Tucked away in a suburban street in Grahamstown, Vusi Khumalo works hard, his denim apron splotched with paint keeping no secrets as to what he does.
As he invites me into his large comfortable home, his smile is warm and welcoming. His wife Thuli is rushing about – their grandson has just come home from Kingswood College, a stone’s throw away. A domestic helper dutifully irons clothes in the kitchen. It could all so easily be a scene from one of Khumalo’s artworks depicting everyday South African life.
This artist, who works in mixed media, was recently commissioned to portray life in a rural Chinese village.
“I visited rural villages in China when I was involved in an exchange programme with an art college there. I noticed the informal settlements and, similar to ours in South Africa, I believe they will not be around forever.
“Now, through my links with China, I have been commissioned by a Chinese man who lives in Cape Town to do a piece on life in rural China,” said Khumalo.
Khumalo chooses to run his lucrative international art business from Grahamstown. He is the only South African and only black artist invited to exhibit and sell his work from London’s prestigious Portland Gallery. Some of his pieces have sold for around £13 000 (around R202 500). Portland, tagged as one of London’s leading art galleries, exhibits and sells work by artists such as Jack Vettriano and Rolf Harris. Khumalo also sells from South Africa’s largest and most prestigious gallery, Everard Read in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
“I am a permanent citizen of the Eastern Cape now,” laughs Khumalo, “the environment here has everything we need. Grahamstown is close to the sea and not far from major cities, like East London. It is also close to rural Eastern Cape.
“They say money is everywhere, you don’t only find it living in Johannesburg. As an artist I can run my business from here and still benefit from a better lifestyle.”
Khumalo, who was born in Balfour North, near Johannesburg, was “deployed” to Grahamstown in 1992 from exile in the African National Congress’s (ANC) Dakawa Camp in Tanzania.
He was repatriated to establish and run an art and craft community centre, also called Dakawa. Originally supported by the Swedish government, this funding has now run its course.
“Dakawa now mainly focuses on craft work, beading and sewing, but is run on a smaller scale than what is was, which is sad,” said Khumalo.
Time spent in Tanzania gave Khumalo the opportunity to pursue his lifelong interest in painting. He enrolled on a correspondence course with London University and then attended a summer course at Gerlesberg Art School in Sweden.
In 1994, Khumalo was awarded a one-year scholarship to attend Konstfack National Art College in Sweden and held his first one-man exhibition there that year.
Khumalo’s work is described on Portland Gallery’s website as “immediately arresting; the sheer power and individuality of what he portrays and how he creates it marks him out as one of Africa’s most gifted and exciting contemporary artists”.
His collages concentrate almost exclusively on South African townships, rural villages and squatter camps.
Khumalo gathers discarded tin cans, stones, clothes and wood and re-assembles them to create immensely powerful images. He possesses an uncanny natural ability to create perspective – often cutting hundreds of piece of rusted metal into different shapes and sizes and nailing onto a board to re-create the very real feeling of the almost endless progression of shanty huts stretching to the horizon.
“I see myself as a visual historian as I capture the moment and time for the future.
We need to record history for all to be exposed to it in later years. I like to see my work hanging in public places, so more people see it,” said Khumalo.
UNWRAP EASTERN CAPE
Vusi Khumalo has set his sights on a new challenge … creating a work of art called Unwrap Eastern Cape.
The concept forms part of a campaign of the same name, run by Yithethe maAfrika, publisher of Madiba Action.
Funds from the sale of the artwork, due for completion in 2009, will be donated to the Premier’s Project of Hope, which provides funding to help people in desperate need. It is managed by a board and is reliant on private sector funding.
