Lungiswa Gqunta

About
Through her work Lungiswa Gqunta grapples with the complexities of the South African post-colonial cultural and political landscape. Focusing on creating multisensory experiences that attempt to articulate the social imbalances that persist as a legacy of both patriarchal dominance and colonialism, Gqunta exposes different forms of violence and the systemic inequality in South Africa.
Informed by her upbringing in a shebeen household in the suburb of New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Gqunta is no stranger to the economic legacy of the apartheid regime. Issues of inequality, gender violence and substance abuse as cultivated through the South African Dop system, are all subjects that come under Gqunta’s scrutiny. Working primarily with found materials; empty beer bottles, petrol, torn bed sheets and worn wooden bed frames Gqunta’s work confronts the viewer with a series of uncomfortable negotiations. Between masculine and feminine, the revolutionary and the oppressed and the haves and the have-not’s, her work unflinchingly cuts through idealized notions of domestic space, enclaves of privilege and political apathy. Despite the conceptual shifts in the materials that Gqunta uses, her media of choice: broken glass, razor wire and concrete, are all ubiquitous to an urban township landscape and Gqunta utilizes these emotionally loaded materials to great effect, so that both the potential threat of violence and its aftermath are deftly balanced in her work.
Lungiswa Gqunta (b.1990) is a visual artist working in performance, printmaking, sculpture and installation. She has also held the following solo exhibitions: Tending to the harvest of dreams (2021), ZOLLAMTMMK Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt; Lungiswa Gqunta (2019), Apalazzo Gallery, Brescia, Italy; Qwitha (2018), WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town; Poolside Conversations (2017), Kelder Projects, London; and Qokobe (2016), WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town. Noteworthy exhibitions include Ubuntu a Lucid Dream (2020), Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Living Forgiving Remembering, Museum Arnheim, Netherlands (2020); Garden of Earthly Delights, Gropius Bau, Berlin (2019); NOT A SINGLE STORY II, Wanas Konst Museum (2018); The Planetary Garden, Cultivating Coexistence, Manifesta Biennial 12, Palermo (2018) and the15th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey (2017). Her work forms part of the public collections of the Kunsthaus Museum, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, The University of Cape Town and Zeitz MOCAA. Gqunta has also been an artist in residence at the Rjiksakademie in Amsterdam.
Gqunta has also attended the Gasworks Residency, London; Women on Aeroplanes workshop, Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos, and the Nirox residency, Cradle of Humankind in 2018.
In addition to her independent practice, Gqunta is one of the founding members of iQhiya, with whom she participated in Documenta 14 and Glasgow International.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2021 | Tending to the harvest of dreams, ZOLLAMTMMK Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt |
2019 | Lungiswa Gqunta, Apalazzo Gallery, Brescia, Italy |
2018 | Qwitha - WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town |
2017 | Poolside Conversations, Kelder Projects, London |
Stranger's Location, Michaelis Galleries, Cape Town | |
2016 | Qokobe - WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town |
Selected Group Exhibitions
2021 | Rijksakademie Open Studios, Rijks Academy, Amsterdam |
Not Angels or Algorithms, Only Human Error - WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town | |
OVERVIEW EFFECT, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade | |
2020 | Ubuntu a Lucid Dream, Palais de Tokyo, Paris |
Overview Effect, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, Serbia | |
Living Forgiving Remembering, Museum Arnheim, Netherlands | |
Bienal 12, Porto Alegre, Brazil | |
Faculty of Seeing Thinking With, Through, and By Anton Wilhelm Amo, Kunstverein, Braunschweig, Germany | |
2019 | Garden of Earthly Delights, Gropius Bau, Berlin |
Heroines Now, AKINCI, Amsterdam | |
Not a Single Story II, Wanas Konst Museum, Sweden | |
2018 | iQhiya, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow International |
Unframed, Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town | |
The Planetary Garden, Cultivating Coexistence, Manifesta Biennial 12, Palermo, Italy | |
Not a Single Story, Nirox Sculpture Park, Cradle of Humankind | |
CLOSE: Proximity/Intimacy/Tension, Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG), Johannesburg | |
2017 | All Things Being Equal…, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town |
iQhiya, Documenta 14 | |
15th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey | |
Everyday Anomaly - WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town | |
2016 | Negative Space - WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town |
iQhiya, The AVA Gallery, Cape Town | |
New Monuments, Commune.1, Cape Town |
Permanent Collections
Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (South Africa)
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth (South Africa)
University of Cape Town, Cape Town (South Africa)
Kunsthaus, Zurich (Switzerland)