Navel Seakamela has a solo exhibition of mixed-media portraits titled “Who We Should Not Be” at Southern Guild. These striking portraits portraits were completed during the gallery’s new residency programme.
The artist reflects on the role of leisure in this series of large-scale works depicting people in moments of quietude, repose and vulnerability. Who We Should Not Be contemplates both the joys and difficulties of existence in a world where bodies are inscribed with meaning, read and misread. This body of work, Navel Seakamela’s first solo with the gallery, was completed while he was the first artist in residence at the GUILD Residency.
Throughout his artistic career, Seakamela has developed a distinct visual language. His approach to telling stories is intuitive and compresses various sensibilities and feelings into a single clean frame — uncluttered, measured, almost bare.
The central chorus of Who We Should Not Be is harmonised around a series of paintings bathed in golden yellow, accompanied by fronds that droop lazily and lounging bodies completely at peace with themselves. For Seakamela, this golden yellow gestures towards the many possibilities of being — not only as a reflection of light but also a reflection on the lightness of being. He leans into this yellow (accentuated by the darkness of the skin) to transport us towards the magical and the sacred
For Seakamela, portraiture is a way of capturing human emotion and digging deep into one’s own subconscious. In Who We Should Not Be, exaggerated portraits become a way for him to reflect on a sense of self through tender representations of love and courage in relation to others. Moments of grace and beauty take hold through a careful unfolding of gestures — a hand on the bare body, eyes shut tight inspiring a dreamlike state, eyes resting on a loved one.
Painting is always fraught with difficult questions of representation — who is represented and why – nevertheless, we build our own worlds within this existing one. Who We Should Not Be is not removed from this historical context; in fact, its cogency lies within that context and should be read in that light. The portrayal of black bodies at rest refuses racist traditions that continue to render black bodies invisible. Within this work, the intimate and the political converge in a deeply meaningful way. – Extract from text by Nkgopoleng Moloi
WHAT: Navel Seakamela – “Who We Should Not Be”
WHERE: Southern Guild, Silo 5, Silo District, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, 8001
WHEN: 22 June to 28 July, 2022
INFO: T +27 21 461 2856 | E southernguild@theguildgroup.co.za  | VisitÂ
PHOTO: Cr Hayden Phipps/SGuild
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Navel Seakamela – Artist Bio
Multidisciplinary artist Navel Seakamela was born in 1991 in Soshanguve, Tshwane, and grew up in Tembisa township just outside Johannesburg.
Based between Pretoria and Joburg, Seakamela focuses on portraiture through the medium of painting and drawing. He explores themes of self-representation and Black identity from the perspective of his own post-Apartheid generation, addressing feelings of isolation, gender precepts and the psychological impact of consumerist culture. His subjects appear as silhouettes of ambiguous gender, with few details or distinguishing features other than their dark tonality and, very often, prominent red mouths. Although his large-scale paintings on unstretched canvas depict not so much the individual person as a sense of shared identity, the close framing of his subjects and emotive expression lend his portraits an intimacy and sense of vulnerability.
Seakamela’s interest in art began at the Tembisa Art Centre, leading him to pursue more formal studies at Tshwane University of Technology. where he completed a diploma in visual arts in 2015. He has participated in numerous local exhibitions since 2013, and was selected as a finalist in the Thami Mnyele Fine Art Awards and the PPC Imaginarium Art Competition (2014-2015). He held his first solo exhibition at Kalashnikovv Gallery in Johannesburg in 2021, followed by another at Bonne Espérance gallery in Paris.
