In 2017, while studying English Literature, my classmates, lecturers, and I visited. As part of the trip, we took a guided trail to the Karoo where we explored the natural semi-desert terrain and appreciated the unassuming presence of medicinal plants and San rock art. As our guide spoke on the significance of animals depicted in rock art and pointed out plants to explain medicinal Ephesus, I felt a sudden pang of emotion when taking in the view of the rocky-red terrain stretched out before me.
Even in the Karoo it seems quiet, with unbreaking unbreaking patterns of endless scattered rocks, stones, miniatures, hardy shrubs and ocher soil, there is clarity in the vastness of the expansiveness that somehow corrects the many possibilities of the rich pasts. and the lives of the animals and people who lived in the area before. In our aesthetic appreciation of nature lies in the inexplicable, magical ability to connect with what you see before you even through the shadow, to feel a sensation fluttering or rising in the chest or stomach that almost shakes the core when you surrender to admiration and You may feel that you live and think about the beauty of nature.
This is the immersive, meditative experience offered by Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Arts (2021), Buhlebezwe Siwani in his latest exhibition at the Standard Bank Art Gallery in downtown Johannesburg. Her exhibition, titled It’s medicine (a Xhosa word that translates to ‘plant-derived medicine’ or a substance that invites good energy while warding off bad) draws attention to Siwani’s life and position as a traditional healer. In a project to interrogate the use of plants in traditional medicine, their evolution in society and the way they are perceived over time, It’s medicine also seeks to understand the power inherent in the understanding of the relationship between the earth, the body and the spiritual.
Siwani’s desire to interrogate amayeza and highlight spiritual and physical interconnectedness stems from a recognition of the cognitive dissonance at play in individuals who appear to be unfairly biased against traditional African healing and medicinal values.
“I’ve been thinking about the negative attitudes people have about amayeza and how traditional medicine is misrepresented,” Siwani said. “People are afraid, even if they don’t have the same concern about something like Panados, for example, which is actually also amayeza. Many people don’t know the properties of Panado. If you go to a traditional healer, the healer will tell you that this plant is made for this and this is what they have or this is what they do. You know exactly what you are getting, but people create a lot of negative thoughts and ideas about iyeza. That is very surprising to me,” said Siwani.
The tendency to question the effectiveness or value of traditional knowledge in medicine often stems from a Western ideological way of thinking rooted in racism rather than a deep investment in examining its efficacy.
Colonialism’s suppression of indigenous knowledge stemmed from the Christian civilizing mission that required black African communities to abandon their traditional beliefs and practices while serving settler communities in need of labor. The rejection of traditional beliefs and practices by white missionaries was largely supported by the priority of intellectualism and rationalism in European thought, as well as biblical texts that misinterpreted paganism and witchcraft for traditional indigenous knowledge in African communities where, as UKZN Honorary Senior Lecturer Dale Wallace points out in his paper on the construction of witchcraft in South Africa, the concept of umthakathi (witchcraft) has been recognized as separate from traditional healing and medicine.
With an understanding of the centuries-old distortion of African religious and spiritual belief systems, we can admire and appreciate the need for such a project. It’s medicineespecially during a time when many young black people are experiencing a revived interest in traditional belief systems and are facing criticism and resistance in some respects.
Siwani’s art installation at the Standard Bank Art Gallery, an establishment that consistently promotes South African art forms and cultural development, includes these pieces, Sun, which can be translated as “the sun is shining or the sun is rising in the sky”. It is a representation of the four celestial bodies depicted using wooden poles tied together and made with imphepho and imbola, plants and substances that are an important source of physical and spiritual healing among various ethnic groups in South Africa and the continent. totally. The corpses were arranged around a dimly lit room that cast shadows on the walls and floor of the room below.
In this section, it is important to note the use of cultural objects such as imphepho, imbola and wood in the creation of celestial objects, which also represent ancestors and spirit beings in many traditional African spiritual belief systems. In the piece’s attempt to demonstrate the interdependent relationship between the earth through the soil, the body through important cultural artifacts and the spirit world through the constellation of the body, Sun reinforces Siwani’s intention to tell how “our body and spirit are tied to earth and water and where we are born and resurrected”.
The manager of the Standard Bank Gallery, artist and curator, Dr Same Mdluli, said that It’s medicine, like Siwani’s other works, is a way to “embrace his gift”. Furthermore, Siwani’s ability to support this gift through art can also provide a place of comfort for individuals or people who seek to be represented in the cultural space.
“It’s medicine is a kind of activism for indigenous knowledge,” said Dr. Mdluli. “It’s about giving people insight into how this is done [traditional African healing] it can be a way to deal with the challenges you may have in life, even if it is a challenge you are experiencing on the phone or if you know from a relative who is experiencing a call. I hope something like this, something visual, can give you a different perspective, especially if you think about it [traditional African healing] it’s really just a different form of counseling or therapy. Having art like Buhle’s can help as a catalyst to talk about healing.
While using the theme of healing, Siwani focuses on the black female body, because, as she says, she “can only speak from [her] own experience” occupying black and female bodies. “I’m also a little tired of hearing about black women’s experiences from other people who aren’t black and women. There’s no focus or respect when talking about black women’s experiences compared to black men’s experiences or white women’s experiences, so I think it’s really important if we are talking about the lived experience as a black woman.
At Descended Spirit (which means “entering spirit”) the film installation is projected above the water using a special projector that provides incredible clarity through the gentle waves of the water. The film, which was shot in several natural landscapes in Cape Town, including the seaside locations of St James Beach and Monwabisi Beach, centers on a narrative about women who seek healing and labor as they grow medicinal plants in their environment.
In this film, Siwani has also highlighted the journey of women for healing and survival despite the impact of ecological warfare which, by exploiting and violating their environment, can threaten their spiritual and physical well-being. Still, they embody fluidity, collaboration and survival through the dances and movements they perform throughout the film.
This image of survival can be seen in the many tangible efforts made by community-based activists across the country to combat the detrimental effects of mining activities in their communities. Examples of communities engaged in years of activism to protect their environment include members of the village of Masodi in Limpopo who have fought to protect their burial sites and heritage from plans to operate a large platinum mine as well as activists in Xolobeni, Eastern Cape. He won a case in the Pretoria high court in 2020 that gave him the right to access information about mining operations that could affect his community.
Siwani’s insistence on using the black female body in his artwork is also a resistance against the Western capitalist and racist system. In some ways, it is not very different from the way other artists like Mary Sibande or Sethembile Msezane use the body in art as a tool to express the desire for the recognition of black women in the social and political environment of South Africa, where the system of colonial and patriarchal logic has played a role major in denying black women experience and subjectivity.
However, the representation of the black female body in Siwani’s work is not limited to visibility, as seen in the installation Sun and the third installation is titled Star (meaning star) that uses eucalyptus tree stumps, grass and soil, as Siwani offers rumination on healing, using the belt of the traditional uniform of the South African Zion and Apostle church. In the sense of awe and transcendence, when living in the beauty of the Karoo terrain, there is an indication to identify yourself outside of yourself in the process of connecting to nature and the world around me.
“I think Buhle’s works are an extension of the multiplicity that we always use, so that we don’t want frames, boxes or stereotypes of the black female body. How Buhle does this is shown in other ways that are in the elements of fluidity of water, gentleness and stillness. I will imagine when there is activity in the gallery, the water experiences movement and at night when there is no one here, I can imagine the aura that is still there,” said Dr Mdluli.
“The same goes for the earth, soil and grass. The exhibition opened on February 23 and will run until April 8. You can imagine what the grass looks like. There is even a growth process taking place. For me, it’s something that can represent the body of a black woman without having to reveal it,” concluded Dr Mdluli.
Iyeza by Buhlebezwe Siwani is currently at the Standard Bank Art Gallery from 23 February to 8 April.