Luvuyo Equiano Nyawose (ZA)

eBhish'

29 April 2022 - 29 July 2022
Image: Luvuyo Equiano Nyawose, [Untitled 1 (December 16th, 2019)], 2021. Courtesy the artist.

Image: Luvuyo Equiano Nyawose, Untitled 1 (December 16th, 2019), 2021. Courtesy the artist.

When

29 April 2022 - 29 July 2022

Venue

Southbank Promenade (outdoor) [i]
Southbank Promenade, Southbank
24 hrs

Theme

Nature

Accessibility

Wheelchair access

The legacies of colonialism and apartheid echo in many forms of social practice in contemporary South Africa. Ibhish’ laseThekwini (the Durban beachfront), a seaside public space, is imbued with a racialised tension. Historically, the beach was the nation’s premier seaside destination and drew crowds of white beachgoers. Since the 1990s, the crowds have changed, making the central beaches predominantly black, particularly in the summer which has been met with abjection.

Through film photography and aerial photography, Nyawose have been documenting black beachgoers to re-inscribe black social life ebhishi (at the beach). The notion of the ocean as a witness is a key photographic interest. We might think of the ocean as a subject which holds memory. This is particularly important in Nyawose’s work, as it looks at the self in relation to the ocean, and engages with the beach as a meeting point of black people in summer and as an articulation of an unnameable space (a metaphysical realm) beyond the constraints of capitalist leisure crucial for spiritual survival.

Saidiya Hartman (2019) argues that the past is not a time that is over; it is a historical force that produces our now. It is important, therefore, to address the invisibility of black social life in public spaces. Through Nyawose’s work, the artist is contributing to a contemporary archive of black life ebhishi, one with humanising, tender and intimate moments, aimed at inscribing our place in the seaside eThekwini.

Commissioned by Photo Australia and the City of Melbourne

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Artists

Founding Partners
  • Bowness Family Foundation
  • Naomi Milgrom Foundation
Major Government Partners
  • City of Melbourne Arts Grants Program
  • Creative Victoria
Major Partners
  • Maddocks

PHOTO Australia respectfully acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands upon which we work and live, and the rich and diverse Indigenous cultures across what is now called Australia. For over 60,000 years, Indigenous arts and culture have thrived on this sacred land, and we honour Elders and cultural leaders past and present. This was, and always will be, Aboriginal land.

01–24 March