Lungiswa Gqunta & Lakisha Apostel - In Land We Resonate

Two artists, two approaches

This exhibition by Lungiswa Gqunta and Lakisha Apostel brings together two experiences of (re)connecting with the earth. One digs up, while the other settles into the soil: two different but complementary ways of working, aimed at creating a sense of embeddedness.

The artists each start from their personal experience of displacement. Gqunta's video installation is named after the Riotous Assemblies Act of 1956, a law that banned outdoor public gatherings in South Africa. In the work, she explores alternative assemblies in the home as a way to unearth knowledge rooted in post-colonial South Africa. Based on her own memories as a young girl, she shows how the tradition of women folding sheets can lead to collective conversation. The collective is also evident in Apostel's performance work We Shared a Belly, where the African diasporic experience is echoed in her highly personal attempts to connect with her homeland of Curaçao. To express this, she uses sculptures as tools in a ritual, in which the uprooted body reconnects with the earth.

At Nest in Laak, the artists stretch the notion of listening to a bodily awareness of the environment. In an exhibition they have designed to accompany the body in space, Gqunta and Apostel both demonstrate different ways of grounding. The artists invite you to listen attentively to what is hidden in the earth. What does it tell us? What can we hear if we listen decolonially?