Nontokozo Tshabalala - Installations

Onde A luta Termina (2023)

Röda Sten Gothenburg, Sweden. 2023

Video and audio site-specific installation, 8 min(loop). 

In collaboration with sound designer Samar Jabri,

and multimedia designer Nikita Govender (South Africa).

Artwork commissioned by Röda Sten Konsthall.

‘A Luta Continua’ (Portuguese: the struggle continues), is a phrase Tshabalala grew up hearing in ‘post’-apartheid South Africa. As a statement, it originates from Mozambique and has been sung by renowned musicians such as Miriam Makeba in solidarity with the liberation struggle throughout Afrika.*

Although political freedom was and is being fought for, freedom without terms has still not been granted. Through time travel, the figure seen in the video work has now found herself immersed in the Just Future: a speculative world of justice and freedom as imagined by Afrofuturists. Although it is a singular expression of this utopia, it invites the audience to re-imagine and share in the spoils of a necessary war; joy, love, rest, and peace.

Onde A luta Termina in this context was a multi-sensory experience that presents itself as a spiritual dialogue/ prayer between the artists' grandma Nomasonto (ancestors), Tshabalala’s gift of being able to create and have the will to fight for justice. And lastly, the exploration of Tshabalala’s dreams(imagination) of the future she’s working towards. Tshabalala hopes you will see yourself in this world and if not, question why you don’t. 

Photography By Hendrik Zeitler

So Far There Is No Law Against Dreaming (2023)

Digital collage, 3x8m  (site specific)
Röda Sten Gothenburg, Sweden. 2023.
Artwork commissioned by Röda Sten Konsthall

Artist Nontokozo Tshabalala not only draws from this powerful statement the courage to continue to dream but resonates with the strong hope created within us all - who fight for justice - by the liberation movement leaders of the time as somewhat of a force to reckon with. The then liberation leaders believed even in exile, that all humans would be free from oppression.
So why can’t we dream?

The artwork is a reminder that the liberation of Black people is the liberation of all people. It also serves as a celebration of all those who continue to fight injustice and affirms that at the end of it all, WE WILL WIN! A luta continua!

*Words said by mam’ Winnie Mandela during an interview with Anne Benjamin in the book Part of my soul went with him published by WW Norton & Company, inc, referring to grassroots projects her and many other Black women in the community of Brandfort had created during her banishment in 1977 until 1985 by the apartheid government.

Photography by Röda Sten Konsthall

Here I stand

Digital collage, 300 x 250 cm, and audio installation, 1 min 51 sek
'Comforting the Machine' exhibition curated by Tawanda Appiah and Simona Dumitriu
GIBCA Extended 2021, 3:e Våningen, Gothenburg.

Here I Stand is a life-sized print that directly confronts colonial history and how it hovers over us. The contemporary silhouette of the artist is staged to mirror the colonial relief still visible on the streets of central Gothenburg. Her use of collage merges geographies, namely Sweden and South Africa, and puts them into relationality. Her work focuses on the questions “Am I the only one seeing these images and wondering how they are still here? Why is this violence still echoing in my memory?” This interrogation rises in defiance of the process of national colonial pride upon which states are still being built. The artist’s practice is often combined with actions of engagement in the daily realities of a segregated city. “Everyday visuals, often left unnoticed, even the most harmful of them all. A red thread linking the past, present and potential future experience of the brown identity (POC) in Gothenburg, highlights the existence of ongoing violent colonial power in everyday life. It’s painful to leave home, cross oceans and be confronted by it.” (Nontokozo Tshabalala)

Listen to 'Here I Stand' poem read by Nontokozo Tshabalala (2021)

Köskos the cow

Painting commissioned by @blastallet Cultural house

Other work