraced by the human cow, looking up at the cow’s face. The viewer is then refocused by the eyes of the human cow looking at the sad figure, by this point the viewer has been centralised within the image of a universal communion, similar to the ritual of the titular exhibition.

Michael Maimane’s Milling, 1998, is a reminder of the Fauvist, André Derain’s Bateaux dans le Port de Collioure, 1905. They both use complementary colours extensively, and in both the paintings the sky is green and yellow, contrastingly, though, Maimane employs a more coordinated gradient. His thick application of oil paint is also reminiscent of Vincent van Gogh, distinctively though, his modernist light impasto technique contemporised his work, similar to that of Frank Auerbach. The shadows are purple, the houses are almost normal colours but the obvious complementary colour of the shadow, supposes a reinvention of perception.

The painting poses a philosophical enquiry, as to whether things are as they appear. Is a shadow not a shadow if it's purple? It is also worth noting that the artwork was created four years after the oppressive regime, when artists were finally able to explore deeper themes. The artworks can also be interpreted as posing questions on progress, as to whether the government administration after democracy was changing its ways and wasn't a reflection of privilege, that was afforded to an elite few? The same shadow only disguised in a complementary colour. His contemporaries, of previous years, had used symbols in a censored manner to pass on the message, employing disguised methods such as the title of an artwork. His work Milling, too, means, 'moving around in a confused mass.'

Michael Javett, the art philanthropist who sponsored the collection, died on November 17, 2022, and was first introduced to Dhlomo by Christopher Till, in 2016. Working together with Leigh Bregman, they established a professional relationship, wherein she was given complete authority and operation over the collection project.

When asked about the different challenges of being a curator and collector, Dhlomo recalled an event in Botswana in 1982, called Culture and Resistance which was about connecting creatives in exile to those who lived locally, "we had a specific artistic brief towards social development and I was the curator, it is because of such experiences that I understand the influence of an honest opinion, from both the exiled and local.” With regards to the selection of artists and artworks that form a part of this collection, Dhlomo states, “I did not work from a thematic perspective but rather searched for the best production of each artist I could find.”

Mihloti ya Ntsako: Journeys with the Bongi Dhlomo Collection

Mihloti ya Ntsako from Tshivenda, a South African dialect, is interpreted as 'tears of joy' and is a book written by Pfunzo Sidogi, which he describes as “chronicling the coming into being of the Bongi Dhlomo Collection, a unique compendium of 138 artworks produced in the previous century by both well-known and unheralded black South-African artists.” The introduction to the book records how the investment made by the Javett Foundation was dispersed amongst multiple facets of building a collection—from visual art storage spaces, framers, restorers, conservators to families of artists, from whom some of the work was purchased.

Sidogi emphasises that, “…most of the artists collected were not recognised or recorded in art history, and those who were fortunate to be, were canonised stereotypically, so my role was to create an African canon, with proper understanding as someone who comes from the same background of being African.”

He further explained, “…this book is the initial phase as Bongi Dhlomo also agreed, that this is almost like a cleansing of a misinterpretation, that African artists did not create work during this time, as there was no collection of it before. The following stage is writing a new history of African art, looking at the different backgrounds of schools, there’s the urban and rural, a new history that will look at these styles and categorise them beyond just the uniform umbrella of resistance art.”

Regarding global appeal, he gestured that, “artists like Dumile Feni (London), Gerald Sekoto (Paris) and Ernest Cole (New York) are part of the collection, the artworks collected from them were created while in exile in Europe and America, referencing the black experience of South Africa but using styles influenced by a global perception. And at first it was questioned if that constitutes a black South-African experience, but it does, because the work is contextually South African.” He added, “Also we must consider that internationalism includes other artists who were exiled in Africa, as they also established links with other perceptions that were not limited to South Africa.”

Concluding the interview, he acknowledged that, as a lecturer, he wrote the book in a manner that would be well suited for teaching students. Commenting on the importance of this unique partnership between the Javett Foundation and Bongi Dhlomo, Sidogi noted, “I think the project is very significant, for a white patron to give complete power to a black woman, is something of a lesson in restitution.”