The Interrogator 2020

The idea of seeking and creating conversations that forge new directions in the face of various forms of marginalisation and exclusion from public and social spaces is empowering to me. This is why I came to an idea of creating this series of work I call The Interrogator featuring a figure covered in cotton wool.

Umdiyadiya 2021

This video performance is inspired by collective memories and seeks to track historical events in a black household during South Africa’s turbulent recent past. The artist remembers time spent in both welcoming and unwelcoming spaces, reflecting on experiences with family and friends. As the artist encounters kindness and softness within rough and uncomfortable spaces and situations, he’s also suggesting that there can be love in a space you might consider “broken” — and that, in some instances, beautiful memories were made there and deserve to be remembered.

Wamkelekile 2020

A series of documented images from an ongoing research work, The Politics of Displacement.
The work shows how displacement can be undeniably destructive and traumatic in multiple ways, it is also looking on how it has beneficiaries and creates new practices of power and accumulation for specific individuals.

Note: The text above was written by the Artist. No modification was made by COCA.

Wezile Mgibe

South Africa

http://wezilemgibeart.simplesite.com/

Wezile Mgibe’s work confronts prejudices and advocates against social inequality and creates a platform for critical self- reflexivity within unwelcoming spaces.
Mgibe’s work is influenced by how things have come to existence, as well as motivations behind certain movements, reactions.
Mgibe is a 2019 David Koloane award recipient, Arts & Culture Trust Finalist Recipient for 2020. His body of work has been witnessed across the country including at Iziko National Gallery (SA), Norval Foundation, FNB Art Joburg, Johannesburg M1 Highway billboard, Hangar Online (Portugal), Institue for Creative Arts and PIAD (SA).
Mgibe’s research work forms part of Human Rights Defenders Hub programme supported by the University of York (UK), LSE Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa supported by SOAS University of London.