Description:
If the ‘lockdown’ conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic have revealed pre-existing disparities and the violent normalcy of racism and patriarchy, then surely such a moment calls with heightened urgency for portals, possibilities, refusals and futurities, and for acts of mutual aid and solidarity. It is in this context that we wish to think about artistic practices as a different kind of resourcing, in which creative acts of giving and receiving perform an alternative economy of exchange.  

The nourishing, umbilical connection implied in the isiXhosa word Imbeleko speaks to the kind of mutual resourcing we associate with these artist offerings, as well as to the collaborative inter-city exchange of the series, which was launched as a collaborative project between relating arts pedagogy organisations in Durban and Johannesburg. As organisers deeply vested in local, transnational and diasporic art communities, we hope these offerings present a different kind of resource, as the precarity and structural violence revealed in the crisis and ‘slow time’ of the global COVID-19 pandemic call for a radical reconfiguring of white, colonial, capitalist and patriarchal temporalities. 

Ismail Farouk and Russel Hlongwane | Art for Humanity 

Author’s details: 
Name: Ismail Farouk & Russel Hlongwane

About Us:
Imbeleko_artist offerings is an online series of commissioned artist interactions, or offerings, collaboratively supported by Art for Humanity (Durban University of Technology) and the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre (University of Johannesburg). Volume 1features four South African artists and creative practitioners, some of whom are well-established, others newer to the scene. In a series of interviews, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Queezy, Sumayya Vally and Nelisiwe Xaba share critical and innovative practices applied in their work, in dialogue with invited curators, writers and cultural organisers. Selected artworks are also featured as online offerings, together working as an online exhibition. Future volumes will expand the conversation, drawing in artists and creatives from across the African continent and diaspora.