Available Works

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