A Different Now is Close Enough to Exhale on You

Goodman Gallery presents A Different Now is Close Enough to Exhale on You, a group exhibition in three parts, guest-curated by Yaounde-born, Berlin-based curator and writer Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung. The exhibition takes place across our Johannesburg and Cape Town galleries alongside a satellite exhibition at Umhlabathi Collective in Johannesburg.

Featured artists at Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg: Leo Asemota, Karimah Ashadu, Rehema Chachage, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Eric Gyamfi, Sabelo Mlangeni, Farkhondeh Shahroudi, Dior Thiam, Rubem Valentim, Sunette L. Viljoen.

The exhibition’s conceptual framework extends from musings over the lyrical content of Cameroonian singer-songwriter and political activist Lapiro de Mbanga’s anthem No Make Erreur (1986). At the heart of the show is an exploration of the systems and relationships that comprise the history of power, extraction and exploitation. It also highlights the histories of resilience, defiance and communion that exist despite dehumanising forms of subjugation. This is articulated through the works of 20 artists from across multiple geographies:

“I wanted to bring together artists whose works I have deeply admired, especially because their works are framed between the polarities of poeticality and politicality. What they all have in common is an ability to approach some of the most sensitive sociopolitical issues with prudence, profundity, and in solidarity, while still possessing a strong aesthetic bearing. When I was approached to curate this exhibition, I was reading Eloghosa Osunde’s essay ‘& Other Stories,’ from which I borrowed the exhibition’s title, which symbolised something of a trust that in these times of dread, artists and culture at large play an important role in crafting our worlds” - Ndikung.

Featuring works that engage with climate change, spatial histories and narratives of conquest and oppression, the entangled nature of the exploitation of people and nature are examined. Ndikung builds a geographical and temporal map, gesturing towards the precarity of human existence constructed through processes of othering that can be found at the core of the colonial project.

Art is also explored as the space in which the work of allyship, conviviality and solidarity can be practised. The inclusion of works that explore remembrance and resistance enables an avenue for unpacking the position that art holds in pushing back against systemic erasure.

The exhibition extends to Umhlabathi Collective located at the old Market Photo Workshop in downtown Johannesburg. Titled Downtown Theory: Degrees of comparison, this satellite show focuses on a selection of photographs by members of the collective, namely Jabulani Dhlamini, Lebohang Kganye, Andile Komanisi, Tshepiso Mabula ka Ndongeni, Tshepiso Mazibuko, Sabelo Mlangeni Andrew Tshabangu, Thandile Zwelibanzi. This show grapples with questions about what it means to live in the now while haunted by ghosts of the past. It builds on the Goodman Gallery exhibitions by considering physical and political topographies.

“For many of us who grew up in other parts of the African continent, we have always looked at South Africa’s liberation struggles as our collective struggles. SA’s dreams of freedom are deeply entangled with the rest of the continent’s. Almost three decades after the transition, one can observe that the power gradients have shifted hands, but still exist, and the Africans from other parts of the continent who once upon a time solidarized with struggling South Africans have become the target. So the question posed by Umhlabathi Collective “what it means to live in the now while haunted by ghosts of the past” is a fundamental one and explains why it was so important to conceive of this show in Cape Town and Johannesburg, and invite international artists as well as our people on the ground to deliberate on that different now that is close enough to exhale on us all” - Ndikung.

The exhibition taking place across three locations allows for the artworks and the themes to be read together and apart. In this way, the artworks speak to each other not only across the gallery floor, but between cities.

Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (b.1977,Yaoundé, Cameroon) is a curator, author and biotechnologist. He is the founder and artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin and is the artistic director of Sonsbeek20–24, a quadrennial contemporary art exhibition in Arnhem, the Netherlands. He is artistic director of the 13th Bamako Encounters 2022, a biennale for African photography in Mali. Ndikung was the curator-at-large for Adam Szymczyk’s Documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany in 2017; a guest curator of the Dak’Art biennale in Dakar, Senegal in 2018. Together with the Miracle Workers Collective, he curated the Finland Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019. He is currently a professor in the Spatial Strategies MA program at the Weissensee Academy of Art in Berlin. From 2023 he will take on the role of Director and Chief Curator at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin.

Danielle McKinney

The inclusion of Last Call and Best Kept Secret follows Mckinney’s New York exhibition titled Golden Hour where she expands and deepens her exploration into female subjecthood. Depicted in abstractly domestic settings, the figures in Mckinney’s work offer a radical possibility: a space in which a person is utterly free to be themselves, an existence circumscribed in aesthetic terms of their own devising. These figures inhabit a sense of freedom and raw emotion one feels in the safety of their own space. For Mckinney, the spatial possibilities offered by painting are an entry point into accessing universal human experiences and spiritual truths.