Lungiswa Gqunta is an artist working in performance, printmaking, sculpture and installation.
2023 Biennial Year Find out more
In her work she attempts to deconstruct spatial modes of exclusion and oppression by addressing, amongst other issues the access to and ownership of land, highlighting the persistent social imbalances and the legacies of both patriarchal dominance, racism and colonialism.
She aims to disrupt this status quo with material references to guerrilla tactics and protest: her installations consist of quotidian objects with the potential to become weapons and means to defend in the struggle that opposes the slow violence imposed by oppression in relation to labour, racial, class, and gender inequalities. Catering to context and audience, her works provide positive references and care to people of colour, and impose discomfort, confrontation, and caution in white (cube) spaces. Hereby, Gqunta aims to reassert black people into the landscape, shedding light on sedimented knowledge and proposes forms of collective healing in which music and female strength play a crucial role.
Solo exhibitions include: Sleep In Witness, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2022) Tending to the harvest of dreams, Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt (2021); Noteworthy group exhibitions include Ubuntu a Lucid Dream, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; On the Necessity of Gardening,Centraal Museum, Utrecht, Mercusol Biennale Brazil, and Documenta 14.
Her work forms part of the public collections of the Kunsthaus Museum, Zurich, KADIST, Paris, MMK, Frankfurt, and Zeitz MOCAA Cape Town. Gqunta has also been an artist in residence at the Rjiksakademie in Amsterdam and Gasworks, London.
Liverpool Biennial 2023
'Sleeping Pools – Brewing' (2023)
Lungiswa Gqunta grapples with the complexities of the South African cultural and political landscape. She addresses histories of displacement and how colonialism, slavery and apartheid continue to shape and inform daily life in her home. Featuring found materials which are commonly present in urban townships, Gqunta centres her own experience and the collective memory of her community to highlight cracks which rupture the underlying structure of South African society, exposing forms of violence and systemic inequality which remain rife today.
Here, the parameters of secure and safe spaces are reconsidered in the form of her sculpture ‘Sleeping Pools – Brewing’, an illuminated irregularly shaped bedframe filled with ink, water and essential oil (to mimic the appearance and smell of petrol*). Gqunta
Lungiswa Gqunta grapples with the complexities of the South African cultural and political landscape. She addresses histories of displacement and how colonialism, slavery and apartheid continue to shape and inform daily life in her home. Featuring found materials which are commonly present in urban townships, Gqunta centres her own experience and the collective memory of her community to highlight cracks which rupture the underlying structure of South African society, exposing forms of violence and systemic inequality which remain rife today. Here, the parameters of secure and safe spaces are reconsidered in the form of her sculpture ‘Sleeping Pools – Brewing’, an illuminated irregularly shaped bedframe filled with ink, water and essential oil (to mimic the appearance and smell of petrol*). Gqunta questions what it means to rest within the divides that separates public and private domains in South Africa, creating a ‘third space’ where the luxury of a suburb and the perceived threat of a township coincide. Gqunta’s use of a petrol scent is intended to create a pervasive sense of discomfort. Referencing a homemade explosive, the petrol bomb – a common weapon used in acts of civil protest – the smell signifies revolutionary violence. This is a tactic the artist uses to expose race, class, and gender-based injustices at play globally, but more specifically in South Africa. The installation narrates a resistance against the structures of colonialism that remain in place today and the inequality that surrounds us. These privileges are directly linked to issues of racial segregation and other long-term effects of apartheid and colonialism that continue to subtly spread and imprison many South Africans, both physically and psychologically. By accompanying this symbolic representation of a suburban swimming pool with petrol as the symbol of political unrest, Gqunta highlights structural inequity and poses an imminent threat to privileged entitlement. Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial.
'Sleeping Pools – Brewing' (2023)
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Lungiswa Gqunta, Sleeping Pools – Brewing, 2023. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Cotton Exchange. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Stuart Whipps.
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Lungiswa Gqunta, Sleeping Pools – Brewing, 2023. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Cotton Exchange. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Stuart Whipps.
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Lungiswa Gqunta, Sleeping Pools – Brewing, 2023. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Cotton Exchange. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Stuart Whipps.
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Lungiswa Gqunta, Sleeping Pools – Brewing, 2023. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Cotton Exchange. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Stuart Whipps.
