RED ROOM

Artist Statement - The Place Called Home by Themba Khumalo

"Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to go fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to unbuild walls." 
- Ursula K. Le Guin -

In “The Place Called Home” Themba Khumalo continues to render landscapes that take us on a sociopolitical journey of romanticized stories of dispossession, time and history. Through his mark making he recreates nuances of the contemporary South Africa he experiences daily. Silwela amalunge, (“we are fighting for our rights”) is the expression that the artist uses to articulate his interaction with the city and its inhabitants; using tonal variations ranging between black and white. In this body of work he presents the longing that comes with displacement most city dwellers experience. Khumalo shows utopian landscapes that lie between the city and uninhabited home. He comments on a longing for a place that bears no concrete, no structure and no possession in his quest for a home.

"We the disposed
Welcome you to share,
The nothingness we own
The meek shall inherit the earth."
- Unknown author -