UBUHLE

About

The beaded paintings by Zondlile Zondo, Zandile, Ntombephi and Thando Ntobela of the Ubuhle collective take us on an extraordinary optical and mental journey. Thousands of glass beads that they patiently sew onto fabric spring up singular images, iridescent and almost fantastic landscapes in which shapes, lines and colours engage in a sensual and colourful contest. The eye, frantic, twirls like their needle from furrows to islands, from curves to scrolls, from patterns to flat tints. It clings, it tears itself away and comes back. 

Out of the memories of a South African childhood artist and poet Zoe Hirson works on found pieces of worn, richly grained wood. She shapes and burns it, adds to it coloured buttons, nails, strips of copper and white thread. And each sculpture comes with its own poem. Her lines of lucid, vulnerable words speak to whatever she has made: “I travel/ till I reach the shores of my heart/ and let the waves wash over/ the pebbles of my hurt.”