Mbulu (after Letta Mbulu), 2017. Oil on canvas, 50x50 cm. “The Reading Room” (Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi and Alphabet Zoo) is open to the public from 5 April at the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg.
This project offers a sustained engagement with Thenjiwe Nkosi’s body of work "Heroes". Nkosi’s portraits are veiled – a function of technique, as well as her conception of what constitutes a “hero”. The faces shift between recognition and obscurity, and come to stand for a community.
Alphabet Zoo is Minenkulu Ngoyi and Isaac Zavale, both traditional print-making artists that formed a street-culture zine and work collaboratively. Together with Andile Buka, Simnikiwe Buhlungu, Mooki Mooks, Kgomotso Neto Tleane, Jack Dyamonds, and the collective Danger Gevaar Ingozi Studio, they start to respond to "Heroes", creating new work in conversation with Nkosi’s paintings.
The space itself grows and changes over time as work is added. It is imagined as a reading room and a place for conversation, screenings and small-scale events: a space always in motion. Participants and the public at large are asked to step inside, and think through the significance of the work, build on the narratives, consider the absences and the spaces between the portraits.
The Reading Room is open to the public from 5 April with a public event on 12 April. Further events are to be announced on social media. From 22 June the reading room will continue under a different guise, elaborating on the conversations of this first iteration.