Writers of Their Own History ,2017
Exhibited : Red Room Gallery, Woodstock, Bambo Sibiya: Tales of Migration, 26 January to 5 March 2017.
Note : ‘Bambo Sibiya is part of a generation of Joburg based artists that includes Nelson Makamo and Phillemon Hlungwani – producing brooding charcoal drawings disrupted by flashes of colour. It’s an aesthetic associated with William Kentridge, but each of these artists inhabits it in their own way and for their own reasons …
In Sibiya’s work, colour and pattern infiltrate charcoal drawings through his rendering of the suits his subjects wear. They shimmer, glow and pop with touches of metallic acrylic paint and lace patterns, drawing attention to the central role an immaculate suit plays in the Swenka tradition.
Zulu migrant workers on Joburg mines participated in Swenka – derived from the English word ‘swank’ – to show off their sense of style and defy the social and economic status that was determined by their race under apartheid … [Sibiya] establishes them as subjects from a bygone era through the medium of charcoal, evoking black-and-white photography, and through the presence of outmoded objects. An old typewriter is on the lap of a man in the piece entitled Writers of their own History … [The] typewriter faces outwards and not inwards towards the subject so that he can’t use it. This creates the impression that the history of the Swenkas was never told by them.’1
1. Mary Corrigall (2017) BusinessDay, 20 February, ‘Swank dress code just a plaster over a gaping societal wound’,https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/businessday/20170220/281878708136668
