Pitika Ntuli, poet and sculptor
Pitika Ntuli, poet and sculptor
(Joburg)
Artist, poet and academic Pitika Ntuli is preparing his mixed media sculptures and poems for his upcoming exhibition at Museum Africa. While galleries and artists have been frantically getting their stands and work ready to display at the Joburg Art Fair this week, Pitika Ntuli is getting ready for his exhibition at Museum Africa in May.
Ntuli is a talented artist, sculpting in wood, metal, bone, stone and plastic. He can add a list of other achievements to his name: poet, writer, academic, teacher, indigenous knowledge expert and government ministerial adviser.
His house and garden in Parktown North are filled with his often powerful works. He plans to put 160 works on display at the May exhibition, which is to be called "Scent of invisible footprints - in moments of complexity".
The invisible footprints refer to being a refugee, the way Ntuli lived for many years. "No one notices who you are, you leave no footprints. You are wanted and unwanted, always in between, feeling you are losing your identity," he explains.
This is his first exhibition in South Africa since his return from exile in 1996. The chief curator of Museum Africa, Ali Hlongwane, says he approached Ntuli in early 2009, and he immediately agreed to the exhibition. Ntuli has raised funding for the exhibition - it is to be sponsored by cellphone group MTN.
He says he likes to take found objects - large elephant or giraffe bones, discarded spades and wheelbarrows, old exhaust pipes and motorbike frames - and re-imagine them. This often involves giving them a face, and giving the work an interpretation which takes in history, like the Industrial Revolution, or the apartheid government's terror tactics, or South Africa's tripartite alliance.
Often his work has a humorous element, like a metal sculpture entitled "Zulu warrior with pants down".
Three major Ntuli works are to be found in Swaziland, where he lived for 16 years before he moved to England. He lived in that country until 1996, when he returned to South Africa. In all, he was in exile for 34 years.
Large Ntuli mural sculptures stand in a bank in Mbabane, the airport and a church in Lobamba. His work is also represented in private collections overseas. "For me art is one of those rare things necessary for someone's self-fulfilment," he says.
Art scene "sterile"
Asked if his work is represented at the Joburg Art Fair, Ntuli says no, that he finds the art scene in Joburg "sterile".
"I go to museums and galleries but nothing hits me in my stomach." He finds leading artists repetitive, and "not interrogating other media".
He expresses a wish to not have BBBEE types buying his work, with it ending up in sterile environments. "Nice people should buy my work," he says, smiling.
Ntuli has held nine solo exhibitions and participated in a dozen group exhibitions, mostly in London. He has curated several exhibitions and was an artist in residence in the 1980s and 1990s at schools and colleges in London.
A poet
However, he would prefer to be known as a poet, he says. "I didn't particularly want to be discovered as an artist."
Ntuli plans to combine his poetry with his artwork, engraving poems on to bones and placing verses in the titles of works on display. He says he has mastered so many media, in reality becoming an "artist engineer".
A wooden sculpture with multiple faces
For example, working with metal requires the artist to learn about the medium. And he has learned to carve and patinate directly on to hot metal, he says.
"Working with stone requires you to become a geologist. There are so many aspects to it - an artist is not just a dreamer."
Born in 1942 in Springs, Ntuli grew up in Witbank, in Mpumalanga.
He became a member of the PAC in his late teens and went into exile in Swaziland in 1962, where he became involved in the local art scene, teaching and organising exhibitions.
He was arrested in 1978 in Swaziland and spent a year on death row as a political prisoner in a Swaziland jail. Once released, he fled to England, where he lived for 18 years.
In London, he spent time lecturing at various institutions and was involved in helping to form a performance poetry organisation in the United Kingdom called Apples and Snakes.
"It's the biggest poetry thing in western Europe," he says, explaining that it began as poetry readings in a pub. This developed to getting a room above the pub, and later the Greater London Arts Association gave the group space for workshops with poetry and music.
It grew and grew and now the "leading poets of the world" participate in readings.
Although he hasn't published an anthology of his poetry, he has published a number of papers, on topics ranging from African art and healing, culture in the African Renaissance, and equal opportunities in the agricultural sector, to labour law in South Africa.
When he returned to South Africa in 1996, he took up a teaching post in the fine arts department of the University of the Witwatersrand. After a year he moved to KwaZulu-Natal where he headed up the fine arts and art history department at the University of Durban-Westville (UDW) for a year.
He was acting vice-principal of UDW for two years, and in 2003 was executive dean of students at the university.
In between, he served as senior fellow to the African Renaissance Institute and as director of the Sankofa Institute for the African Renaissance. His most recent appointment was executive director of organisational development in the merged University of KwaZulu-Natal.
February 17th, 2011
