Bay art practitioner Wezile Mgibe is presenting his new work Death Graduates on Saturday November 17 at the ArtEC Gallery in Central.
The KwaMagxaki multi-disciplinary artist says Death Graduates will look at love in the black community and the “parts of ourselves with which we have been at war”.
“Death Graduates speaks about the number of deaths at university and all the bad news the media is providing, and how there is no space for good news any more,” Mgibe said.
He said he would like to create a space for good news, continuing his series of post-apartheid trauma live art called In These Streets.
“Two years of my life of researching, experimenting and presenting developing work in various spaces has led to this exact moment where a series of demonstrations will happen at ArtEC," he said.
“It actually sums up all of my work I did while away in Pretoria, Bloemfontein and Cape Town for a PE audience who never got a chance to see the work.”
Mgibe said Death Graduates would also reflect a journey he felt many other shared.
“I have gone through so many phases of depression, wonder, excitement, seeing us as radical possibility, witnessing our radical imagination and – most of all – black love.”
Mgibe, who now divides his time between the Bay and Cape Town, uses both performing and visual art as a tool for social change, along with improvisation and physical theatre and audio.
He presented two original works in September – a contemporary Afro-fusion dance with an art installation, In These Streets – Bayeza!, which premiered at the PE Opera House, and his first piece In These Streets - Collecting Bodies, which was performed in Cape Town.
Death Graduates is at 1pm on Saturday November 17 and tickets are R30. Further information from ArtEC, 041-585-3641.