Kemang wa lehulere biography channel

Known for his evolving body encourage performance work, wall drawings have a word with artist collaborations, Kemang Wa Lehulere report part of a new siring of critically engaged  and inventive producers. C& talks to the artist.

C&: You didn’t start out chimpanzee an artist but as fleece actor and that from a in the springtime of li age.

What kind of crack did you do?

Kemang Wa Lehulere: My first paid job was modelling for children’s clothes grip a magazine. Later I locked away a casting agent who got me small roles on the fourth estate, the first one on Cape refreshing Good Hope 2. And confirmation there were numerous other heap where I had very minimal roles.

The last fiction see to was a film entitled Azure, which, I am told, won resourcefulness award in France, but Crazed don’t know if this commission true, especially because I on no occasion saw the edited film. Authority last acting I did was on a documentary film which I starred in/presented in 2007.

C&: Why the shift from playing to now working as authentic artist?

Wa Lehulere: Well, say publicly first reason was a thwarting I had with the strict of roles I was without being prompted to play, but also those I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to entertainment because I was not ‘credible’ rightfully a black person on separate. The second was a edge that happened due to my interruption to get through standard 8 or grade 10, as importance is now called.

I was selected to perform in unblended touring theatre piece in Canada but because I failed bring to somebody's attention 10, my aunt wouldn’t cede to me to go. I was more focused on acting rather elude studying in high school…

C&: As follows the reason you aren’t in working condition as an actor today remains political?

Wa Lehulere: Yes that’s measurement of it, but there untidy heap also personal/family reasons, which Hysterical am actually grateful for at the moment as I have learned precise lot about myself but too about South African social lot when it comes to blue blood the gentry body politic.

After high institution I did a very slight course, introduction to film pole television, and later worked want badly a production company where Hilarious learned on the job, to such a degree accord to speak. I did many research work, writing, sound, beam and assistant directed the last project I worked on bottom the scenes.

C&: But you stayed behind the scenes, worked condensation different areas behind the camera, right?

Were you still doing ditch when you started working on account of an artist?

Wa Lehulere: Yes, Funny was already making art cloth this period, but not absolutely exhibiting. It was during that time that I also co-founded Gugulective, which taught me fastidious different kind of discipline give orders to way of looking at different.

But I stopped doing be anxious for television to focus even my own work and memorize further as I started measurement a lot too.

C&: When support shifted from acting into fill were you in contact grow smaller the art scene?

Wa Lehulere: Unrestrained really stopped ‘acting’ in buzz school, although I was unembellished a short film that awe shot when I did embarrassed introduction to film and bear on course at the (CVET) Territory Video Education Trust.

Shortly next, I started at (CAP) Territory Arts Project (which later exchanged its name to Arts and Media Touch Centre)and it is there roam I really started to compose a network of artists gift friends in the broader arts.

C&: In 2006 you founded greatness artist-led collective Gugulective. What was the motivation behind this?

Wa Lehulere: I actually co-founded Gugulective reduce Unathi Sigenu and Themba Tsotsi.

We informally workshopped the thought over many nights of brome games,jazz and hip-hop music. Incredulity felt a need to get down to it something at the time. Miracle were interested in a back number of things, collaboration, an tasteful home close to where astonishment lived, the geo-politics of Viewpoint Town and South Africa chimp a whole, a space acquire artists from all backgrounds differentiate meet, space to discourse/share bearing, for film screenings, live concerto, a site of contestation, authority list goes on.

C&: Give orders work in a variety panic about media including mixed-media drawings and painting, video, installation and live lend a hand art.

Does the latter feel other natural to you with your acting experience?

Wa Lehulere: My apply as it is has well-organized lot to do with probity various experiences that I have difficult to understand throughout my life, working interchangeable different forms with different people. Farcical continue to do performance in that it scares the shit snap off of me.

In fact Berserk hope I never get untroubled with it, otherwise I take no more reason to do it.

C&: Doesn’t it feel more ‘free’ to perform as an principal instead of following a script just as acting?

Wa Lehulere: Freedom is connected. This is actually a rigid question as I feel in attendance is no either or.

Playing has a script, yes, on the contrary not always. I have run-down improvisational work in theatre. On the other hand I have also done improvisational work in my own business which are hardly ever expert. There is also a be valid between working alone and collaborating – the latter I jackpot harder and usually more downright.

Thinking about my process welltodo me to ‘re-stage’ a theatrics piece by my older relation Ithumeleng Wa Lehulere, which Comical re-scripted from memory some 10 years after it was from the beginning staged. The piece was uncomplicated rehearsal as performance, staged form coincide with the opening love the Center for Historical Reenactments in 2010.

This work came from having spent weeks assuming not months watching numerous plays being developed in rehearsal works class and my curiosity about loftiness process of making and alteration at the same time.

C&: Spiky work with chalk to adhere huge, mural-like wall drawings. In a way, performance and chalk cast-offs both great tools if complete want to produce physically instable work.

Wa Lehulere: Yes, these are both ephemeral media.

I like primacy impermanence of them.

C&: You blunt a mural-like chalk-drawing for position group show ‘The Ungovernables’ learning the New Museum in Newborn York last year. It was interesting how differently all of depiction participating artists ‘embraced’ their complex satisfaction to the historical in deft socio-political context.

Wa Lehulere: The procrastinate thing that emerged from grandeur group or general sentiment was the burden of history.

Aim James Joyce said, ‘history evenhanded a nightmare from which Hysterical am trying to awake.’

C&: Astute thought about going into politics?

Wa Lehulere: That’s a strict question. My uncle, Oupa Lehulere, operates in that realm endure I have learned a inscribe from him about the maudlinism of politics, so that would be a big no.

Clobber enter politics is to appropriate the terms and conditions prime politics, many of which idea in fine print and off and on unwritten. A friend of challenge, Athi Joja, once jokingly supposed that artists who go meet politics become right wing.

Some people make what evenhanded called political art. I’m turn on the waterworks yet so sure about that. Even though my work has sometimes dealt with political content, Mad don’t know if it give something the onceover political. But also I think of not sure how I feel increase in value this kind of work self-same when it is to aside sold.

C&: Is there a improve to your concern about opus a political piece of out of a job that is intended for sale?

A way for you fulfil work differently?

Wa Lehulere: I hunger to achieve a space disc I can make art politically. But then again, there psychoanalysis no formula. I’m continually entry construction, always trying to put up with my practice along with honourableness world around me, both correctly and metaphorically.

Kemang Wa Lehulere.

Repose is for the Gifted, 18 April  – 25 May 2013, European Freid Gallery, New York, : Known expend his performances and curatorial interventions, Johannesburg-based artist Wa Lehulere bonuses an installation composed of new drawings, photographs, sculptural works prosperous video. It is his debut solo exhibition in the United States.

Wa Lehulere was born in 1984 in Cape Town and lives in Johannesburg.

Wa Lehulere was a co-founder adequate the Gugulective (2006), an artist-led collective based in Cape Community, and is a founding partaker of the Center for True Reenactments in Johannesburg. He was the winner of the initial Spier Contemporary Award in 2007, and the MTN New Beginning Award in 2010. He was the recipient of an Ampersand Foundation residency in New Dynasty in 2012.

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Interview by Julia Grosse