Tinyiko Makwakwa - The Blue Print

10.06.23 - 24.06.23
Solo Exhibition at
Kalashnikovv Gallery,
Johannesburg

Exhibition Statement

A blueprint symbolises a plan of action or a strategy but what it really is, when pared down to its essence, is a reproduction of an image or template that already exists. Tinyiko Makwakwa activates both its function and form in her second solo with Kalashnikovv Gallery.

In the development of her practice, where she uses natural dyes, fibre and textile to create compositions, for this body of work Makwakwa works with indigo, an ancient pigment, as a means to explore ideas around forgotten language, memory and accessing knowledge.

Guided by the observation of celestial bodies and examining her own body as a blueprint, Makwakwa says she was inspired by a period leading up to and following the summer solstice, which coincided with an empathism for her own individual and collective spiritual and cultural insights.

Makwakwa says, “It has been too often repeated and reinforced that Africans never or hardly ever recorded or wrote anything down and have an oral history instead of any written archive. That African and indigenous people are oral storytellers. But what if those memories and teachings are saved in a way or place that requires us to challenge the way we think about collecting and preserving knowledge? And that our bodies as ancestral sites of knowledge have encoded knowledge in our DNA. Knowledge systems are not the same as what people think they are. We have written language that is archived perhaps in our own inner body that doesn’t need external validation.”

To layer colours and expression into the fabric, Makwakwa uses a labour- and timeintensive starch resist technique that also prompted her to ask questions about her own past resistance to exploring different ways of understanding the world and herself.

Weaving cotton around the curvilinear forms and aesthetics she imagines as an expression of that language, the untreated thread introduces greater movement to the surface with a stitch effect that mirrors that of the shongololo with its myriad legs and its seemingly endless perambulations. Makwakwa says, “That movement picks up on the reverberations of the shades of blue across the sky during the summer solstice and the idea that movement is necessary and will get us to where we need to be”.

A self-taught artist born in 1984 in Johannesburg, Makwakwa has had work featured in a number of group shows that include: “Mow down the lawn” at Ithuba Gallery, Johannesburg (2018), Africa Textile Talks, Middleburg (2022), “Waste Not Want Not” at Shade Gallery, Johannesburg (2022), and “New Signings” at Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg (2022), Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg (2022), Cape Town Art Fair (2023) and RMB Latitudes Art Fair Johannesburg (2023). Her first solo “Cosmos & Community” was held at Kalashnikovv Gallery (2021) and “The Blue Print” is Makwakwa’s second solo with the gallery.