“Displaced and uprooted”: Buhlebezwe Siwani’s visual art of healing
This article examines a selection of the recent work of South African artist and sangoma (traditional healer) Buhlebezwe Siwani, namely the video installations uNgenzelephantsi (2014) and AmaHubo (2018) and the multimedia exhibitions iYeza (Makhanda, 2022 and Johannesburg, 2023) and ulwela amaza (Am...
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| Vydáno v: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles, |
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| Hlavní autor: | |
| Médium: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Jazyk: | Anglais |
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Angles
2025
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| On-line přístup: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Shrnutí: | This article examines a selection of the recent work of South African artist and sangoma (traditional healer) Buhlebezwe Siwani, namely the video installations uNgenzelephantsi (2014) and AmaHubo (2018) and the multimedia exhibitions iYeza (Makhanda, 2022 and Johannesburg, 2023) and ulwela amaza (Amsterdam, 2025). Drawing on Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s Potential History, it argues that the work performs a complex gesture of “unlearning” of hegemonic imperial narratives and disengages from dominant epistemologies and understandings of the world, producing instead a visual universe which retrieves the traumatic, silenced histories of Indigenous people in South Africa and of African diasporic communities in the Netherlands, and accommodates multiple epistemic and spiritual traditions. For Siwani, art is not separable from her work as a healer, but is itself a healing practice. |
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