Among the exceptional, singular and, yes, occasionally awful, artworks in the permanent collection of the South African National Gallery, one work stands out as truly enigmatic. It is an untitled paper installation principally composed of repurposed cement packaging that Moshekwa Langa found on the streets of KwaMhlanga, the short-lived capital of the KwaNdebele homeland, shortly after finishing high school in 1993.
This canonical work appears on the must-see exhibition surveying Langas category-resistant practice at A4 Arts Foundation in Cape Town. Titled How to Make a Book , it declares its purpose there is an in-depth publication on the artist in the works.
The works on show at A4 span the period 1995 to 2018. There are a half-dozen pieces from the 1990s, when Langa emerged self-taught, fully formed and fax-enabled on the local art scene. They include Dor, a speculative flag made for a 1998 exhibition in Rotterdam, Holland, as well as his untitled paper installation from 1995.
Three wires running obliquely across the central gallery of A4 display about 20 unbleached fragments of irregularly shaped paper that Langa recycled from discarded cement packaging.
First you invent the country then, if you can, an economy, wrote American journalist Joseph Lelyveld in 1985 of KwaNdebele, a proxy state being built in a hurry.
