The tilting Superman logo on a boyish figure cut out of rubber and the flipped logo on another, the pair joined by barely touching hands on a hessian backdrop, are flanked by a shadowy figure made of recycled rubber inner tube pierced by fragments on a rubber backdrop in Patrick Bongoy’s artwork Shadow Self II.
This evokes the uneven realisation of the dreams of youth, says the visual artist of the piece, in his new solo exhibition, Ebbing.
“Those flipped logos are me reflecting on when I was young and I wanted to be Superman and someone important to my community. That dream isn’t yet fully [realised],” says the internationally-acclaimed Bongoy, now 43.
“I have to become that hero who can open conversations between people.”
Opening up conversations in a world stressed by war and exploitation of people and the environment powers his imagination, with which he transforms discarded rubber and other waste materials into the sculptures and tapestries on display in his fourth solo exhibition in South Africa.
“Now, more than ever with the turmoil of wars, environmental degradation and pollution, we must [talk] and move towards understanding. A sense of community is escaping and people are far apart,” says the DRC-born artist, who moved to Cape Town in 2013.
“That’s why I wanted to open a space of reflection. That’s why I manipulate materials, predominantly rubber, which is connected to the environment and the history of Congo,” says Bongo, who graduated with a BA in Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa.
“I love working with different textures. I was in fashion in the Congo before I went into fine art.
“Even though rubber has this darkness and depth, and heavy history, it also attracts movement, and the light plays around it,” says Bongoy, a master at portraying grim and hopeful elements in the same space with his intricate lattices and shapes.
“I want people to see the beauty and new life that translates out of this dead material,” he states.
He doesn’t flinch from showing how we are destroying the earth — from the “global reality of literal and figurative environmental pollution” in his words — as his sculpture of a single lung, titled Resuscitation 1, reveals. “Initially I was going to do two lungs, but after the tragedy of the Amazon rainforest, Congo’s forest is our only hope.
“This is a wake-up call to [humanity],” says the artist, looking sombre beneath a black hoodie over a Zoom call this week.
“There’s hope for a better tomorrow — as long as we have the collective will to achieve it,” is the theme underlying Ebbing. “It’s just a matter of effort, energy and consciousness — and the collective will to change,” in Bongoy’s view.
In Ebbing, he surprises with a sculpture of an unconventional dog with an amputated limb and hints of a lion’s mane and stature.
“As humans, we tend to talk more about us, but the matter of the world is not only human,” he says of this compelling animal with its woven rubber coat. A wall-to-wall canvas of silhouetted children is another striking piece on display.
Bongoy — whose works have been exhibited at art fairs and expos from London and Brussels to Istanbul and Chicago — says African art has come to the fore globally.
He is one of the 2024 finalists in the prestigious Loewe Foundation Craft Prize. The winner of a €50,000 prize will be announced in Paris.
“We can see the attention of the world has been given to us since 2011. The eyes of the world are turning to Africa and we have been given the chance to be listened to,” says the activist artist.
“Now is our time. Now [we] have to tell the world who we are, our culture, the beauty and the pain,” says Bongoy, who exhibited at the Stellenbosch Triennale, as well as other local exhibitions and galleries including MOMO.
When the Covid-19 pandemic silenced or slowed much human activity, Bongoy never stopped his labour-intensive work in his studio, close to his home in Salt River.
“I would go down side streets to my studio and every day I was stitching (and weaving) just for my mental health, until the end of Covid. This was a large black and red tapestry, not some specific project,” he says of that piece.
In tandem with his vigorous work ethic, Bongoy takes time to reflect, on the mountain and while at the beach, gazing at the motion of the waves. Their repeated crashing onto the shore evokes the challenges confronting humanity, he feels.
Ebbing, he says “is a meditation about our need for mother earth.”
*Ebbing is on exhibition at the Old Wine Cellar at Spier Wine Estate in Stellenbosch until May 12.
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