Bambo Sibiya and the art of precarity

On entering the site of Bambo Sibiya’s latest exhibition at Circa Gallery, one is struck by the sheer scale of the art pieces. The work sucks the viewer into an unending time warp, the pieces are monumental assemblages that resist categorisation. The show is all things at once: spiritual, enlivening, elegant, uplifting. 

“I work on big pieces and, with my style, if I go too small, my work becomes squeezed. So I need to open up. The more room I have, the better,” says the artist.

Sibiya’s technique is unmistakable; his productions stay with you long after the experience. He has a rare gift that enables him to distil black people’s beauty and put it on display for all to admire. He produces art that defies the many ways in which this anti-black, anti-poor, anti-African world tells us we don’t belong. In Sibiya’s worlds, black people are part of the ecology that renders human life possible; the magic that fuels existence. We are one with the birds, the plants, the wild animals — we are colourful.

“The entire idea behind the exhibition was to celebrate what we have — our beauty, our nature, our women. And the birds, for me they symbolise a lot of things, and one of those is freedom,” he says.

“My colour palette for the entire exhibition is blue and pink. So I started with blue as an initial colour. As I was painting, I just felt like the work was becoming a bit heavy. I introduced pink to balance it.” 

Our conversation turns into an impromptu walkabout during which the master tactician reveals his trade secrets amid a chorus of posed portraits that are striking to behold. His eyes brighten up as he delves into the technical aspects of his craft, such as why some materials, like glitter, do not naturally lend themselves to fine art, and what he thinks about when composing his art works. I then ask him how he decides that the work is done. 

“It’s easy to start, but finishing is a big problem. For me, when I can look at my piece and smile, then I know that it’s done. I need to be happy. Because you can keep going, but the reason you keep doing that is because you’re not satisfied. It means that you have not achieved it yet, it’s incomplete. Sometimes I look at my pieces like I’m walking into the gallery, and I become mesmerised. I feel like I’ve done this, these are my hands. I get blown away seeing them curated in a certain way.” 

Sibiya treats his process like one would a sacred offering. He calls it sharing his mind with the viewer, and says that bringing the objects he imagines in his head to life is “the most difficult thing”. 

“I can start knowing exactly how I want the piece to turn out, but I can tell you every time I don’t get to those results. It’s either I get more than what I expected, or I get less. Because sometimes you work on a piece and you just feel like ...I can’t do more than this. This is enough.”

But sometimes his work indicates that it’s still not done. Sibiya says that he usually rolls up the incomplete pieces and puts them away to focus on something else. He’ll then return to them in two or three weeks with a fresh mind and a new set of ideas. 

“With all my paintings, I don’t work on one piece and finish it. I actually start all of them at once. I can hang about three pieces at once in my studio. It’s always trial and error, I don’t have a specific working recipe. Sometimes I’ll just place it on a wall where I pass by every time, and just think about it. Then I’ll put sticky notes whenever something comes up.”

Sibiya delves deeper into the process of working on this current body of work as our conversation draws to an end. He speaks about his artistic evolution, and how he tries to own every piece that goes into building his exhibits, down to the dresses that the model wears. 

“When I did the mining collection, I would go out and source suits. But I had zero connection to those suits, there was no sentimental value. But with this collection, I had to design them myself. So I take honour in everything.”

• Ngemva Kokuqubuka — After Precarity is showing at the Circa Gallery until July 27.