Lungiswa Gqunta is an artist working in performance, printmaking, sculpture and installation.
2023 year exhibited in Biennial Find out more
In her work she attempts to deconstruct spatial modes of exclusion and oppression by addressing, amongst other issues the access to and ownership of land, highlighting the persistent social imbalances and the legacies of both patriarchal dominance, racism and colonialism.
She aims to disrupt this status quo with material references to guerrilla tactics and protest: her installations consist of quotidian objects with the potential to become weapons and means to defend in the struggle that opposes the slow violence imposed by oppression in relation to labour, racial, class, and gender inequalities. Catering to context and audience, her works provide positive references and care to people of colour, and impose discomfort, confrontation, and caution in white (cube) spaces. Hereby, Gqunta aims to reassert black people into the landscape, shedding light on sedimented knowledge and proposes forms of collective healing in which music and female strength play a crucial role.
Solo exhibitions include: Sleep In Witness, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2022) Tending to the harvest of dreams, Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt (2021); Noteworthy group exhibitions include Ubuntu a Lucid Dream, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; On the Necessity of Gardening,Centraal Museum, Utrecht, Mercusol Biennale Brazil, and Documenta 14.
Her work forms part of the public collections of the Kunsthaus Museum, Zurich, KADIST, Paris, MMK, Frankfurt, and Zeitz MOCAA Cape Town. Gqunta has also been an artist in residence at the Rjiksakademie in Amsterdam and Gasworks, London.
Liverpool Biennial 2023
Sleeping Pools – Brewing (2023)
Lungiswa Gqunta is interested in histories of displacement and how colonialism, slavery and Apartheid shape and inform displacement. Her work is fractured with the cracks that rupture the underlying structure of South African society. Rather than build upon this unsteady terrain, Gqunta pieces together the fragments of her lived experiences – those of her community’s collective memories – and distils them into their most essential materials, reconstructing the socio-political landscape. Here, the parameters of secure spaces are reconsidered in the form of her sculpture ‘Sleeping Pools – Brewing’ (2023), an illuminated bedframe filled with a petrol-like substance. Gqunta questions what it means to rest in the tenuous divide that separates public and private domains in South Africa, subsequently creating a
Lungiswa Gqunta is interested in histories of displacement and how colonialism, slavery and Apartheid shape and inform displacement. Her work is fractured with the cracks that rupture the underlying structure of South African society. Rather than build upon this unsteady terrain, Gqunta pieces together the fragments of her lived experiences – those of her community’s collective memories – and distils them into their most essential materials, reconstructing the socio-political landscape. Here, the parameters of secure spaces are reconsidered in the form of her sculpture ‘Sleeping Pools – Brewing’ (2023), an illuminated bedframe filled with a petrol-like substance. Gqunta questions what it means to rest in the tenuous divide that separates public and private domains in South Africa, subsequently creating a ‘third space’ where the luxury of a suburb and the perceived threat of a township coincide. The significance of Gqunta’s use of petrol lies in the sense of discomfort it creates, pervasive and unsettling. By accompanying this symbolic representation of a suburban swimming pool with the presence of political unrest, Gqunta highlights structural inequity and poses an imminent threat to privileged entitlement. Showing at Cotton Exchange
Sleeping Pools – Brewing (2023)
Showing at Cotton Exchange
Wednesday to Sunday 10:00am-6:00pm
