Created By
Fumani Maluleke
Acrylic on reed mat
Curator
Luke Chapman
This work urges us to approach memory as an active site, where retrieval and reinvention take place simultaneously. In "Cheka wa ma javula III," the mat is a field for negotiation: collapsed boundaries, new solidarities, lines of inheritance redrawn for the present. Maluleke’s sensitivity to surface and shadow is matched by a sophisticated probing of belonging—the mat’s edges holding together histories that are neither fixed nor finished.
"Cheka wa ma javula III" stands as a monumental meditation on the intersections of personal inheritance and collective memory. Utilizing the generous square meterage of the mat, Maluleke draws the viewer’s gaze into a realm where tradition is both material and metaphor. The intricacy of the reed surface, with its visible process and shifting light, is a nod to the enduring labor of mat weaving in the artist’s home region, unlocking ancestral narratives coded in technique and repetition. Here, space is not neutral—the very dimensions insist on presence, evoking both the physical scale of rural gathering spaces and the broader cultural landscape of South Africa.
Created By
Fumani Maluleke
197 x 197 cm | 78 x 78 in
Framed and mounted
2025
