Propositions for dis-order : Vusumzi Nkomo

Vusumzi Nkomo (b. 1993) is an artist, musician, writer, cultural theorist and educator living and working in Cape Town, South Africa.

His work, situated in the intersection between art and politics, investigates notions of invention and residue as means to make sense of how we are positioned as modern subjects. Nkomo asks how systems, structures and practices persist long after they have been pronounced ‘dead’. His practice spans across installation, sculpture, video, drawing, performance and sound. Nkomo’s work probes hegemonic semiotic systems while critiquing and interrogating racial violence, knowledge production, language, power, history and memory.

Working with a range of materials such as concrete, glass and mirrors, shoe and floor polish, sea salt, soil, ash, and various found objects, Nkomo stages speculative encounters between objects to expose the operations of structural violence and paradigmatic precarity in the longue durée of South Africa’s history of racial slavery, colonialism and their afterlives. Often drawing from conceptualist and minimalist strategies, Nkomo is interested in seriality, repetition, fragmentation, movement and multiplicity, as modes of unveiling and demystifying the pervasiveness and ubiquity of anti-blackness as structuring modality of Black life.

In 2024, Nkomo presented his debut solo exhibition Ityala aliboli at Association for Visual Arts (AVA) Gallery, and his second solo exhibition titled Propositions for dis-order at THK Gallery in September 2024. Nkomo recently presented  work in a number of group shows including SENSES (2024) at Michaelis Gallery curated by Kamogelo Walaza; over/under (2024) at Lemkus Gallery curated by Jared Leite and Jade Nair; Fullhouse (2023) at blank projects curated by FEDE and Under Projects; TEXT (2023) organised by artists Kamyar Bineshtarigh and Brett Seiler; Occupation (2022) at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG), curated by Thuli Gamedze, Zen Marie, and Gilles Furtwängler; PILOT (2022), and a durational performance (2022) with his sound collective DEAD SYMBOLS with artists and composers Rowan Smith and Fernando Damon, both at Under Projects; a sonic lecture titled Sagrili and The Coming of Western Schools (2022) in dialogue with Portuguese artist Grada Kilomba’s “A World of Illusions” at Norval Foundation. He has also produced work as part of sound collective Blackness and Dance with American writer Kim Reynolds and sound artist and composer Dani Kyengo O’Neill / BUJIN.