Occupying A Fatuous State of Severity

23 February 2020 - 29 March 2020

What began as a collection of short stories birthed in the pangs of depression is now laid bare as an immersive installation situating the viewer in the upside-down state of our existence in society.

The exhibition reflects the mental and emotional highways of the mind as explored in The Fatuous State of Severity a book written by multidisciplinary artist and writer Phumlani Pikoli that surrounds experiences of a young generation coping with the tensions of social media, language insecurities and the various dynamics within relationships.

Journeying between the works, visitors are invited to contemplate their own occupation in the expressed state of severity. Abandoning the comfort of distance, occupying this fatuous state prompts visitors to come face to face with works that impel introspective dialogue. By suspending moments of psychological disarray, the exhibition magnifies the suppression of the black mental struggle and examines our empathy for difference and detachment.

Pikoli employs the creative dexterity of collaborators Bale Legoabe, Skumbuzo Salman and Felix Laband to create a metaphysical reveille of tone, positionality, and moralism that’s both central and abstruse to the nature of the body of work. These additional voices are linguistic, visual and sonic experiences that connect and disconnect, arrange and scatter, filter out and clog the viscerally inimitable experience of mental illness.

What’s shaped over a three-year-long, intimate exercise is now not only exposed but also existentially ported onto these it encounters.

Bale Legoabe