2007
Installation comprising Isitshaba and untitled costume
Isitshaba: cotton, gauze, ribbon, silicone, sponge, plywood
80 x 80 x 100cm
Costume: cotton, Broderie Anglaise
188 x 165cm

Nicholas Hlobo’s installation, Amaqanda’am, comprises a white cotton costumesculpture and a large sphere covered with the same fabric, attached to a silicone nipple. In Xhosa the phrase Amaqanda’am means ‘my eggs’, but it can also be used as a metaphor for testicles or one’s possessions or responsibilities. The sphere has its own title, Isitshaba, meaning ‘crown’, and – according to Hlobo – a reference to the gay slang expression ‘I would like to crown you’.

The hooded cloak, adorned with cutwork embroidery, recalls at once the Voortrekkerskappie (the hood worn by female Dutch settlers in South Africa) and the costumes of the Ku Klux Klan. A long tail-like extension at one of the arms, and the costume’s juxtaposition with the sphere, however, suggest that those resemblances are secondary to the image of sperm and egg immediately prior to conception. The installation was used by Hlobo in his performance at Aardklop, where he was festival artist this year. This was his first performance to use sound and to employ a second character, in this case a guitar player (the part taken here by Mathambo Nzuza, a musician who specialises in jazz and traditional Zulu music). In the performance, Hlobo, dressed in the white spermatozoid cloak, stages the moment of conception through a ballet for man and sphere. He sings in a loud, wailing Xhosa about how, as a gay man, he is repeatedly told that he will not bear children. In response, his song offers his sculptures as proof that he can give birth to something that will outlast his own time on earth.

In 2007, Hlobo had solo exhibitions at Extraspazio, Rome; the Savannah College for Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia; and at the Aardklop Nasionale Kunstefees in Potchefstroom. His second solo exhibition at Michael Stevenson will be in March/ April 2008. He is one of the artists selected for Flow, a survey show of young African art at the Studio Museum in Harlem, opening April 2008, and in July 2008 he will present a new solo project at the ICA Boston as part of their Momentum series.

© 2007 Michael Stevenson. All rights reserved.