In a world that is driven by brand awareness and self-expression, how would we be perceived by our distant future descendants? Would our portraits feature signs of virtue and perhaps slightly out-of-touch cultural hallmarks of yesteryear? Or would we paint ourselves honestly with 21st-century fashion accessories & signs of our increasingly automated lives?
Multimedia artist Kgodisho Mowa explores this relationship in his illustrations, drawing portraits of African men in a style that is informed by his own experience of sacred traditions that become saturated with modern culture.
We asked Mowa about the motivation behind his artworks. He described how his own upbringing in an agrarian part of Polokwane, South Africa, forms part of his creative perspective and how years later, on receiving a peculiar call to return home, a close friend was faced with a clash of cultures.
“Growing up in rural Polokwane, I was in a community where African tradition was so sacred and respected, but when I moved to the city I saw African people being heavily influenced by Western trends,” Mowa said.
“At some point one of my friends, who was born and raised in a city, received a calling to be initiated and become a Sangoma [a traditional spiritual healer], but he had no idea what that meant and he had to go to the village where his grandparents live to be initiated. Afterwards, I noticed that he still mixed his modern behaviour with traditional ones and I asked myself – what would we look like if we were to become ancestors to the next generation?”
Mowa then started to collect visual references that would help him to illustrate a disparate mental image – the traditional ancestral portrayal as seen through a modern lens.
“This image popped up in my head of an ancestral spirit looking like a rapper with a bandana, snapback cap and some Ray-Bans – how cool and unusual would that be? And would such images be offensive or easily accepted?” Mowa added.
Rough sketches, found photographs, pictures of his own and his own creations on Adobe Illustrator, all formed part of Mowa’s process. He has dubbed it “Evaporation”.
“The theme, Evaporation, is about spirits rising to the surface to guide people who are still on Earth, but they don't look like we've imagined them. Instead, they look like cool kids and hipsters, so it's easier for the youth to connect with them because they are like-minded to us and connected with current trends,” Mowa said.
